No Sounds Are Forbidden

No Sounds Are Forbidden returns with a new episode! In the second episode, “Order From Chaos: Modernism and Rationality in 12 Tones,” host Matthew Friedman explores the radical conservatism of Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone composition method, and its impact on western avant-garde music before, and after the Second World War. This episode features music by Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Hanns Eisler, Luigi Dallapiccola, Igor Stravinsky, Milton Babbitt, and Donald Martino.

No Sounds Are Forbidden explores the exciting, and complex history of the avant-garde art music of the 20th and 21st centuries. In the first episode, “Moondrunk: Pierrot Lunaire at the Edge of Modernity,” host Matthew Friedman goes back to the beginning (or a beginning) of the avant-garde, when Pierrot Lunaire shocked the music world, and ensured that nothing would ever sound the same again.

The European concert season of 1912-1913 signaled the end of the old cultural order, even before the anciens régîmes marched into a suicidal conflict in the trenches of the Great War. In May 1913, Paris had