Why serialism?

Jan 6 18:15 UTC 1992

tcc talks about the "atrocity inflicted on the music world" by 
serialist music, the type where arrhthmia and atonality combine to 
produce an effect that used be the last word in modernity.  

[Two paragraphs of explanation follow which you should skip if you 
already know about it, or if you don't know and don't care.] 

  The original problem, as I understand it, was to find a way to 
  abandon traditional tonality and move on to something else, 
  without abandoning structure and order.  The solution was to 
  compose in such a way that all twelve tones of the chromatic 
  scale were given equal time, so to speak, so that no one tone 
  would ever assume the role of the tonic.  The way to accomplish 
  this is to ensure that all twelve tones are played before any one 
  of them is repeated.  The mechanism for this is called the "tone 
  row," a series in which all twelve tones are played in some 
  specific order.  (Hence the term "serial" composition.)  You can 
  vary the series by playing it backwards (retrograde), with the 
  intervals inverted (inversion), and backward with the intervals 
  inverted (inverse retrograde).  

  The technique was developed by Arnold Schonberg and perfected by 
  his student Anton Webern and others who extended the idea of the 
  series to such things as rhythm, dynamics and orchestration.  In 
  the most rigidly controlled serialist pieces, everything is 
  subject to meticulous serial manipulations.  Despite this, the 
  music sounds chaotic and ugly to most listeners, even after 
  three-quarters of a century of performances and recordings and 
  explanatory books and articles.  

The composers and critics and listeners who champion serialism are 
growing older and fewer as time goes by, while the younger 
generation seems to be indifferent to it.  Personally, I find most 
of it boring and not worth listening to.  Does anyone here have 
anything nice to say about it?  Or anything not-nice to say about 
it, for that matter?  And if it's that bad, how did it come to 
dominate the music of our century?  

response 2 of 13:

Feb 28 02:39 UTC 1992

Besides the way it sounds, it is interesting to compose in, if you're the
only person that's going to listen to it.

As an *artist* though, I feel that it becomes more of a very limiting
*system* of thought as opposed to a tool which one uses to create music. I
feel that it's music already written, and all  you're doing is doing a 
'variation on a theme'.

Besides all that, it could be that 'serial' composition is an artificial
creation of aesthetes and best left to the aesthetes.

Music as an art developed out of being able to express emotion or action 
through processions of notes, chords and musical tools, much of which 
repeats notes in a 'series' within the phrase, or measure.  Music as a science
unrelated to emotion says you can't repeat a note within a predetermined
peroid.  It's an artificial limit.

Perhaps someone with a more objective view should respond to this item [:)

response 4 of 13:

Sep 10 15:47 UTC 1992

Interesting comment:  "One's first reaction can't be trusted as a 
guide, but neither can one's conditioned reaction necessarily; it 
may merely show that you can get used to anything, however awful." 

That's exactly right.  I tried very, very hard when younger to try 
and find the beauties I was told are to be found in some 
superficially abrasive-sounding music.  When I was 16 or 17 years 
old, I brought home a recording of Bartok's (abrasive but not 
serialist) 4th Quartet and listened to it twenty-one times in a 
row, determined to crack the code and hear for myself what all the 
fuss was about.  I succeeded, and to this day I find the piece 
structurally beautiful and sonically haunting.  

Once you go through that sort of exercise, anything less abrasive 
becomes a piece of cake.  You can judge all kinds of modernist 
stuff on its own merits:  "Oh, sure, it's like somebody hammering a 
spike into your head -  but is it any good?"  The implication is 
that it *all* sounds like somebody hammering a spike into your 
head, but some of the hammering is brilliant, and some is schlocky, 
and most is in between somewhere.  

It's next to impossible for me to back out of this now.  When 
someone tells me that Elliott Carter's Concerto for Orchestra 
sounds like a cross between hurricane Andrew and the L.A. riots, 
all I can say is, "Keep listening, it's really very beautiful."  

But this means I've accepted the premise that it's okay for music 
to sound like that.  But I'm not sure it's okay; despite the 
unaffected pleasure I get from listening to some of it, I've never 
been sure it's okay.  In fact, I really think we took a wrong turn 
somewhere back there, and all I'm doing is making the most of the 
unpleasantness we've been left with - getting used to anything, 
however awful, as davel puts it.  

response 6 of 13:

Sep 21 05:19 UTC 1992

I'm surprised with the fuss that people do raise and the issue that people make
out of 'serialist' music, that alternative tunings and other 'what-are-we-
missing-by-being-western' musical bizzareities don't also make a lot of hot
air billow forth.  (Wendy Carlos notwithstanding.)

I've kicked and prodded at my 'puter writing myself a just-or-otherwise tuning
system/compositional tool, and I must say, am having quite a soulful time
playing with different forms of composition, transposition, and chordal 
structure.  It's just like nothing I've ever heard before, yet I'm writing it
and when I play it back, it sounds like, well...  almost like the emotions
or situations that I'm expressing I've never experienced or felt before.

There's this one interval, from what would be 'fourth' to 'third' in a 
descending heavily padded instrumental part, well, it almost defies
explanation. It's the same interval that Wendy Carlos uses in part of 'Beauty
in the Beast', in a similar descending denouement transitional phrase.  It
sounds both in and out of tune and in and out of interval at the same time. 
Maddening, and insanely drawing.

response 8 of 13:

Apr 19 13:10 UTC 1993

Bartok was more influenced by Strauss, Debussy and Stravinsky than by
Schoenberg et al, and his chief inspiration eventually became folk
music.  It's easy to imagine Bartok existing without the Viennese gang.
(Also, the Concerto for Orchestra is an "American" composition dating
from 1943, and seems to have very little of WWII in it, strange to say,
unless you count the nostalgic tone that creeps through in places --
Bartok was separated from his homeland by the war.)  But there was
an early-ish "expressionist" period where Bartok definitely sounded
influenced by Vienna.  The Miraculous Mandarin dates from this period.
Not twelve-tone or serialist, just harsh and neurotic.  I realize I sound
like I know what I'm talking about here, but it's an illusion, as always.
Anyone who really knows his or her Bartok should please jump in ASAP.

response 10 of 13:

May 16 12:30 UTC 1994

Listen to Bartok's string quartets
Listen to Stravinsky's rite of spring
May take a few tries to get used to, but they're both beautiful.

response 12 of 13:

May 18 07:15 UTC 1994

I know this discussion was held long ago, but I'll add that just because
sounds ("music") are arranged serially or with "dissonance" does not make
the music automatically bad - nor does it make the music good.  I found many
of the comments of the "I don't like it, it doesn't seem like real music,
it was just an experiment" kind to be personal opinions, rather than objective
views of the genre.  That's fine, but let's separate the two.