About 15 years ago, when modernist composers were making heyday, the most puritanical modernists of all were the Viennese Atonalists.* While their fellows boisterously and good-naturedly jounced the sacred applecart of musical structure, the Atonalists systematically bored into that structure like so many worms. Their music was as painful and persistent as a dentist's drill.
Most relentless Atonalist was gloomy, bald-headed Arnold Schöberg, who in his time influenced at least half the younger composers of Europe. Other eminent Atonalists, all Schöberg disciples: Anton von Webern, who wrote orchestral pieces like the slight whine...
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