Arnold Schoenberg: Classic or Dud?

yes I do think of 'serialism' as the total inverse of tonality. and if bach took a while to be understood, so will webern and stockhausen but it is a diff time, there are records and much of this is already understood or listened to, and is extensively written about and discussed, maybe more so than 200 years ago.

'particurlarly american music' ? OK, I believe it got more funding and got taken more seriously later into the 20th C in the US academia, during years when it had largely been abandoned by Europeans like Stockhausen ('large scale experiments' of mega/"meta" proportions cf: the much earlier Kontra-Punkte), Boulez (15 year writing block) or Ligetti (intuitively composed/felt expressionism). Later Europeans beat the US people to the punch with electro-acoustic stuff not revolving around the inherent non-repetition strategies so central to Schoenburg->Webern too.

Americans like Powell, Wuorinen and Martino all picked up Pullitzers '60s-'90s in the US, where this academic and highly mathematically organised musical old-boys curiosity was still supported by universities and 'private trust' patrons.

But This post's dear to my heart really mainly because i just want to hit sonic youth again for the blow-hard art-bores i think they are.
Where is their critique of the non-intuitive school in the US ? It is often claimed that 20th c music went into two camps, the freedom of cage vs. the rigour of babbitt. I'm not making this up. The two schools view is, if somewhat simplistic, still conventional wisdom.

So, where are sonic youth getting off trying to do their so-so-cool kiss-off-my-ass act applying it to the efforts of many composers but ignoring just as many, many of these composers in their own back yard? It really makes the GB20thC double CD look like another publicity stunt. It's fun ? It's serious ? Isn't that a red herring ?Are they really just committed to what they can actually perform ? Are they unaware of this other school, even whilst happily name-dropping c. taylor (who famously said he wanted to play "boulez yeah, but funky") ?
Isn't it just plain obvious that they haven't got the chops to pull off yeah plainly 'particurlarly american music' ? If not, wtf is GB20thC ? OK so they can only play their own 'special' guitars. Fine.

My point is that Sonic Youth just aren't qualified to produce what purports to be a summarily critical and/or faithful 20th c album. The title implies a reasonably exhaustive approach yet they conveniently ignore parts (half) of the considerable canon that does exist which would simply be beyond both their 'special' virtuosity (and possibly the attention spans of some of their fans).
(I do not mean to be a snobbish wanker here. Rather, again and again, it's Sonic Youth and their 'special' status that strikes me as snobbery, inverse snobbery perhaps, but it always seems they get so much critical slack. I admire many of their skittish art stunts, but I'm sick of them simply assuming some high ground, sick of all the pussy-footing that passes for comment on SY 2004).

Who the F*** do "The Gordons" think they are ? Continuous grandiose stuff like this which comes across like the wisdom passed down from burnt out dead-heads whose parents might be able to remember some NYC 'happenings'? And who are they to allign themselves with a mere faction of the 20thC canon and yet pass their double album off as something named and thus implicitly so comprehensive ?Well who are they to allign/ crash these other composers' parties anyway ? WHo's making up the rules ? NYC ? Conneticut ? New Jersey ?

Well ? Could someone please defend these cool NYC cats ? Whatever will they try and pull next ? Am i the only person who thinks this about GB20thC in this way ?

I'd like to think DY will do a sequel to GB20thC -- with a full on DVD production.

No it doesn't, not at all. It's not "20th Century Music: An overview". The first word is "Goodbye", which is a familiar, friendly term; they're saying goodbye to the things which they thought were interesting about the 20th C. It seems like a personal, rather than an academic, look.

So. I think you have a fundamental misreading of the project.

Schoenberg is all right, but he's no Webern. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a zillion copies of Webern string quartets etc. Verklaerte Nacht is kinda boring and fussy, but Pierrot is terrific, and the tiny piano pieces are great.

