Is Serialism Dead?

[Resonant- Serpent]

Fascinating subject. There are some mentions of history in this thread that I had no idea about.

Could someone recommend some books on this subject and the composers? I know the names, I know the music, but I've found little on the actual creative impulses/history.

[jancivil]

perhaps look for someone in this area and help them get noticed, if you tell 20 people, and they tell 20 people and so on...

here is some impure serialism. I was in the area.

Hey, nice ending. It was kinda like Zappa mixed with Kontakt II

Hey thanx. You must be a real perv to dig that ending, which still makes me laugh sometimes.

the beginning is supposed to be the not really scary motif for the stupid-looking monster's entrance, where you can see the guy's tie under the suit.

[jancivil]

perhaps look for someone in this area and help them get noticed, if you tell 20 people, and they tell 20 people and so on...

here is some impure serialism. I was in the area.

so long as you know by pure all i meant was the more modern stuff (kieren hebden and such) that ive heard has definite influences but also brings other forms into play.
i wasnt getting into the old

pure is superior nonsence

.

Oh no, I'd never accuse you of that kind of thing.

'Pure' serialism, to me might be the completely 100% correct academic type, or, might exclude the transitional Schoenberg 'free atonality' before he codified the thing, like that. Webern would be *pure*.

Webern is pretty awesome in my book btw.

[herodotus]

Fascinating subject. There are some mentions of history in this thread that I had no idea about.

Could someone recommend some books on this subject and the composers? I know the names, I know the music, but I've found little on the actual creative impulses/history.

For Schoenberg, I think it's best to go to the source. The book of essays called 'Style and Idea' has most of his best writing. Berg and Webern left behind very little writing unfortunately. If you can find it, Willi Reich translated some of Weberns words in a book called The Path to the New Music.

For the later developments, Joan Peysers biography of Boulez, though tendentious, gives a good sense of the goings on at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.

Googling the names Allen Forte and George Perle will bring you to numerous books. Check out especially the latters 'Serial composition and atonality. Also google George Barraque, who wrote extensively on these matters from an insiders perspective. His music was probably the most approachable of any of the participants at Darmstadt, after Messiaen.

[llatham]

According to Stockhausen the purpose of serialism is (was) to kill and replace romanticism.

Most new genres that come about are typically in reaction to an existing genre. It is true that Romanticism has grown into this behemoth that has for, IMHO, far too long exerted its influence on music - so some composers may have felt a need to slay that dragon. But, that's not the purpose of serialism. The purpose of serialism is to produce compositional material based on a pre-conceived series of elements.

Sorry but I never understood the point of all that noises.

Serialism is not responsible for that noise. Noise can be made by non-serialistic techniques as well. Serialism does not inherently produce anything other than ordered sets of elements. How serialism is implemented in a work is a different matter.

What I'm missing here? I really understand and appreciate minimalism, for example, but my brain refuse to accept any theorical idea suggested by serialism.

Is it your brain, or your preconceptions? part of it may be that you, like many, are working with an assumed definition of serialism that's incorrect. At that farther end of the spectrum, you could have already defined it as "bad" (as many do) and are walking in with that preconception.

Serialism, Atonality, and Dodecaphonic music are three different things.

When you sit down to Jam with someone over a I-vi-ii-V progression, you are playing serialist music. You've chosen a *series* of chords. 12 bar blues. Guess what. Serialism. And people don't even bother to retrograde those forms!

What most people have a problem with in the music of the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Webern and Berg) and their followers is not the serial procedures use to create the music, but the end result - which is created by a combination of factors - of which serialism is only one.

What people have a problem with is the systematic re-definition of everything everyone thinks is music. Schoenberg not music? Well, people have said that about Rap. And Rock. And Jazz, etc. Where I think Schoenberg et al "went wrong" was that they used Serial procudures (in addition to* Atonality.

But, it's not the Atonality that people have the most issue with. Debussy was Atonal and people love him. It's the break down of "everything traditional" that causes issues: The rhythms are incoherent, there are no "lines" with the registral leaps - in addition to the serialism and atonality. In other words, there's nothing to hang on to. It seems composers felt the Row would be an element that would "hold the work together" but they underestimated their listener's ability to conceptualize that. Instead, listeners tend to look for something "more obvious" (repetition - which is why minimalism may be easier for you to digest). I think, in retrospect, they leaped when they should have baby stepped .

But not all serialism - even the 12 tone atonal kind is like Schoenberg (and even Schoenberg has pre-serial atonality, and pre-serial works).

