I don’t know who said this, but someone once wrote that the problem with serial music isn’t that it’s unemotional but that it’s too emotional. I don’t think we can dismiss the effect the cinema has on mainstream receptiveness to many twentieth century, otherwise avant-garde affectations such as serialism, texturalism, and electronic music. I think that exploration has helped many understand the dramatic/programmatic potential of these types of composition.

I think the best PR for atonal music is to stop emphasizing its association with academia. The way serialism, in particular, was framed for me in that first composition class was like it was some science experiment whipped together in a university lab that was more concerned with mathematical precision than aural aesthetics. I remember my instructor comparing serialism to a slug, which on a visceral level is disgusting but on a purely biological level is a work of art of the highest transcendental order.

When I listen to Schoenberg and Webern now, I don’t get this impression anymore. I think of serialism as more of a style than a process now. The visual impression of the twelve-tone matrix itself communicates so much stuffiness and precompositional determinism that I think it has largely contributed to an unfair bias towards serialism as being hyperintellectualization, when the fact is that the aural/psychological effect is just as significant as in tonal music and more often than not, only a few rows from the matrix are generally utilized in a given piece. It’s more about the conception of the initial pitch sequence that ultimately builds the character of the resulting piece.

Of course, there are bad serial composers and hardcore integral serialists, but I am less familiar with their work. I can say for sure that when I listen to Webern and Schoenberg, I hear more of a concern for beauty and sensation than a of pure experimentalism.

I’ve always thought of minimalism as working in a similar way, ironically.