Poieticism and Gnarlyism

Over at Sequenza 21, they're having very interesting debates on the poietic fallacy fallacy and gnarlyism.

The basic idea is that no composers write music thinking that won't touch their audience. This raises all sorts of questions, many of which have to do with so-called "gnarly" composers, i.e., the high modernists.

It made me think of a juicy quotation from a composer who actually didn't write music to touch his audience. Why not? Because to him, music wasn't capable of doing so:

I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc.

Which gnarlyist said that? Was that from the grandfather of them all, Schoenberg? Or did the most partisan serialist, Pierre Boulez say that? Babbit? Wournien? Rochberg?

None of them. In fact, it was said by the opposite camp: Igor Stravinsky.

It puts the whole debate in a very different perspective, doesn't it?

The saddest thing is that this same Stravinsky who isn't out to move his audience has somehow remained popular, while the "gnarlyists" are only now making inroads with the public. We always love those who hate us.