… the listener wants only what he expects to happen, what he can thus guess and predict; but then he wishes to be surprised. Is it pride in the successful prediction, pride that is enhanced by the justified doubt of an ever wavering self-confidence, is this the reason why the appearance of the expected will be found so surprising? … He wants new works of art, but only such as he expects to hear; and what he expects is, fundamentally, an arrangement of old components. But not a completely new arrangement; and the components may not be all too old. ‘Modern but not hypermodern’ – artists who know how to work this hocus-pocus satisfy the public for a short while and save it from the dilemma of its opposing wishes; but after a short while the public has enough of these artists and thereby proves, if indirectly, that it has some instinct for good, even if it does turn this instinct almost exclusively against the good. – Arnold Schoenberg (From Theory of Harmony, Third Edition)
A Thought from Arnold Schoenberg (From Beyond…)
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