I guess I'm on the other side of the discussion: I follow the music lesson well enough, but I'm quite unclear on what Palmer is trying to say in the original comment: Britten uses fourths instead of fifths (quartal harmony a la early Schoenberg)? Or fifths instead of fourths? And whyever (says the person who loves tritones) would you not use tritones in an opera based on The Turn of the Screw, a work where unease and evil are the order of the day?

I also note that Palmer is one of those conservatives who regards radical elements as "conventional, traditional" "clichés," when it seems to me that "normal," "natural" "musical formulas" (note the betraying word "formula"!) "associated with all-pervasive good" (which I'm assuming means major key, but maybe I'm wrong) are far more traditional, conventional, and clichéd (i.e. boring, from my idiosyncratic point of view).

I.e., a cliché is a convention one dislikes.

Don Keller