The Art-Music, Literature and Linguistics Forum

Which ones do you find faultless and love unconditionally? Personally I can think of four I have come to know and of which I have few criticisms: Schönberg's Variations, Berg's Concerto, Webern's second Cantata, and (of all things) Banks's Divisions. But there must be thousands more candidates.

Wellesz's exposition though is off-putting: "A melodic skeleton has to be thought out, consisting of the twelve notes of the dodecuple scale . . . no tone should be repeated before the note-row comes to an end."

Why ever not?

Does not that method in its inflexibility tend to destroy the above-mentioned "melodic" quality rather than enhance it?

"The pattern appears 1) in its original form, 2) in its inversion, 3) in its cancrizans, and 4) in the crab inversion."

But WHY??

No truly inspired composer would wish to do all that would he?

"All the harmonies are built upon chords consisting of notes of the row arranged in the order in which they appear in the series."

Why why why??? No one ever says.

Just as in the first case (of the melody) this removal of the composer's freedom tends to destroy, not enhance, the harmonic interest and quality of a work.

Percy Scholes calls this "a highly artificial composing procedure," which could be praise but coming from him I do not think it is.

This will be a short thread, I feel?

The Berg Violin Concerto is the only serial work that is unequivocally excellent - and only because the composer shifts the goalposts to subvert the profoundly pointless idea of 12-note rows.

Not necessarily a short thread . . .

I have never warmed to Berg's violin concerto: I did hear it live a year ago and it seemed as impenetrable as it always has been. Indeed I've always found Berg's 12-note stuff difficult to get on with. Webern's concerto, on the other hand, would certainly get my vote. And I've always felt that Skalkottas was one of the very few pre-1950 composers to be able to write naturally with his version of the 12-note method, although I've never bothered to find out how or why. And I must admit a liking for some 12-note jazz - I find the nature of the contradiction engaging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsyDWtzfA7k

I'd never really noticed that the score for THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 is actually dodecaphonic?  But thank you for pointing it out :)

Is anyone still writing serial music?  It's a bit like asking if anyone still has a BetaMax VCR  :)

Indeed, the note row is not dissimilar to that of the Webern Concerto


The name may be a give-away, but I just bet that Elvis Schoenberg's Blue suede shoes is of the tendency. Some stuff actually does sound 12-note.
Amuses me at any rate.

http://www.myspace.com/osurreal/music/songs/blue-suede-shoes-77285975

I admire and adore quite a bit of American composer Charles Wuorinen's work, which is not 'serial' (Wuorinen actually takes exception to that term) but is definitely dodecaphonic. I'm especially drawn to his remarkable chamber works, including the saxophone quartet, his two piano quintets, the string sextet, his numerous trio pieces for different instrumental arrangements, etc...

I love Berg's Violin Concerto. Stravinsky's Movements, for piano and orchestra was a very influential work for me 25 years ago, and somewhat inspired my own Diffractions for Piano & Orchestra (1987). I've since forgotten how thoroughly I explored the note-row manipulation of Movements, I think I was more interested in the textural and rhythmic ideas in any event. Just reading again briefly about that work, it seems that Stravinsky's use of serialism was not that rigid. That's fine by me. Concerning my own work(s) I'd say I "dabbled" in serialism, if it was useful to inspire a theme that would be later freely developed then so be it, which is what I did with Diffractions.

Mention of your own work here prompts me to note en passant (at the risk of departing slightly from the topic, for which I trust I may be forgiven) that, although much of my earliest musial education (from a Webern pupil) centred on a quite rigid application of principles of serialism, not least the total serialist persuasions that briefly abounded in the demi-monde of Darmstadt and Donaueschingen at the hands of the cliques of Köln, I realised very early on that this was not the way for me in my own work; more recently, however, I have used 12-note themes from time to time in various pieces but never treated them serially.

