Abstract

Worries about the artistic integrity (for lack of a better term) of twelve-tone music are not new. Critics, philosophers, musicians, even composers them- selves have assailed the idiom with a fervor usually reserved for individual artists or works. Just why it is supposed to be defective is not entirely clear, however. I want to revisit these questions by way of putting some insights from music history and theory together with some insights from the philosophy and psychology of music. To find out whether twelve-tone composition is defective we will need to reflect carefully upon our concepts of music and art in general, so if all goes well our conclusions should have some broader import. Because I will be pulling together considerations from several domains, I will need to lay a fair amount of groundwork at the beginning; but once that is done, we will have a vantage on the present issues that would not otherwise be open to us.