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Hmm. . . your post gets me to thinking (always dangerous!). . .

"they drew a sharp distinction between what they and their colleagues were doing and what Copland refers to as music used as a couch, or what might be called the concept of "easy listening", though not limited to the genre the music business later actually labeled easy listening."

If only Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and their followers had written as much "easy listening" music as Mozart! No, I don't mean the piano concertos, string quintets, and symphonies (although the symphonies numbered 24 and before might qualify!). I'm talking about the boatloads of divertimenti, cassations, and other easy listening from the 18th century! And who is Copland to pooh-pooh easy listening anyway? No, it's the INability of the serialists to write easy-listening works that reveals some of the true limitations and weaknesses of that whole school, i.e., its inability to encompass a wide range of the human experience. (And, no, if you're looking for easy listening in things like Schoenberg's cabaret songs, that's completely invalid - because that music was not written with serial techniques.)

Indeed, there were some passing comments that Copland made in the article that jdaniels linked to which, under anlysis, might be revealed to be nothing more than mere self-serving assertions, without any evidence at all. For instance, take this assertion:

[The composer] expresses these thoughts (musical thoughts, which are not to be confused with literary ones) in the musical language of his own time. The resultant work of art should speak to the men and women of the artist's own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give.

Well, that certainly avoids the issue, doesn't it! So Schoenberg's serialism is the music of that time? If a work of art "from the artist's own time" speaks with such "directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give", then I guess someone forgot to tell the VAST majority of the concert-going audience stretching from the time that Copland wrote the article (1949) until the present day.

The serialists had their 15 minutes of fame - now, aside from the niche of a niche of enthusiasts, it's time to put these composers and their synthetic, slide-rule notions of music into the dust bin of history.

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