I love Berg's Violin Concerto, incidentally! I could never make head of tail of Schönberg's, however, until I heard it in the revelatory recording by Hilary Hahn, after listening to which I had the temerity to take the grave risk of declaring to the distinguished Schönberg scholar Malcolm MacDonald that she plays it as though it's a piece of music...

Elvis Schoenberg is a lot of fun.  I must admit I love the Live and Let Die/Carmina Burana hybrid.

I've unearthed broadcasts of a) Adès's and b) Birtwistle's, but have no idea whether either of them is serial. (In fact Adès sounds like Puccini warmed up.) Do those interest you?

Which reminds me: Benjamin Britten, certainly not a serial composer, used a twelve-tone theme at the outset of his Cantata Academica, and treated it very cleverly. I'm sure many other composers have used this trick as well.

I  believe William Alwyn did a very interesting approach in his 3rd.  He used 8 tones in the first movement, the remaining 4 tones in the 2nd, and then all 12 in the third.

I like the way Bernstein uses 12-note rows in the 3rd Symphony and his treatment of Beethoven's 'Ihr stürzt nieder' tone-row in the third Meditation in Mass.

Can you please recall that easy, short rule how I can find out whether a work is dodecaphonic or not when I am just listening to a piece and have no idea of music theory? It must have slipped my mind...

I would nominate Lutoslawki's Livre Pour Orchestre and Symphony No 2. Thrillingly imagined music.

I have to admit to a liking for Xenakis and Ferneyhough.

I agree with the Lutoslawski, and would also add Schoenberg's Violin Concerto.

Ok, if you like it, more power to you.
But this is precisely the type of music which has many people thoroughly disliking classical music.
When I am trying to lure someone to listen, this music is absolutely my last choice. And if I suggested
Xenaxis, they would send the men in white coats to pick me up. Music for and of the people, it is not..

Xenakis wrote some of the most thrilling and appealing music of the past century—for me anyway. On the other hand, the music of Wagner is dull and generally overhyped, and i have given up trying to like it.

I imagine your opinion is exactly the same as mine, just with the names reversed :D


Have to admit of the composers i like i don't have the faintest idea which ones are dodecaphonic and which ones aren't, without looking at the liner notes that is. The methods a composer uses to construct their works are relevant only to them in my opinion—the results are what matter. Stravinsky's "serial" works are among my favourite music ever written, though. especially Threni, Movements, Requiem Canticles (which hopelessly dogged my steps in attempting to write my first choral work).

Schoenberg was no slouch either. i've never warmed in particular to the Boulezerie, but Petrassi's serial works have always struck me as quite underrated.

Petrassi is a fine composer, as is Bruno Bettinelli - the music is abstract. I do not know or care what category the music is, I just like it.
Xenaxis gets my attention, that's for sure. the same way uppers do. If the mood is right..if I need screamed at, he is certainly on tap.
Schnittke and Pettersson are great if I want to wallow in angst, and I do recognize their genius.
So it all depends on our expectations and our mindset..
Despite Wagner's memories now polluted with charges of Anti-semitism, please read what other modern composers have said of Wagner's music (esp Tristan und Isolde). You will realize the hype is valid..he dramatically changed musical world. for the better.

I love Kokkonen's Symphonies 1 & 2, Irving Fine's Symphony, Copland's Piano Fantasy, Hugh Wood's Symphony, Rautavaara's 3rd Symphony and......that's about it.  All but Wood were far from devoted serialists though. At Fine's death he was working on a neo-romantic Violin Concerto. I think they all felt too constrained and limited by the process.

My list:




Oldfezzi

Actually, I remember well playing some Ligeti to a friend of mine who had no musical knowledge whatever and had no familiarity with any concert music. He was indignant - even angry - that he had never heard such music before, and was almost suggesting that these treasures had been hidden from him by some huge conspiracy.

Atmospheres, I'll bet..Ligiti is quite imaginative,and often accessable.. he did write movie music..
I have a freind who is just the opposite...he savors melody and structure..and dosen't get angry when I play something unique.

Nope, it was the Requiem, and not the well-known bit, either.