No it doesn't, not at all. It's not "20th Century Music: An overview". The first word is "Goodbye", which is a familiar, friendly term; they're saying goodbye to the things which they thought were interesting about the 20th C. It seems like a personal, rather than an academic, look.

This strikes me as a narrow, 'special' and almost inside view of what is merely the title and presumed mission statement of the whole project afterall. But Jeez (as we say in NZ), an overview .. ? How much more exhastive a title could they choose ? Well that's what i thik, and Julio is right, a gb20thc part 2 covering the other stuff, that would be fair. But in 2004 wouldn't it just be a little too non-compliant for consumption.

It's tone, the tone of the title, which is downright regal. Mr Gordon might have been a convincing rapper/ man-about-town with that "master-dik" song, but that very funny convincing OTM critique of new rap and dance qua Ciccone Youth was fifteen years ago when the Gordons were still convincingly youthfully talented. The kiss-my-ass/ 'kill yr idols [if you can do better]', their essentially combatative or at least 'punk' stance was amusing and refreshing, esp. as early warning/response to the then emerging 'rap-better-than-you' tone if not posedown. However, no-one could deny it was one of their typically 'punk tough' stance art events,.. both critique, joke and successful musical 'special side project'. That was then, but I do not believe that the "we're cooler than you/ still cool/ inscutable" stance was or is a stance the band would willingly wish to be caught conveniently closetting.

Did some band member suggest this was the title ? Casuistry, your angle on the implications of the title seems to fly in the face of the tradition of SY project titles, which have never seemed sincere in the merely one-dimmensional black and white way you suggest. Isn't "goodbye" at least possibly read as shrugging-off gesture in this context ?

Strikingly, this band of all bands would have had to be have been aware of the dismissive ambiguity of the title.. surely they thought it could be interpreted that way ? With their history of wordplay i simply can't believe it wasn't considered.

Casuistry, please, what makes you so convinced of such a view of the title ? A title that meant un-ambiguously simply leaves the band suddenly naive looking ? Or is that really a sincere change of channel, from the "cool things" ?
Where did you hear or read or get told of this break with SY tradition, a double-lp with such a personal intent and none of the faux mean-spiritedness (or "punk"competetiveness, if you like). Could you point me in the direction of some public-domain interview, press statement or other corroborative band explanation of the title, the "goodbye" and "overview" in particular.

It's a small point, but since it's your dismissal of what are essentially a series of questions i feel it fair to raise re: such a willfully arrogant band (recent example "Mariah /Doyle cream", an unpleasant and thoroughly embarassingly disingenuous cheap shot), yeah, excuse me for not jumping to band-friendly easy conclusions with SY, a band too PR-versed/ always in the news not to be aware of those words as at least partly 'shrug' ?

Smug, shrug, schmrug, .. that's SY to me. Please re-convert me Casuistry ! I used to be such an admirer of their work before the wtf formula really began to feel like too many schmrugs too far.

Yeah, help me please Casuistry,

(1)what do you think of SY approaching the school they've ignored, working with the serious post-serialist and of course American artists ? howabout SY + string quaartet + piano ? Couldn't they respond to 20th c music in a maybe stylistic, compositional or even re-mix way (like Ciccone Youth) ? Why make something the size of at least a standard double-lp and ignore it the options that made the band such naughty fub in the first place ?

and

(2) The other thing which keeps bugging me is the constant down-playing of Mr Gordon's "youthful" experiences of all sorts of music, presumably accompanied by the musings and educated opinions of his father, the ,uh Music Professor ? Someone tell me this ain't true, please. It's just too good to be true ! (I read it somewhere, but please someone who can be bothered please correct me if i'm wrong).

