ABSTRACT
Schoenberg scoffed at the idea of writing the kind of music that would appeal to the people he sourly referred to as ‘the masses’. ‘If it is art’, he said, ‘it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art’. We should not expect the most seminal composer of the twentieth century to have thought otherwise. Since the Renaissance, ‘classical’ music had been the preserve of a minority; and, in addition, art in the late bourgeois world was with increasing rigour refusing the socially accepted ‘reality’. Today the trend is confirmed. Our so-called serious composers – and especially those of the avant-garde – write for an elite, and all those who do not understand their esoteric virtues – those ‘masses’ – are successfully excluded.