I could not classify Ligiti as unsung...he has quite a wide following.
Another Italian who may be to your liking (in the general category as Petrassi), but not heralded and quite gifted is this man:
Dodecaphonic, atonal, serial..whatever..and perhaps meriting another thread is Bruno Bettinelli:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzzYZe47wBA&list=PL7743470771C543AF

And they were!!   (See my note about the Straw Man Theory of bogus attacks on unfavoured composers  ;D )

I never said he was, nor Lutoslawski, nor Xenakis.

It is quite difficult to label many pieces as strict 12-tone. For example, much of the music of Xenakis is not 12 tone. A piece like the Boulez structures is quite 12 tone, but then he also tried to serialize other aspects of the composition.

For me, the list of works that I admire that have the dodecaphonic technique at whole or part of their construction would indeed be long.

Some examples:

Ginastera: Estudio Sinfonicos; Don Rodrigo; Second Piano Concerto, etc.
Rochberg: Second Symphony
Blackwood: Second Symphony; Piano Concerto
Searle: His Symphonies
Wellesz: His later symphonies
Gerhard: Many of his later works
Stravinsky: Movements; Huxley Variations
Rosenman: The Cobweb (film score)
Copland: Inscape and Connotations (probably my favorite Copland works)

There are many other works that "sound" twelve tone...like the Symphonies of Schnabel, many works by Berio, etc.

For me, there are many non-tonal works I value greatly...Speaking of Berio, Circle and Visage. I find Visage to be one of the masterpieces of music.

Karl

Kokkonen's 1st and 2nd Symphonies, Hugh Wood's Symphony, Copland's Piano Fantasy, Stravinsky's Agon. Just for starters.
I do not consider any of these strictly serial.

Stravinsky's hugely successful career took a nosedive in his latter years - when he succumbed to the pressure to write dodecaphonic twaddle.

But what is the real legacy of this stuff?  None, as far as I can see.

Twelve-tone composition is simply an intellectual diversion, rather like doing sudoku puzzles. And performing it is rather like giving a public display of sudokus which you have solved.

The actual continuum of twentieth-century composition - Janacek, Strauss, Lutoslawski, Ives, Britten, Tippett, Shostakovich, Prokofiev - has no space for the intellectual affectation of twelve-note composition.  Its influence is a complete 0.

Of course, it's placed on a pedestal by the self-appointed priesthood of 'modern' composers. Although in time, it's as far from "contemporary" music as Haydn was from Wagner.

I agree with the first part of this but not the second; where is the evidence that the already "hugely successful" Stravinsky (as he undoubtedly was) was even pressurised (externally) to write dodecaphonic music, let alone that he "succumbed" to such "pressure"? Surely this was his decision alone, not one imposed from the outside? - and the mature Stravinsky never struck me as the kind of composer to take his orders from elsewhere!

I don't see why it needs to be, or indeed why it should be regared as presumaing any greater degree of "intellectual exerise" than writing music in any other ways; one might as well seek to posit a similar argument about the intricate disciplines of species counterpoint as espoused by Renaissance composers but I cannot see that gaining much acceptance.

I would be as wary of underestimating over indeed overestimating the influence of 12 note serial procedures and practices as I would of claiming that, notwithstanding their importance, the eight composers whom you mention are representative of the entire "continuum of twentieth-century composition" when clearly that "continuum" is vastly wider and richer than just those; to add in Sibelius, Varèse, Nielsen, Carter, Xenakis, Messiaen, Henze, Bartók, Berio, Pettersson, Sessions and a bunch of British symphonists from Vaughan Williams, Brian and Bax through Rubbra and Walton to Arnold and Simpson up to living ones such as Maxwell Davies, McCabe and Matthews alone illustrates that.

If its influence is "0", how has it gotten and stayed on that pedestal?

12 note serial practice is just one of the ways to salvation that has no appeal for me (and when I write 12 note themes I do not treat them serially), but we don't (thankfully) all go the same way home. Furthermore, hardly any listeners would be able to tell just by listening that a piece is written using 12 note serial procedures in any case.

