Serial music reached only small specialist late-night radio audiences despite apparent demand.

Evidence

The broadcasting companies noted considerable demand for the new music during the 1950s. But it was broadcast in late-night programmes whose audiences consisted of a small number of specialists and fans. `A message in a bottle, addressed to no one’ was how the music was described at the time, not without a certain self-satisfaction and pride. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2193

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘message in a bottle’ self-image of serial composers — an aesthetic avant-garde proud of its own irrelevance — is a rich angle for an essay on how artistic communities romanticize their own marginalization.
• CANDY: Serial music’s self-description as ‘a message in a bottle, addressed to no one’ is a vivid, quotable capsule of high-modernist self-understanding.