(Julio, promise to return to Schoenburg et. al. and the for-me fascinating (i call them) post-serialist 'canon')

Ok, 200 Sun Ra records, that's anthropological, fetishistic, unique special interest, (is passionate a possibility ?) .. i suppose .. or is it R&D for making sophisticated sounding space-cadet music ?
But that's ignoring the Black Saints i see in the corner,.. Thurston likes free jazz so he must have been aware of the influence of Stockhausen and Webern on the whole of the Chicago school (of intelligent mainly black mainly jazz music that is). Someone aware of free jazz is usually all too painfully aware of the complimentary "un-funky 20thc" someone like Braxton refers too when he recounts being snubbed by Boulez at IRCAM (which also happened to Taylor).

eg Schoenburg's solo piano music influenced the young Braxton, supposedly changed his life. So what does the (internet) sy track "Anthony Braxton Kiss My Trad Ass" mean ? uh, critique ?

This is a band uncritically saying goodbye to music they feel an affinity towards, yes Casuistry ? They're nice to other people now are they ? They aren't young lion-type cats no more huh bro ?

C'mon, this is a band trying to place itself in musical history, allign itself with various conveniently and carefully selected sympathetic composers. SY want to bow out on the up, at least "recognised" as part of some composer crew since they won't be remembered as the youthful mind-changers and liberators of the likes of Funkadelic, the Stones, the Stooges, the Dead, like so many bands that did change youthful minds on a mass scale.
OK, allign, no, BUY a vanity double CD (= triple lp !) and set youselves aside all (nah, can't do that) the composers of the "great American tradition" (Ives anyone ?) and in 50 years someone might be confused enough to see the Gordons as genuine musical pedigree.

Pity that they were musical pedigree when they were in fact musically youthfully inspiring. Wonder when O'Rourke is gonna get sick of re-playing all the old xpressway favourites one too many time and move on ? How could he not be bored with his current gig given his youthful tragectory, or has he spent his ideas now ? Retire as producer/ boy-genius ?
Or was O'Rourke the Mr Fix-it, the Van Dyke Parks of the SY story, bought in by the record company, who've already tossed SY some money, headline status over the top of darling Nirvana at their height in a wretched tour video, the newly discovered Butch Vig, vanity-parallel labels (despite the supposed and much vaunted 'artistic freedom' of the DGC deal, Thust'in was harping on about the difficulties of working for 'major labels' in the NME as early as 1992),.. seemingly endlessly allowed this band to live this dream out .. why ?

Yeah, like all those numerous bands touring the world re-playing the old favourites ? Like the Beach Boys ? Is this what O'Rourke wants to do ?

(sorry Julio, i just wish this band got the same critical ride that other bands have, .. and where are the fans in this, still putting up with the same old/alt. chords, permutated into ever decreasing Coltrane-esque circles ? and where is all the digital, improv and production acumen of O'Rourke ? why has this band so stoically stuck to their guns and resisted the seductive new timbres they could use in their music but don't, timbres that might even attract youthful listeners ?)

What's so hard to understand? SY doesn't have the chops to play Babbitt. While I'm sure Moore is aware of serialism, etc., it doesn't seem like the vein of 20th C. music that appeals to him, that he's been involved with. (I'm not much of an SY fan, much less a historian of their work, so all I know is Moore's involvement with Branca back in the day, which doesn't seem terribly in the vein of serialists etc.)

But I can easily imagine them simply wanting to play some of this music, music which they had an affinity for and which they were capable of performing. And perhaps they wanted to set themselves up as part of the Fluxux/minimalist/Cagean music tradition, but so what? I don't think Yoko Ono would have rejected their attempts.

More likely is that they wanted to introduce their fans to this music, and they wanted to try performing it, and they wanted to celebrate the passing of the 20th Century. None of these seem like unlikely sentiments, unless you are determined to make SY fit into a one-dimensional trajectory of intentions.

But more important than all this: I liked the album. It wasn't earth-shatteringly great, but I liked it well enough. I'm glad they did it.

Research via the standard-band middle-bio "Confusion is Next" : Thurstin's father George Moore died in 1976, apparently an unpublished composer himself, so Thurston would have known his father until he was 18. It seems mean-spirited to speculate whether George Moore himself was part of one fiercely-held side of the two competing schools, post-serialist or free-cage.

