BACK AGAIN TO BACH
These desultory remarks on a few salient features of the Suite for Piano, op. 25, could easily be amplified into a complete analysis of the piece—indeed a more complete analysis, in the sense that it can more fully trace the composer’s decisions in the very act of composing, than in any other kind of music. That analytical transparency, making twelve-tone technique perhaps the easiest of all compositional methods to demonstrate and teach, and which therefore gave it an aura of uprightness in the spirit of scientific “positivism” (open empirical inquiry), was an important spur to its spread, just as its “artificiality” and “arid intellectualism” (the very same qualities, of course, viewed from a less welcoming perspective) incited resistance.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 12 In Search of Utopia." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 16 Jun. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-012006.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 12 In Search of Utopia. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Early Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 16 Jun. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-012006.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 12 In Search of Utopia." In Music in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 16 Jun. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-012006.xml
