No, I do not hate twelve-tone music. But I don’t like it. I love all kinds of music but not this one. It is foreign to me. I find it a bit against nature because each measure clashes with my hearing balance, which so far seemed to me quite satisfactory.
And I know I’m not alone in this opinion. I dare believe that the vast majority of people do not like this music. There are even those who hate it and do everything to eradicate it. I’m not going that far, as long as it is not imposed on me.
I am glad when my kids listen to music with interest and discernment, taste it with pleasure; and if they practice the better! But I would find it hard to understand that they would become passionate about dodecaphony. Being of a quite forgiving nature I would resolve myself to accept this, but not without great reluctance; and in any case a conversion on my part cannot be expected. I even know that some dedicated dodecaphonists do not really want that their descendants would follow them because they understand that this is a path strewn with serious pitfalls that can lead to social isolation.
I’m being told that to love something it should be practiced, that one who is critical without knowing is an impostor, and that those who engage in this music have a highly developed sensitivity worthy of great respect. It would therefore be almost mandatory to practice this music! As I do not really know dodecaphony, as I allow myself a critique of it, and as my artistic and intellectual sensitivity is quite average, should I consider myself excluded from the debate? Yet we condemn murderers without the judges having killed anybody, we debate on representation in democracy without having been elected, and we appreciate a dish without being a cook. I feel therefore legitimate to express an opinion on the twelve-tone music, despite my functional incompetence in this area.
Yet in the world of art and culture it is not fashionable to criticize the avant-garde because it looks backward, petty bourgeois, shut off from modernism, intolerant, or even phobic. At best I will remain ignored, but if my speech would gain audience I would immediately be classified me as a pariah, category from which it will be impossible to get out. In my humble case it will probably be the first solution, superb ignorance. But I will not venture to make me famous with this opinion because then I would be put on the pillory or shot in public.
Nowadays it has become common to conflate criticism with racism, differences with exclusion, and statistics with stigma. But in my dislike of dodecaphonic music everyone shall give me credit that there is nothing like that. It is simply a matter of taste and personal inclination.
In fact I do not know what to say about practitioners of this music. I don’t blame them, even if one could accuse me of it. Maybe they are coming to this music because of what they fundamentally are: become what you are. I don’t mind if they form clubs or interest groups. The Viennese Arnold, Alban and Anton have marked their time practicing dissonances that others had tried not making –often without success– since mankind exists. It is neither good nor bad, except for my auditory system.
Yet aggressiveness on the part of these people may upset me, even to the point of annoyance. For example, they pretend to be at the forefront of modern classical music, but their music is neither classical nor modern, it is simply inaudible. And they try by all means to impose a dose of their art in any concert. Of course not as the centerpiece in the second half, people would go away, but each time it is necessary to suffer a quarter of an hour of sonic inconsistencies while we just wanted to taste the delicacy of Mozart or Shostakovich’s impulses; in the true signification of the word, it is disgusting.
This minority is made up of individuals who have made a choice, although some say that this choice has imposed itself to them, like a calling.  While doing everything to mark their territory they nevertheless do not form a community eligible to certain rights. It is fashionable in these circles to pose as a victim or as the misunderstood, implying that others are torturers or at best fools who do not understand anything. But obviously this is not true and it is not enough to cry wolf to have it appear. Society is not responsible for the inaccessibility of their music; they must bear this responsibility themselves. And they know it, because all those who indulge in it had to follow a hard steeplechase to get out of classicism and to enter these faintly audible practices. Within these difficult conditions they have also forged skills and strategies that could not have grown in the absence of adversity, and for this they deserve a measure of respect. However, they are not entitled to any special status or support; otherwise similar rights should be granted to pétanque players and pastis drinkers. There are even some who would like to stop using the word concert to describe a meeting where musicians play this music before an audience. They prefer the word Mass, a ceremony that should not be only reserved for a selected community but open to any group that wants it –the Mass for all– with all the rituals that allow communion. It’s getting overwhelming!
No, I do not hate twelve-tone music. But I don’t like it. I love all kinds of music but not this one. I’m indifferent to it as long as it is not mandatory. Does it make me an insensitive obscurantist, recluse in the past and unable to move with the times? Does it make me a violent intolerant? Am I an extreme racist? Should the doors of culture be closed to me in retaliation to my untenable posture?
What I hate is censorship by anticipation, categorical judgments, and the inquisitors’ lack of humor.