I have other "issues" with SY and the Gordons in particular, mostly to do with the entropic corner-painting of their limited repertoire /range and the public posturing. It's like watching a band getting steadily more boring, widening their appeal by dumbing down their sound. " ..ivory tower[s] .. throw-away lines .. often return ..", .. Roxy Music, apparently an early fave of Thurston's, disbanded as their sound became something else.
Thurston's own throw-away lines, so often saying as much about his place in the overall scene as anything else, like the Xenakis remarks, and the "goodbye" and "overview" of the title .. i dunno, O'Rourke can do musique-concrete, the "Whitey" had both humour and evident studio wizardry in spades, .. i think this band could have done GB20thC(AE) a lot better. How about GB20thC: (A-E) ?

which makes me now want
to crank up some Arnold S.
and get crunk WITH GUNZZZ

PS Julio hurry up and join the site dammit, did you get the invite, love matt.

oops, i misread your post at least. Still, i wish SY could make one of their rockers sound like Roxys meticulously produced/ phased"Out of the Blue".
and the title suggestion "Goodbye Sonic Youth",.. i dunno, they make me so mad, i cannot not take them seriously.

anyway, i wanna hear the Momus material. SY don't play here very often. Could Momus be persuaded to make the short hop from NYC to NZ the next time he's there please ?

in the mean time, i just dug up a 1945 recording of Pierrot Lunaire fathfully restored by CBS in brittle mono to listen to. With Steuermann (piano), Stiedry-Wagner (voice) et. al. i don't know where this was recorded and i could do better possibly in the sense that a later version might be easier to listen to with some late 20thC production. Nice English block poetry to follow though and German sprechstimme that's easier on the ear and easier to follow than actual singing (and will ignore the inclination to critique Gordon sprechstimme).

I didn't say they should do serialist stuff on gb20thc -- they should do what they like, I'm all for an uk garage covers lp next (sonic nurse was pretty dull on the one listen I gave it but maybe its like a fine wine or something).

But here goes:
(1) Take the stark contrast between DN and (post DGC) Goo and Dirty.
(2) The David Geffen Company did supposedly give Neil Young one of those cool-artist type 'complete artistic freedom' (or as was reported a "you do just what you want, Big Neil") contracts in the early '80s, him being so idiosyncratic etc. etc. Then after the bizarre (actually really great, imho) Trans and Reactor albums, Young was sued by DGC for producing albums rumoured too "difficult" to market or on some such technicality, a $28million law suit that apparently Geffen himself later regretted, preumably when Young became even more marketable.
(3) Thurton qua talent scout/ advisor/ "whatever" (rumoured payback for suggesting "sign Nirvana" to DGC), a role, however informal, within DGC. However, the Pat Metheny "noise album" Zero Tolerance for Silence (which comes with Thurston's hype-up mini-review on the throw-away shrinkwrap) was an album the company allegedly originally tried to farm out on a subsidiary before biting the bullet and putting it on DGC
(as told to me sometime ago -- and i actually bought the Pat Metheny CD based on the hype/mini-review on the shrink wrap, and i still have the little sticker with Thurston's hyperbole, saving it esp. since the Metheny album seemed like a bad joke and a crock, esp. compared to Metheny's Song X album, a really great album and cut-out bin gem that of course didn't sell well for DGC either).
(4) The emergence of SY Records, Smells Like, Ecstatic Peace !, but esp. SYR as a seemingly desperate outlet for a creatively claustraphobic band, SYR of which GB20thC was released on and which i'm NOT saying is a dumbed down effort.

All of the above leads me to humbly guess in my humble opinion that SY can't just do what they always wanted, well at least not on their major label account. Goo and Dirty suggest to me that they possibly never could. Daydream Nation is so much more intricate and complicated harmonically and structurally, certainly not sounding like a conventional rock record. Inaccessible to many a cross-over Goo fan i'm sure yet a real work of art of a level to which many listeners believe SY have been unable to rise ever since. Maybe instead of double-CD Delux editions of Dirty, they should re-release their best album, Daydream Nation Redux, with back-in-fascion PiL/ Albatross production sound ?

