[bjornlouser]

"But most of all Schoenberg was trying too hard to be remembered. Bach, Mozart, Debussy and his predecessors saw themselves as jobbing composers. They knew they had to keep at least one ear moored in audience expectations."

But weren't audience expectations tainted by the musical establishment? Debussy (born 1862) won the Prix de Rome, but somehow Ravel (born 1875, one year after Schoenberg) was snubbed for five consecutive years.

Something terrible seems to have happened in music schools around the turn of the century. It's hard to blame Schoenberg for wanting to watch it all burn.