My perhaps favourite example of knowing when and how to break the rules is Franz Schuberts &quot;Erlkönig&quot; [1] because it is so stark.<p>If you listen to it without paying attention to the text (based on a poem by Goethe by the same name; both the German text and an English translation is found at [1]), parts of it sounds like horrible jammering and poor harmonies and it&#x27;s easy to write it off as not sounding very nice.<p>Here&#x27;s [2] a much clearer rendition (two singers, with much stronger delineation of the three different characters) than the one linked from Britannica.<p>If you <i>do</i> pay attention to the text, it is very clear that the unpleasant parts are very deliberate:<p>The singer(s) switches between the role of a father, his sick dying child, and the Erl-king that occurs in the hallucinations of the child while the father is riding to bring the child to a doctor.<p>The big difference between the unpleasant-sounding parts of this song and a bad composer is the clear intent and delineation - Schubert made things sound bad intentionally explicitly at the points he wanted to illustrate pain and fear, rather than because he didn&#x27;t know how to make things sound pleasant when he wanted to.<p>The song clearly proves this by setting the childs jammering and the fathers fearful attempts to soothe him up against much more pleasant segments where the Erl-king speaks and tries to seduce the child to come with him.<p>You only get that clear separation if you know how to evoke each effect precisely. Arguably a bad particularly composer wouldn&#x27;t even know how to make things sound bad the &quot;right way&quot; - there&#x27;s a big difference between random bad sounds and making things evoke a child in pain.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;topic&#x2F;Erlkonig" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.britannica.com&#x2F;topic&#x2F;Erlkonig</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soundcloud.com&#x2F;sean_contretenor_lee&#x2F;erlkonig" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soundcloud.com&#x2F;sean_contretenor_lee&#x2F;erlkonig</a>