So some suggestions:
1. Give some of the music by other serialist composers a chance.
2. Adopt a broader definition of Serialism (guess what, many minimalistic pieces use serialist procedures. Try "Clapping Music" by Steve Reich).

Best,
Steve

[jancivil]

What I'm missing here? I really understand and appreciate minimalism, for example, but my brain refuse to accept any theorical idea suggested by serialism.

Per what your brain refuses to accept, you might look at how your brain works, rather than the Information as being at fault. Seriously.

[jancivil]

According to Stockhausen the purpose of serialism is (was) to kill and replace romanticism.

Most new genres that come about are typically in reaction to an existing genre. It is true that Romanticism has grown into this behemoth that has for, IMHO, far too long exerted its influence on music - so some composers may have felt a need to slay that dragon.

Whence Alban Berg then?

[terragong]

dont forget him ..great composer..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen

[MadBrain]

I think serialism is kindof an inherently academic movement: my guess is that it's easier to teach than the one kajillion possible variations of ordinary tonality (modes, jazz chords, wacky modulations, different schools of voice leading, etc, etc, etc), which also makes it easier to grade student works: you can correct from the score and you don't have to find how to deal with stuff students can come up like 13add4b18 chords, or mixes of jazz and classical chords (that's one thing that I find ridiculous - classical theory teachers that have 0 knowledge of how jazz harmony, and vice versa). I guess serialism is getting less popular because people are getting better educated for dealing with the "sorta follows rules but actually never quite and there's a gazillion exceptions" of real music. But this is just a conjecture.

[jancivil]

dont forget him ..great composer..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Messiaen

Oh yeah Messiaen. Great. Notated birdsong. My harmony teacher, organist James Gallatin was a big Messiaen freak. Rhythmically really compelling stuff. One of the few well known European composers of that time who endeavored to import Eastern, eg., Indian ideas into his thing.

[Download SOphist]

wow! this thread has kept civil for two pages! nice one, really appreciate the will to inform and the effort not to mislead.

(BTW, Messiaen was the only of the crew that i could listen repeatedly. not that it means anything much... )

Cheers!

[jancivil]

I think serialism is kindof an inherently academic movement: my guess is that it's easier to teach than the one kajillion possible variations of ordinary tonality (modes, jazz chords, wacky modulations, different schools of voice leading, etc, etc, etc), which also makes it easier to grade student works: you can correct from the score and you don't have to find how to deal with stuff students can come up ...

Ah ha. Yeah, when I had some intro comp course, it had to be by-the-book serial dodecaphony, and by the end of the course, I had a heart to heart with teach, said, 'I won't present a composition for a grade, drop me from the course'. Fortunately he was a hippie, that T.A.

Both my harmony teachers were organists who could sight-read anything, and they figured how good your part-writing SOUNDED into a final grade. Something about that approach informed the whole thing, and even diatonic harmony, was interesting. Chromatic harmony rocked my world at that time. It set the whole Schoenberg et al thing up for my ear very well.

FZ had the experience of taking a record into his guy in hischool, why does this sound good? "parallel fourths"; my community college harmony teach hipped me to that same sound, just demo'ing the character of intervals in context.

[VicDiesel]

You mean they used loops in the 1300s?

That, and extreme time stretching.

Victor.

[vurt]

perhaps look for someone in this area and help them get noticed, if you tell 20 people, and they tell 20 people and so on...

here is some impure serialism. I was in the area.

so long as you know by pure all i meant was the more modern stuff (kieren hebden and such) that ive heard has definite influences but also brings other forms into play.
i wasnt getting into the old

pure is superior nonsence

.

Oh no, I'd never accuse you of that kind of thing.

maybe you wouldnt, but you know how it can get around here if we live things unexplained, too often

'Pure' serialism, to me might be the completely 100% correct academic type, or, might exclude the transitional Schoenberg 'free atonality' before he codified the thing, like that. Webern would be *pure*.

Webern is pretty awesome in my book btw.

yeah kind of the ame view on pure, as in rigid to a form (whatever that form may be)
its the same thing we see with genres i guess, any slight departyre is frowned upon by some and hailed as a new form by others.
to me its all just music, if we all did follow the same rules to the letter, wouldnt music have gotten very boring by now

and yeah i like a bit of webern now and then
i like a lot of schoenberg every now and then too

[Ogg Vorbis]

According to Stockhausen the purpose of serialism is (was) to kill and replace romanticism.

Ironically, that strikes me as a very romantic idea - [shatner] we MUST....destroy...that, that... THING that causes...US... to live under its....SHADOW... we MUST....be free! [/shatner]