Busoni- From so long ago you'd think we'd be getting it by now.

I looked down and there was just too much promotion afoot.  Must get back to revelations on THE subject...

Some thoughts and stuff then, starting here with Busoni--I'll add more on this later, but for now, since this was more than 100 years ago- could we please stop flogging a dead horse?  You know who you are. The flies are getting unbearable!

"Tradition is a plaster mask taken from life, which, in the course of many years, and after passing through the hands of innumerable artisans, leaves its resemblance to the original largely a matter of imagination."

"The function of the artist consists in making laws, not in following laws ready made.  He who follows such laws, ceases to be a creator."

"So narrow has our tonal range become, so stereotyped its form of expression, that nowadays there is not one formal motive that cannot be fitted with some other familiar motive so that the two may be played simultaneously."

"What we now call our Tonal System is nothing more than a set of "signs"; an ingenious device to grasp somewhat of eternal harmony; a meagre pocket edition of that encyclopedic work; artificial light instead of the sun...

"And so, in music, the signs have assumed greater consequence than that which they ought to stand for, and can only suggest...

"How important, indeed, are "Third," "Fifth," and "Octave"! How strictly we divide "consonances" from "dissonances"--in a sphere where no dissonances can possibly exist!"

 

Striving for liberation

I strive for: complete liberation from all forms
from all symbols
of cohesion and
of logic.
Thus:
away with 'motivic working out'.
Away with harmony as
cement or bricks of a building.
Harmony is expression 
and nothing else.
Then: 
Away with Pathos!
Away with protracted ten-ton scores, from erected or constructed
towers, rocks and other massive claptrap.
My music must be
brief. 
Concise! In two notes: not built, but 'expressed'!! 
And the results I wish for:
no stylized and sterile protracted emotion.
People are not like that:
it is impossible for a person to have only one sensation at a time.
One has thousands simultaneously. And these thousands can no
more readily be added than an apple and a pear.  They go
their own ways.
And this variegation, this multifariousness, this illogicality which
our senses demonstrate, the illogicality presented by their interactions,
set forth by some mounting rush of blood, by some reaction of the
senses or the nerves, this I should like to have in my music.
It should be an expression of feeling, as our feelings, which bring
us in contact with our subconscious,really are, and no false
child of feelings and "conscious logic."

-Arnold Schoenberg to Ferrucio Busoni 1909