SOURCE: "Schönberg—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," in Breaking the Sound Barrier: A Critical Anthology of the New Music, edited by Gregory Battcock and translated by William Drabkin, E. P. Dutton, 1981, pp. 316-30.

In the following essay, originally published in Perspectives of New Music in 1977, Rufer examines the relevance of Schoenberg's music and theory to contemporary audiences.

Anyone for whom music is not merely a gourmet's treat, but an art that consists essentially of ideas, will want to provide himself from time to time with an overview of the state and development of the music of our time. And he will probably surrender, at first, to the confusing aspects of mutually contradictory or overlapping tendencies, directions, and opinions with which we are confronted verbally as well as musically. Tonal music versus nontonal music, polytonal versus twelve tone, serial versus aleatory—or whatever the latest rage is called (although...