Yes, but there's a major difference. Many people enjoy listening to Renaissance polyphony.  ;)


Of course - my list was merely a series of important but not exclusive landmarks :)  It was not intended to replace Grove.

Which members of your list have written important serial works? 

I merely ask.  I can't readily think of any twelve-tone works by RVW, for example ;)


People like [certain of] your friends have put it there. People obsessed with projecting a primacy of German/Austrian music that allegedly followed on from Brahms and Bruckner.  Yet in reality German music lost the plot in the C20th, and other countries took up the baton.  Hence my listing of Lutoslawski, Janacek and Britten (amongst others).

There is no legacy from twelve-note composition. It was a mistaken and deluded idea in the first place, and only the King's Ministers . . . are still claiming that the King's New Clothes were magnificent and worthy raiments.

Its musical legacy is a complete nullity.

And I'm one of them - but many people don't!

No, I know that and understand it, of course.

None - but that was the whole point of my use of the word "alone" towards its end - i.e. as a mean of pointing out the sheerly cornucopic nature of that "continuum" even without venturing into composers who did write 12 note serial music!

I have never met [them]! But I still do not see in any case how a handful of people in isolation, whether or not I know them, could contrive to achieve this if the inherent influence of 12-note serial music is really zero.

But is the obviously non-Austro-German Boulez one of these people?

I cannot agree with that. OK, it might well be argued that the "primacy" per se of Austro-German musical composition may well have fallen away since WWI, but I'd not take that alone as an illustration of Mitteleuropa having "lost the plot"...

Even though I do not personally have recorse to such procedures when writing, I would not seek to claim either that there is "no legacy from twelve-note composition", that it "was a mistaken and deluded idea in the first place" or that those to whom you refer (for no obvious reason) as "King's Ministers" make any such claims as such either, especially given that the musical methodologies concerend are not today regarded as anyone's "New Clothes", let alone those of an unspecified "King".

What I do think, however, is that certain discussion of the entire 12-tone business (rather than 12-tone procedures and practices themselves) has generated in certain quarters a number of expressions that seem as disproportionate to the importance of the subject itself as they risk fostering divisiveness; it's just one route to compositional salvation among many and it has in any case supplanted none that existed before it came into being. The truculent statements about it attributed to the young Boulez in the 1950s have done such discussion no favours.

Furthermore, 12-note serialism is not the only kind that's ever been explored and exploited and, for all the differences between, say, on the one hand Hauer and Schönberg and on the other Scriabin and Roslavets, thee can be no doubt that the latter two sailed quite close to serial ideas, the former in his late works and the latter in his early ones.

As one of the great unwashed, I don't really know if what I am listening to is dodecaphonic or not, so I fall back on the cliche, if I like it, I listen to it. So probably someday I will realize one of my favorites is of that class!

Believe me, you do not have to be either great or unwashed, let alone both, to be unable to determine with any certainty whether or not a piece to which you're listening is a dodecaphonic serial one!

This is a further area where I find [their] musings to be wrong and ignorant.

The extremely wise theatre director, Peter Brook, famously said that if you feel you need to explain in a programme note what your work means - then you've failed.  "The longer the note - the greater your failure".

If [people] can't write their music well enough - and have to give lectures or notes about "what it means", then this means they have failed.

The music has to stand or fall on its own merits.  It should not require the audience to attend classes given by the composer, in order to "understand" his ideas. This is the very definition of professional failure.

In almost every respect I agree with you and with Peter Brook - and indeed with Delius who wrote something along very similar lines almost a century ago as follows:

Music that needs "explanation, that requires bolstering up with propaganda, always arouses suspicion that(,) if left to stand on hits own merits, it would very quickly collapse and be no more heard of" (I believe that this was in an essay entitled At the Crossroads in the very first edition in 1920 of Philip Heseltine's short-lived music magazine The Sackbut).

