Art, of course, is an illusion, thoughnmany frequently overlook that fact andntreat it as a direct representation ofnreality. Increasingly, modern novelists,nare calling attention to their form sonthat people will recognize fiction as fiction.nSome, like John Fowles, do it wellnby masterfully manipulating time, whilenothers take a more heavy-handed approachnand spill type all over the page.nA question that film-makers interestednin doing the same thing mightnpose to themselves is: How does onenmake a serious film that says somethingnabout the nature of acting, one that callsnattention to itself as a work of art. butnwhich doesn’t collapse under the weightnof undue seriousness or have the substancenof a trivial, bubble? The filmednversion of The French Lieutenant’snWoman is an answer to that question.nThe film functions both as an entertainmentnand as a commentary on acting.nWhen the film opens, Meryl Streep,nfamous Hollywood actress, is shownnbeing prepped, getting ready to walk outnon the Cobb at Lyme Bay as Sarah, “thenAgainst Atonalitynby Robert R. ReiUyn”What if. we may ask now, the 12tonenrevolution was not really necessarynand it has taken us half a century tonfind that out?” When such a questionnas this appears in the New York Timesn”Arts and Leisure” section (12/9/79).none may safely assume that the academicnstranglehold of the dodecaphonic disciplesnof Schoenberg et al. has beennbroken. It was a stranglehold that nearlynsuffocated modern music; rather, itnMr. Reilly is a special assistant at thenInternational Communications Agencynin Washington. D.C.nMUSICnFrench lieutenant’s woman.” It almostnseems as if this is not the actual startnof the film, but rather a short preview,n”The Making of…” But then the actionnbegins, and the actress becomes a character.nWe forget about the opening untilnwe see Charles Smithson answer a telenphone—in 1867.’ —which makes usnaware that he is actually Jeremy Irons,nan actor, whom we might remembernseeing in the British television adaptationnof Brideshead Revisited.nBack and forth the film goes, but in anmanner more complexthan a play withinna play. That is, there’s a real actress performingnas an actress, who plays the rolenof a fictional character who is based onna character in a novel, a fictional characternwho pretends to be something thatnshe isn’t—which is at least five levels.nYet an averag’e filmgoer, one who simplynwants to see a modern Victorian melodraman(i.e. one in which the so-(fallednprudes are shown to be as licentious asngoats), can watch the film without beingnunduly disturbed by the Chinese-boxneffect. •nwas almost modern music’s suicide.nThis suicide was attempted by a systematicnfragmentation of the language ofnmusic, the same fragmentation that isneasily discernable in so -much modernnpainting and sculpture, wherein a singlencomponent or ingredient of art is elevatedninto its own autonomous, isolatednwhole.nAfter a half-century’s drubbing,nmelodic thought and tonal structurenare once again emerging in music, atnfirst painfully, slowly, cautiously, as ifnfrom a coma induced by a terrible beating,nbut now almost ebulliently. I knownof no better prescription for this recoverynthan George Rochberg’s essay onnnnhis “Third String Quartet” in which henspeaks of “turning away from . . . thencultural pathology of my own time.”nThat pathology is characterized by anwholesale rejection of the past and then”pursuit of the one-idea, uni-dimensionalnwork and gesture which seems tonhave dominated the esthetics of art innthe 20th century.”nWhat are the origins of this pathology?nThe answer is adumbrated in thenopening New York Times question asnto the necessity of the 12-tone revolution.nThe fact is that the 12-tone revolutionnwas thought to be necessary notnbecause it was needed, but because itnwas historically inevitable (due to thensupposed e.xhaustion of the tonal system).nIn other words, this culturalnpathology was rooted in modern ideologynand translated into a musical dialecticnwhich turns into strong hints ofngnosticism, as in Schoenberg’s own case.nThere is certainly such a thing as ideologynin music, and to no one’s surprise,nits influence has been reductionist. Likenanything else that can be affected bynideology, music has suffered from whatnEric Voegelin calls “a loss of reality.”nThe loss was purposeful. The sourcenof much “originality” in modern artnhas become not creation but destruction,na process of taking away what has beenngiven—not only by tradition but by naturenitself. Of course the principalnpremise of modern ideology is thatnwholesale destruction is necessary fornthe development of the truly new. Wenwere thus given in music a second-hand,nor ersatz, reality which operated accordingnto its own self-invented and independentnrules divorced from the verynnature of sound. In their attempt tondiscredit tonality as a matter of merenconvention, the 12-toners subjectednaudiences to all manner of manufacturednand systematized noises. The audiencesnfled—in spite of the critics’ barbsnthat they were musical rubes, Abandonednby and eventually unconcerned aboutntheir audience, the dodecaphonists shedn•any remaining restraints on their sterilenhermeticism and sank into total incom-nii5nJanuary/ February 1982n