I also think Dirty(which had one vinyl only track) was a prototype for Use Your Illusion, a DGC coup, a double double albums at vinyl death-knell time crossover to CD time so obv. collectible to the larger grunge die-hard fans (fans that's be too pissed off with cd or vinyl only tracks however). The sequencing of avant material vs. grungey hits on the vinyl Dirty also seems an obvious accessibility trade-off.

S. often complained that conductors ignored the strict metronome-tight timing instructions in the score,eg, so for instance i have slow and fast versions of both chamber concertos, saw Boulex conduct #1 fast,.. etc.
With Boulez i thought, this is really quite fast, but then it'd have been a beloved gem of the whole avant audience in attendance that night, so i figured they'd have been bored with it slower, but i figured the main reason was it maybe makes Boulez look slicker,
but in modern times,
mainly because it's not unfolding in concert for the first time as would've only been the only possible to hear when conceived, but instead unfolding for an audience of converts. (ie it's not both weird and unknown material, a double wammy)

For an audience bored by the same old chords these pieces were i assume conceived as orchestral real-time dramas or events, so some non-boring repetition, slower re-fold of thematic materials etc. simply becomes neccesary, goes the reasoning.

As goes my explanantion for the appeal of Webern over Schoenburg in the recording/ cd age. OK, with Webern no flab, but you still inevitably/eventually know the pieces, making it (i dunno) your favourite musical consumable ?
The S. is going to get over-familiar using the same resoning, hence my advice, cut to different parts or movements if you can non-sequentially, to keep S. interesting.

As for Pierrot Lunaire, there's an extra catch, as S. prescribes even (the) gaps between the movements, in the case of Pierrot Lunaire to be of different irregular durations, for cynical further dramatic effect. I've read that not all recordings have stuck to the rules on that front either (orchetral union regulations too perhaps).

A significant musical trick in itself, that i presume S. invented.

(as is "dead-air", a clichéd don't-do from music radio, something i like to use on my student radio show for surprise/ contrast/ "juxtaposition in the age of juxtaposition"... Dead air, imho of lower statistical consequence for a student radio station than for a meat-head generic rock/dance non-talk radio station, but still generally a big no-no).

(disclaimer: NOT a gratuitous self-serving advertisement for my student radio show, often more addled-sounding ranting detail specific to the particular music often of disproportionate length to said music itself, but quite probably dead-air if you did try to tune in, so don't bother)

Schoenburg allegedly had to work for hollywood upon escaping germany -- presmably work he would not wish to acknowledge with his name -- and he even taught john cage, but pronounced him an 'inventor' -- how much (unacknowledged) work did SY do for DGC, the definitive new-money californan hollywood crossover co. ?

I don't see how 'getting to know' webern is an arg for schoenberg.

personally i think S. had the better hooks, W. a certain discipline and almost exhaustively rigid way, a guy not worth argung with as he'd just go on and on and be correct in his little 12-tone "did you hear this vignette" way, one of those musicologist types that has to have the things the right way, observe a discipline or pioneer a new one, like academics try to do -- well that's how he sounds to me,.. very quaint and cunning, but S. is all the while devising ways to confine his obvious prolific melodic talent and avoid the "heard it too often" syndrome that we all experience and so devising his compression system for all his licks and hooks to be merged into (that the young acadenic protege has designs on of course). Again julio, just my perverse imagination with yet more probably bogus explanations, but that's what i think right now.