I have always distrusted this kind of thing and have said as little as possible (though still perhaps not quite little enough!) about my own work when asked to do so and I do very much feel that, because one is writing music, not words (or at least not words alone), it behoves one to make that expression as self-sufficient as possible.

Where I take issue with you is with the principle that prompts you to point your admonitory finger at [that person]. To which of his particular "musings" do you take issue? I wrote about the improbability of being able to tell that a piece is a dodecaphonic serial one just from listening and he has pointed out the very same on several occasions so, unless you disagree with that (in which case you also take issue with my own "musings"), we would all appear broadly to be in agreement on this.

Thanks for the pointer to that essay Mr. H! It is not available in the Internet Archive, but I will keep looking out for it!

Clearly twelve-note composition had no influence on anyone, anywhere. It's obvious because you keep repeating it so loudly.

While they may all be nobodies whose renown is only due to the nefarious machinations of Richard Barrett I do admit that I enjoy some of the dodecaphonic works of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Hauer, Skalkottas, Wellesz, Gerhard, Krenek, Sessions, Copland, Stravinsky, Castiglioni, Barraqué, Berio, Petrassi, Dallapiccola, Nono, Holliger, Lutyens, Stockhausen and Maderna. And even Barrett I suppose though I have no idea whether his music is dodecaphonic or triskaidekaphonic or what have you. I think I slept through that particular lecture.

I could name some specific sudoku puzzles of theirs I like but I'm worried that that might make me part of the priesthood. I'm not really big on celibacy.

Well, at least that last bit's a relief!

For the record, I have never slept through any of those lectures. I have never been awake through any of them either. Indeed, I must be quite unforgivably unobservant beause I've not even noticed that they have been given.

We have in this thread been presented with the suggestion that dodecaphony is dead. As dead as the dodo, perhaps. But this particular dodo has been gravely misunderstood and ill served thereby. Schönberg's friend Gershwin (whose work he greatly admired and who funded the world première recording of Schönberg's final string quartet only a year before he []Gershwin] died) understood it, just as he understood how dodecaphony, like so much else in Schönberg, is grounded in tradition, in the past; he even wrote a song to illustrate this fact, in which a line runs
Oh, do, do, do / What you've done / Done, done before, baby /
These words, though not actually set to a note row, say it all, really...

To all of them. Those who fail to agree with him that Arnold Schoenberg's output was the turning-point for music in the C20th allegedly wish to trample on the entire musical output of the last one hundred years, and "put it in a box".   :)

There is a name for this kind of argument.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OSbH7zkbWts/T1nsN4yhhBI/AAAAAAAAA_c/eJJVnpSARg4/s1600/exposestraw.jpg)

In the sixties of the last century (1964 and 1965) I used to go along to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (and at least one other group, of which I forget the name) to hear Boulez, Stockhausen, and similar continental visitors lecture on their productions. I do not now remember anything at all that they said. All I remember is that on each occasion the audience consisted of much the same set of thirty or so mostly young people, and that there was always present a certain red-headed gent from the Russian embassy, who would attempt to make conversation with the audience during the intervals. I suppose the Russians thought that the Boulez/Stockhausen lovers were the cream of Britain's younger generation, and were attempting to gather them in before they crumbled away. (Which they actually did do when the seventies came round.)

A strawman argument? On the internet? Why, the reprobate!

Good thing he's historically irrelevant, otherwise I might have been very upset!

No. Not at all. I have said more or less the same thing myself. Would you therefore seek to accuse me likewise of being beholden to the same imaginary "synod"? which, since he is, as you know, by no means the only composer to be invited to offer information about theirs and others' work from time to time, he does not "head" in any case; since when, for that matter, did responding to an invitiation to talk about or discuss one's work identify one as a member, let alone the "head", of some "synod"?.

What you appear either to miss or to be unprepared to take on board is the implicit but clear meaning that it is also not necessary to know how a piece of music was "written" just from hearing it - which is just as well, really, since composers as a rule do not in any case write their works so as to generate the kinds of puzzlement and perplexity amongst their listeners as to presuppose a requirement for composerly verbal "explanation".

