“Some have a wish for music to be primarily an antidote to existential loneliness. When music fills this role, it’s lovely, but the idea that this is music’s primary function is so limiting as to be just bathetic. Music is a powerful, temporal art, and it needs to fulfill all the functions of art—to challenge, to celebrate, to excite intellectually and spiritually. To draw an ineffectual line called ‘tonality’ in the sand, and demand that none shall pass, will not work.”
This is from an excellent article on New Music Box by Alan Fletcher, president of the Aspen Music Festival. It’s a good read who’s argument for why we need all kinds of music are not “bathetic.” It also goes into some of the myths that surround new music.
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