A Quote by Alban Berg

Why is Schoenberg's Music so Hard to Understand? — © Alban Berg
Why is Schoenberg's Music so Hard to Understand?
You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.
I understand the power of music, I understand the therapeutic nature of music, the sense of community that music engenders, so I totally understand why it still goes on, choirs come together as a focal point for a community.
Comedy is hard to do, and I don't know why it doesn't have its own category in awards. I don't understand why people think it's harder to do drama than it is to do comedy. It doesn't get respect. It's hard. It's really hard. It would be more gratifying to get something for a comedy, because it doesn't happen much or at all.
I had a period after touring the first record where I didn't agree with the way things worked in the music industry as far as how you release music, demand, the pace of everything. You don't know who's talking to you. Who's Spotify? Who's iTunes? Who are all those bloggers? Who says I have to do this? Why do you have to do all this press? Why do I have to do so many shows? Why do I have to do a regular album right now? I don't understand it.
You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being like, "We are the end of music. We are the end of this tradition. Music is done."
When I get home and people ask me,'Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man? What are you? Some kind of war junkie? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you. And that's it. That's all it is.
When it comes to kids, it's just not hard to get them healthy. I don't find it hard and don't understand why people find it hard.
In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.
I understand why it's hard to pin me down because I really relate to so many things. Like, for example, when people ask me what's my favorite music, I can't tell them. I love everything.
Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand.
I used to practice piano for hours, and now, with a synthesizer, you can input the music and the machine perfects the song. That's why we have so many people in the music business who should be plumbers. They don't really understand music because they haven't been trained.
Super casual music listeners. That's most of the people in the world. And you have to understand, that's why Top 40 radio exists. It's not there for people who seek out music and who love music.
I screwed up at a young age with my parents. They were very religious and they didn't really understand music. They didn't really listen to music. I went through a series of battles with them about why I loved music.
I think there's just been this "thing" that's developed, this way that we have of talking about our music that alienates people. And I fall into that too! I learned that in graduate school. You just talk about your music in a specific way, and that separates people from you. But some composers like that. Schoenberg liked that. He wanted to feel that he was making music for an elite few. That's fine for him, but I want to set myself free from that sort of attitude.
When I came to North America, it was hard. It was hard to understand, hard to get someone to understand me. I only knew Russian. I studied French in school, but it didn't help. I forgot most of that.
I have very diverse tastes in music, and I don't, like, make distinctions between what I can't and can't listen to. In fact, I could never understand why anybody would do that in the first place. My attitude is, 'I can't make music if I don't like music.'
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