I have never sat in the same room as him and have only once attended a live performance of one of his works (the piano piece lost, played by Sarah Nicolls) on an occasion when he was not present; as I said before, I've never met or even seen him, so my experience of listening to his works has all of necessity been without his (or indeed anyone else's) prior verbal explanatory input. From what I have read of his writings on all manner of music from Mozart to Ornette Coleman, Boccherini to Mahler, Xenakis and Stockhausen to Shostakovich and Pettersson, my distinct impression is of someone whose terms of reference are far too wide-ranging to admit of cramped, constricted and patronising attitudes.

You would never stoop to any such thing, of course! Yes, when he (and others, for that matter) are confronted with opinions that have no realistic basis in fact but are presneted as though fact, he might well argue with them, which is a quite different matter. I have done the same in the very thread to which you refer (without naming it or identifying its source) so, while you're busy pouring scorn on him, you might perhaps think to spare a little for me as well.

But your interpretation of the facts of history and his take on them simply does not stand up to intelligent scrutiny. He knows as well as you and I do that Schönberg's development as a composer from the beginning of the last century up to, say, the outbreak of WWI was indeed a turning-point for music - but "a" turning-point, not "the" turning-point; what of Busoni, Debussy, Scriabin, Strauss, Ives and others during that same period? And all that was in any case separated by a decade or so from the appearance of Schönberg's first published dodecaphonic work, during which intervening period there were also the "turning-points" of Roslavets, Ornstein, Vermeulen, Varèse and others. Not only was there a multiplicity of "turning-points", however, but also none of them sought to overturn what had gone before or indeed undermine other things that were going on at the same time. Only Boulez (if what's attributed to him is correct) and Xenakis sought to "start anew" - and that was three decades and more later in any case; Xenakis cpontinued to plough his own furrow though without expressing dictatorial ideas as Boulez appeared to do - and Boulez himself has changed consierably as a composer since the 1950s.

I believe the gentleman concerned has done a magnificent job of painting himself into a corner, all by himself - he doesn't need any help from us, and there seems no need to rehash his views any further here ;)

To sum up my own views (as a performer who has performed Schoenberg works as a soloist at the St Petersburg Philharmonia...)...  it seems to me that the case cannot be made for Schoenberg as the Prometheus, or Janus, of C20th music.

Serial composition was an intellectual affectation which quickly fizzled out, and which has had no influence whatsoever on the music of the C20th. It has not just died out - it's been actively jettisoned.  Composers have instead taken greater interest in aspects of music which are not pitch-related - rhythm, duration, tempo, timbre, colour, overtone, instrumentation. In these areas, Schoenberg contributed nothing new whatsoever.

http://www.ram.ac.uk/events?event_id=2236

A (free) Royal Academy of Music concert featuring Skalkottas's 4th quartet at 6.00pm on Friday 28th Feb. It's 40-odd minutes long and staggeringly difficult so rarely gets played. One of the major 20th century quartets IMHO.

It's dodecaphonic, but don't let that put you off!

Then why was it so difficult for non-serialist composers to get their music performed for much of the period?


Schoenberg may not have directly done so, but his version of serialism led to "total serialism", which does extend serialist techniques beyond pitch.

Put me off? It's one of Skalkottas' finest works! A truly powerful piece that makes me wonder what Schönberg would have thought of it - I cannot imagine that his reaction would have been other than thrilled. But given the challenges that have since been put before quartets by Carter, Ferneyhough et al - and in the light of the immense problems of getting together earlier works such as van Dieren's first quartet, Schönberg's D minor quartet or even the last quartets of Beethoven, is it really so difficult that ensembles fight shy of it because of fears of being able to put together a telling performance? Surely not!

Now that this thread has re-opened, here's what I'd have posted to it had it not been closed earlier.

