Variation on a Theme

In response to Camp Studio:

I'm not really sure if this is right or whatever but the idea is that all these guys were brought up to play Beethoven, banging away at the piano or pulling thier violin bows in that uncertain time of ultimate certainty after World War 2 and those instruments of generations past became the only way they could express their Atonal disbelief in a world gone mad with violence and it's almost weird to think about it this way like it could have been some other instruments as the main instruments of the post tonal wave of compositions but it could have been. Also Atonal hunting wasps planted their eggs in the paralyzed (There are bugs all over me! There are ants in my eyes!) formal structures that were just all over the place anyway too. Bricolage as usually. The reality of their youth, their heritage made the instruments of an age depleted the only logical option for this next phase. They simultaneously spurned and embraced the past - Schoenberg was dead, Mahler alive. So ever since I don't know the 50s all these kids go to school for Classical because it seems like it's either that or Jazz or the horrifying reality of life on the farm and stuff (I love ya Wade baby, Props!). Anyway they (later: we) went and then found there were fewer and fewer ears until Cage did something else - we could be cool so we join the post-college aleotric orchestra and howl and compose with dice and random words and bang on cans we hit all cute and deliberate like babies with hipster hair. Basically we wish we were FREE. No more tuxes and tails, heart-on-sleeve vibrato, recitals, glittering premieres. I'm (re)inventing sound all over again. Anyway now we're in the backlash from that and maybe we're connecting again, maybe not all this stuff has melody. We're making music but we don't know what it is. There's a whole bunch of us by the way, we are the Ex Classical Students (good Halloween idea!). We realized the real Pierrot Lunaire was to just knock the whole Ouji Board over (Props K.C.!). Everyone talks about us but no one listens. The stuff we learned is finding its way into our compositions whether we admit it or not. Are we making Music? Are we Musicians? I'm not sure we care.