Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep while listening to some Debussy followed by Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw. The Debussy will lull you into a peaceful, somnolent state. Then A Survivor from Warsaw will come on and it…will…scare…the…living…hell…out…of…you. (But I guess that’s sort of the point of it, isn’t it?) I learned this from personal experience.
One question you hear people ask a lot when listening to some strains of avant-garde music is, “but is it music?”. You hear a lot of arguments about what exactly music is and isn’t (in the avant-garde world, anyway). And people waste a lot of time arguing about those definitions.
Well, I think the question shouldn’t be “is it music?”; it should be “does it bear repeated listening?”. Or, to get right to the point, “is it any good?†Because that’s really what matters, isn’t it?
Welcome to Dancing about Architecture. This is a blog about music. Comments are welcome!