I see that, having previously poured scorn on a particular person, you now refer to him as a "gentleman"; that said, whatever he may have done and however magnificent you may perceive it to be, it is certainly not painting himself into a corner, as what I have read of his writings clearly reveals someone whose widely divergent interests in all manner of musics would alone ensure that he would not even fit into one.

I would be genuinely interested to have details of the AS works that you have performed. However, I am not aware that anyone has sought in the first place to make out a case for him as the "Prometheus, or Janus, of C20th music"; the fact that he was a figure of great importance in the music of the first half of that century does not of itself make him either of those things, particularly given that - as I wrote earlier - there have been numerous other musical "turning-points" during the time that Schönberg/Schoenberg worked and none had in any case sought to overthrow tradition or the music of the past. This last is perhaps of especial importance in relation to Schönberg/Schoenberg in the light of the fact that he spent far more of his time teaching about Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms et al than he did in expounding his dodecaphonic methodologies in composition classes.

To begin with, serial composition was no more of an "intellectual affectation" than were the disciplines of species counterpoint which, it could be argued, really did largely "fizzle out", albeit over a longer timescale, because Western musical language was developing away from it; on the contrary, it was just one means to an end whose incipit and history paralelled those of many other compositional persuasions during the past century.

There is a order issue with the first six words of your second sentence (a verbal hexachord? perish the thought!); it should have read "it has just not died out". It holds sway nowadays rather less - and rather less widely - than once it did, for sure, but it has certainly not bitten the dust altogether, let alone been "actively jettisoned"; had either been the case, dyn would have been unable to cite dodecaphonic works by sixteen composers chosen (I imagine) more or less at random without any intention to present them as a comprehensive list - and the fact that most of them span the final three quarters of the past century demonstrates clearly that it survived at least that long, albeit without attaing any kind of primacy.

David Matthews, for example - fine composer as I believe him to be - has not "actively jettisoned it"; he has simply not espoused in in the first place because he has not found it conducive to what he wants to express or the ways in which he wants to do it and I have no doubt that other composers could say the same (of whom one is writing here now).

Your closing gambit about composers having prioritised "rhythm, duration, tempo, timbre, colour, overtone, instrumentation" is both misleadingly disproportionate and unclear; do you mean that composers have only in more recent times (i.e. post-Schoenberg) abandoned dodecaphony in favour of music whose principal thrust is less pitch-related? I would disagree even with that in general terms, but your lack of clarity here is also in the "when" of this, by reason of your observation that Schönberg himself had "contributed nothing" to those six aspects of musical creation (presumably at any time during his creative career), a remark so bizarre as to cast all credibility into oblivion!

I think that this a bit of an exaggeration, though there's no smoke without fire. As I've suggested previously, serialist procedures were and are just one of many paths to compositional salvation available to composers and I think that part of the problem in terms of its reception today is that a handful of its more vociferously dogmatic practitioners in the immediate post-WWII years sought to ascribe to it a kind of primacy that it neither deserved nor ever really even had outside their own circles.

Sure, but it's hard nevertheless to equate the suggestion that Schönberg eschewed - or failed to address - those non-pitch-related aspects of musical creativity with the actualité; also, I think it unlikely that Schoenberg would have felt attracted to seeking to explore total serialism had he survived for, say, a decade or more longer than he did. Do you think, perhaps, that his version of serialism did more to lead to total serialist practice any more than did, say, Webern's or Skalkottas's?

Speaking of Skalkottas, incidentaly, the aforementioned fourth quartet, as well as the first and third quartets, the three piano concertos, the concertos for violin, for double bass, etc. and quite a few others of his works are available to listen to on YouTube.

I don't think it is much of an exaggeration, except that perhaps "serialist" should be replaced by "atonal". Look at what happened under William Glock in the UK, for instance. The neglect faced by composers like Scott, Rubbra, Lloyd, Arnell and many others. Still today I see newspaper critics sneeringly refer to any new tonal composition as "traditionalist" as if that were a bad thing.