Actually i think what i said about 'getting to know' in the other post was self-explanatory julio, even if it includes silly grammar.

as for SY & Geffen, well we had to wait almost a decade for this SYR stuff, which may have been a periodic contract renewal with a different artistic freedom clause (more akin to jazz labels that where musos seem to have dates sometimes all over the place). Would Geffen allow sy to run a parallel label if it was going to compete with it's own SY outout ? Doubt it. To me that leaves that SY in a no-mans land with DGC cheques for the stoner-metal and SYR possibly paid out of own money & points money for Nirvana and even perhaps Use Your Illusion ?
i mean who knows, but it does guarentee DGC will not allow anything melding rock with avant to happen unless it's on DGC, kinda voiding out SYR. Why would DGC risk missing a killer crossover like DV69 ? This hypothesis admittedly confines SYR to a ghetto of sorts, improv, low percentage free-20thc, whatever, as long as it doesn't hit DGC negatively. OK perhaps there's a kick-back provision for a run-away hit on SYR.

Julio, this is all speculation because there is no transperancy here, no real insight into what corporate compromises are being made and where. Who pays for what. But not many indie cult bands could have afforded to make it 20 years, losing half their fanbase when changing labels and temporarily influencing youthful minds to seemingly tune in and drop out all over again (as presented on "The Year That Punk Broke"), to tell your parents "punk U" and spazz out. Those days are over and the older fans were not impressed. Do they still play Xpressway Skull ? Do they play old faithful hits from their early period ? Aren't they like the greatful dead.

Whatever happened, the DGC deals must have been interesting deals. Look at what happened to Neil Young trying to be artistic. Hasn't the record industry just got more stingey than ever with this MP3 thing ? Cutting costs and downsizing. Of course Geffen exited the company he'd used other peoples' money to set up for aroun $US1Billion, just ten years after creating the company that still bears his name (of course). What's your angle on what i said about Neil Young and artistic freedom, julio. How did SY know they were gonna be around long enough to pull off the SYR thing, however lame ?

When you see a painting on the wall & you buy it you know how much the atist and how much the dealer makes. But this is still the record industry. It's a Geffen experiment like the similarly art-cred named "Asylum" all over again. Geffen has carried Joni Mitchell through most of his career even if he sold DGC some time ago. Maybe he just likes the Gordons in an informal way for some of their ideas back in the day of nu-metal like Nirvana and G&R.

Kim Gordon asks something like "are you gonna save us girls from corporate male/white oppression" to Chuck D on the first DGC album, right in the middle of the projected hit single, to which Chuck, from the band that did the Clash thing, a deal actually pricing down their albums for their public, mumbles answers ambiguous some yeah right as though he's a session token-token black in the wrong studio or maybe enjoys the inference that black men aren't any better but thinks to admit loudly would be counter-productive etc. or maybe he doesn't like the record company contra deal or didn't know he was being set 'up by' SY in the best example of "bad sampling" or recording (a tribute i suppose), .. but who knows.

Not knowing is fun until the quality starts wobbling from side to side, from DGC to SYR in this case, with plenty missing inbetween.
If you wanna take this to another thread julio fine, and i'll breakdown all sy songs musically to show the patterns, how the rot set in, how a certain carefully defined subset of real assonance and dissonance has been used template style for most of the DGC period. A real big subset (yeah, it's really just 10%) of the interesting extended tonal music of both S, W and even of the easy-going Berg.

As far as the band is concerned (and maybe some of the fans they target that i've met) the book does one thing right, alligning the sludge/ wtf angle with groop mindsets. I mean, what a great book title.

(promise to return with more Schoenburg material soon, but it desrves fresh listens i realise in some cases i've neglected 'cause it's on vinyl)

to add to paul's '03 post I tracked down another perf (as tribute) of pierrot lunaire -- zorn's wonderful 'chimeras' disc -- there are slight variances (11 not 12), perc, organ, the vocals are screechy, not so speech-like and there is, wait for this...a. bluddy. WIND MACHINE...now add that manic energy he usually brings to his (ugh) "projects".

How many tributes actually work in referencing and at the same time divorcing themselves from the orig and STANDING on their own right (has there been a thread about this)? 'cause this is one.

you never kept your promise, george gosset!

