Duly noted. Riffing on the theme of stupidity being doing the same thing multiple times and expecting different results, here's a riff on themes, more specifically thematic material (Get it? Riffing? Themes? Music?).
The twelve tone system is often seen as a 'revolutionary' turning point in the history of music. According to Howard Goodall, who has a degree from Oxford or something, and writes terrible music, and books justifying the existence of his terrible music, the tradition which developed out of Schoenberg's system has produced 'not a single piece in 100 years that any normal person could listen to.' This is high praise indeed, but we shouldn't get too excited yet.
I think the significance of the twelve tone system can be easily understood in the context of western music up to that point. The characteristic texture of that tradition is (or was) contrapuntal. Beginning with the medieval proscription of parallel fourths and fifths, the gradual recognition of the third as a consonant interval, and the developing preference for contrary motion, the initial development of polyphonic technique reached a peak in the music of the 16th century.
This 'modal' style of counterpoint is marked by very limited concern for harmonic progression. Typically cadences only occur at the very end of a piece, every other harmony is simply a result of the relationship between the melodic lines. This is why students since the early 18th century have been introduced to the study of counterpoint through the Palestrina style - it allows for a pure focus on the treatment of consonance and dissonance without adding the extra complication of having to produce 'correct' harmonic progressions except for in the final cadence.
The development of the sense of harmonic progression and key, referred to generically as 'tonality' or sometimes 'functional harmony', which was to remain a part of music until the first half of the 20th century, produced a change in contrapuntal style, reaching an original peak in the music of JS Bach. The sense of stability provided by 18th century tonality, as well as the facility provided by writing instrumental rather than vocal music, allowed for much greater freedom in the use of chromaticism and dissonances. In the most famous example, the B minor fugue from Book I of the WTC, Bach writes a fugue with a theme which uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale.
By the end of the 19th century the development of chromaticism threatened to destroy the tonal foundation which it had grown out of. Beginning with Debussy composers rapidly began to abandon the rules on which the development of the previous 200 years of music had been based. In the Debussian style, any chord is allowed to follow any other chord, with the only consideration being, for Debussy at least, the beauty of the sound.
Schoenberg characterised the prior history of music as a gradual process of the emancipation of the dissonance. Audiences had been accustomed to hear more remote key relations and more elaborate dissonances as an integral part of musical style. But the dissonance was still treated as dissonance, that is, as something to be resolved.
The essential element of the contrapuntal style, whether of Palestrina, Bach or even Wagner, is the treatment of dissonances. The kinds of extended chords which we accept as an integral element of the style of Debussy would sound peculiar or even discordant if inserted at random into a piece by Mozart, because the Mozartean style treats those relationships as dissonances, not as free sonorities.
But what happens when, as in Debussy's music, chords other than the triad can be treated as consonant, and the momentum provided by the need for harmonic resolution becomes lost as all chords can be treated as equally good at any point in a piece as any other?
This is not to say that a contrapuntal style of sorts is not possible without the traditional methods of treating dissonance. In fact, if no interval or chord is considered dissonant or in need of resolution, it would seem that initially we are provided with the greatest possible contrapuntal freedom. We can write any melodic line against any other and the result will always be harmonically 'correct', because we have given up entirely any notion of harmonic correctness.
Yet in another sense the emancipation of the dissonance completely destroys the contrapuntal style, because the essence of that style consists precisely in it's treatment of dissonances. When dissonance ceases to be a concern of musical style, that means the death of contrapuntal art. No technique is required to arbitrarily combine any given melodic line with any other.
This is where the twelve tone system comes in. And although it was indeed at the time a 'revolutionary' conception, I think in one sense it is perhaps one of the most conservative developments in the history of 20th century music. I mean in this way - the twelve tone system is an attempt to rescue contrapuntal technique from the apparent abyss into which it seems fated to fall once musical style ceases to regard any combination of notes as dissonant.
It is well known that Schoenberg first developed the technique in the early 20's, a time which also saw the development of 'neo-classicism' and the 'new objectivity'. As Stravinsky and his cohorts sought to beat back the expressionistic excesses of romanticism and return to Baroque and Classical ideals of proportion and clarity of line, Schoenberg introduced the world to the twelve tone system with his Suite for Piano Op. 25. It might seem peculiar that such an innovation in technique should be introduced to the world in a piece which is formally modeled on a Baroque dance suite. But as we have already detailed this is one of the most conservative artistic 'revolutions' that could be imagined.
Schoenberg's pupil Webern is often regarded as the bridge between the style of the former and the music which emerged after WWII written by composers like Boulez, Stockhausen and Luigi Nono. Certainly Webern seems to have been the most enthusiastic advocate adopter of the twelve tone system. The music of Schoenberg and Alban Berg always has a fundamental tension between the new style and an immense nostalgia for the old, a nostalgia which would lead Schoenberg himself to return occasionally to writing tonal music. Webern's music is often praised or derided because he alone seems to lack affection for the romantic past.
And yet, Webern embodies the contradiction between revolution and reaction which is present in the Second Viennese school to the most extreme extent. He had gained his musical education under the tutelage of the musicologist Guido Adler, and had become enthralled by the musical technique of the renaissance contrapuntal masters. He alone threw himself heart and soul into the twelve-tone system because he saw in it the way back to the strict contrapuntal technique which he had so admired in the 15th and 16th century masters.
Hopefully this gives a general idea of the significance of the music of the Second Viennese school. Generally, as I have said, it is music which in it's fundamental aesthetic should give no issues to the listeners of Classic.fm. That it has not made headway here is I believe a simple matter of historical contingency. I have no doubt that in a few years hence pieces such as this will make their way into the Classic.fm hall of fame, once it is seen correctly as a bulwark against modern degenerate forms of music:
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