If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd agree with me.
I've said it many times before (at a party last night for instance, fascinating company me) but now it's official.
There are exceptions that prove the rule of course (prove as in test obviously, prove as in confirm would be a bit mental) but generally speaking non-tonal music is like a cup of espresso coffee, or a shot of whisky (single malt naturally) or perhaps most cogently, a poem.
Music which has no pulse, no 'tune' and lacks a tonal centre ought to be fairly brief; unless you can find other means of parsing the material into graspable sections or moments (as Sciarrino does with silence/space or Kurtág via many short movements to cite two examples).
To break this 'rule' or to compose in ignorance of it is to run the risk of writing music which approaches a sort of entropy; so much information that the listener can't process it, can't remember it or walk away feeling like they have a clear idea of the piece. Boredom would be a more prosaic description.
More is certainly less in most cases, many a beautiful chord or flowing contrapuntal section has been ruined by suffocation.
If you're going to write a long non-tonal piece (let's say 10+ minutes) justify it, musically (not with some guff in the programme notes or commentary).
Rant over/off.
Feel free to disagree, as always.
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