Worst thing to happen to music. Ever. Even worse than rap.

― Geir Hongro

http://i.imgur.com/rFtJ0.gif

First few minutes of this are just astounding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw2uTW0mdSs

Serialism: Playing all the wrong notes, but not necessarily in the wrong order

Dodecaphony was still some ways in the offing when he put the finishing touches on his Gurre-Lieder.

Unless you weren't replying to mfktz, in which case, I approve.

... it's a reference to a Morecambe & Wise sketch which featured Andre Previn which, like, 99.9% of the UK population at the time watched.

some good george gosset material in this thread, RIP.

julio desouza too, where's that guy these days?

I believe he is posting as xyzzz?

I never really knew what george was talking about, or why Sonic Youth came up on a Schoenberg thread, but if the point was that Thurston Moore is a pseud because he didn't play Wuorinen and Babbitt, that is definitely an important opinion that needs to be heard.

Schoenberg one of the all-time greatest, though.

serialism is certainly fortunate

Not sure what I meant by this. Maybe something like 'in retrospect, serialism writ large has yielded more interesting results than its integral variant (à la Boulez, et al.)'? In which case, I haven't really changed my mind on that front. (Tbf I was considerably more ESL-ish in my teens.)

I still think Berg > Webern > Schoenberg, but it's much closer now.

Old ILX was wild.

Personally offended and sickened that these wretched poseurs sonic toof didn’t cover philomel in their supposedly definitive history of 20th Century music. PS Rap sux.

lapsed indie kids protest too much

schoenberg > berg > webern for me. berg's oeuvre probably more consistently excellent but he didn't write pierrot lunaire or a survivor form warsaw and as great as his operas are i prefer moses und aron. webern's whole miniature thing gets on my nerves somehow though i admit the 2nd movement of the piano variations slaps hard

Moses and Aron needs way more love. Surprised that the Met did it once.

too late to ask george what he meant now unfortunately

didn't he ramble

i think some connection to that album of 20th cent composers stuff they did, i dunno

You know what's really good, though, is the third string quartet.

been listening schoenberg as pop

I don’t know from 12 tone or theory in the slightest but this guy has so many damn tunes its incredible, in every phase of his career

piano suite and serenade for strings I’ve seen dismissed as dry academic experiments but they’re both hooky as hell, and potentially danceable

3rd quartet grabbed me first with that riff but all the others are great too, no 2 especially moving me atm. string trio is pretty intense even by his standards though i think that’s sort of the point (probably the intense emotionality of his work bothers some people more than the “atonality” or whatever?)

this all comes from an utterly superficial overview of his music instead of the kind of hardcore intellectual investment you’re supposed to need to appreciate him at all. which I’m sure would be very rewarding in many ways. but I feel like I’ve been lied to about this by the classical gatekeepers. no one told me about the tunes man

^^^ gets it.

No, you should not need heavy intellectual investment to appreciate his work imo - he himself had very little formal training and was mostly self-taught. He was an Expressionist and a Romantic. (Analysis can certainly help but it is not and should not be the only way his work can be approached.)

To Kandinsky, he wrote (from Ross, The Rest Is Noise):

Art belongs to the unconscious! One must express oneself! Express oneself directly! Not one’s taste, or one’s upbringing, or one’s intelligence, knowledge or skill. 

To Busoni (from Auner, Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries):

It is impossible for a person to have only one sensation at a time. One has thousands simultaneously. And these thousands can no more readily be added together than an apple and a pear. They go their own ways. And this variegation, this multifariousness, this illogicality which our senses demonstrate, the illogicality presented by their interactions, set forth by some mounting rush of blood, by some reactions of the senses or
the nerves, this I should like to have in my music.

Don't get me wrong, he (despite his lack of formal training) became a famous theorist and teacher (and then professor) as well and there is a lot going on formally - but he would have definitely been happy with people appreciating his music in a visceral, immediate way.