Apropos of Free-Jazz, Guelph Jazz Festival, and Schoenberg

The composer Allen Shawn's Arnold Schoenberg's Journey is a wonderful book. He explicates Schoenberg's music for the rest of us, for the unprofessional atonal enthusiasts. My view is that the atonal - I know "atonal" is a bad choice of nomenclature, a bad choice for getting things right - music in our life is often more accessible (another bad word) to jazz enthusiasts than to classical (another bad word) music enthusiasts. I recommend reading Shawn's short chapter 10, "Wrong Notes". Shawn compares Thelonious Monk 'composing' at the piano with Schoenberg's rapid-pace and nearly trance-like way of 'composing' at his writing desk, writing that Schoenberg, "believed passionately that art should come primarily from the unconscious." (106) He continues by posing four very interesting questions:

What if Schoenberg's music had been improvised? What if it belonged to the world of "free jazz"? Or more realistically, what if the technical aspect of Schoenberg's music had been kept secret when it was first introduced? Would it have more easily found a following if it had been presented as a form of spontaneous expression? (106)

I don't think that Schoenberg or Monk would have "easily found a following" in any case: their music isn't simple enough - unlike the music of a Marsalis, a Glass, or an Adams.
      In Schoenberg's music, as in free-jazz, the interval seems to be the thing. This is especially true of Henry Threadgill's music and his magic. As I noted in the Guelph Jazz Festival post, if one is interested in Schoenberg improvised, listen to Spooky Action's Schoenberg disc.