It makes more sense if we say "2nd Viennese School" rather than Schoenberg here. Without Schoenberg and Webern (I don't know how influential Skalkottas ever was) you would not have seen the development of total serialism later on. And certainly I don't think Schoenberg would have appreciated total serialism at all, had he lived longer. Obviously Schoenberg (and especially Webern) were concerned with more things than pitch, but I wasn't attempting, in the post quoted, to do any more than refute the idea that serialism per se is unconerned with anything other than pitch.

I'm not for one moment suggesting that no such sidelining occurred; of course it did in certain quarters, perhaps most notably (and regrettably) Darmstadt from the late 40s at least until the early 60s and in Britain during the Glock era as you mention. Mind you, even during the latter of those, Malcolm Arnold seemed to get away with it relatively unscathed and the putting out to grass of Robert Simpson seemed to be a gradual process.

I also wonder whether the customary received opinion of Glock as some kind of new broom sweeping the airwaves clean of composers such as those whom you mention takes too little account of whether some of their works were considered not to be up to scratch rather than merely being thought of as embarrassingly outmoded; the sidelining of Rubbra was undoubtedly unforgivable, but how often did the symphonies of Lloyd, Arnell and some others attain the same level as did his? Not only that, but Lutyens and Searle didn't exactly do brilliantly during that time either, despite most of their works being largely "atonal" - and let's not forget that the comparative pushing into the background of Walton occurred at a time when he was himself having grave doubts about his ability to continue as a composer (the third symphony that Previn sought from him barely progressed beyond a single page) and, of course, he had studied with Searle for a couple of years on and off soon after WWII because he wanted to try to enrich his creativity.

I think that there was also a problem in the perception that it was becoming increasingly difficult for BBC to continue to provide a balanced conspectus even of new British music because there was so much of it and it was becoming ever more diverse; perhaps it was deemed easier in such circumstances, then, to look as though one's chucking out the "old" to replace it with the "new". In any event, the benefit of hindsight suggests that it was a case of the pendulum swinging too far.

OK - as long as it's duly recognised that, whilst Schönberg's 12 note serialist practice was widely (and, I think, understandably) regarded as representing the core of serialism, at least in its early days, other composers experimented with other forms of serialism and, whereas "serialism" and "atonality" were once widely perceived as synonymous - or at the very least interdependent - Berg lost no time in undermining such a view. One might well wonder how Roslavets might have developed had he not come in for Shostakovich treatment at the hands of the state even before Shostakovich himself came under tht spotlight - and whether and to what extent any kind of serialist procudures might have informed his work.

Skalkottas's influence was negligible, albeit for reasons quite other than anything to do with the value of his music.

I agree that Schönberg would not have appreciated total serialism (and Berg would doubtless have appreciated it even less); had either or both survived to encounter in its practice, however, I have no idea whether they might have harboured any thoughts about the fate of the monster that they'd respectvely created and fed.

I understand and agree with your last sentence here; all composers are, after all, interested to greater or lesser deree with matters other than pitch!

One important factor that risks being overlooked is that Schönberg would not only have deprecated total serialism had he lived to hear its products but he'd also have been scornful of the dogmatic attitude of those of the dictators of Darmstadt / Donaueschingen in making out that the past had to be cast asunder and composers who failed to address serialism were of no use; after all, his first overtly 12 note work dated from the 1920s but in the 1930s he wrote his second chamber symphony - in E flat minor - not for him the notion that serialism was the only way. His remark about having developed a system of composing that would ensure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years was obviously one of his jokes, for all that it seems to have been lost on Ronald Stevenson when reviewing Malcolm MacDonald's excellent book on Schönberg for the non-PC titled Books & Bookmen years ago when he wrote that this was a strange idea for an Austrian Jew to have"...

I have question. I've always wondered "why serial"? That is, I can see why composers in the early C20 would have thought composing totally chromatically, but where did the idea of doing it serially come from, after all there were never any tonal, serial compositions.

Over to our apologists for serialism for an answer, I think??

Well, don't anyone look to me to provide one! - but, while wondering to whom else to put that question, I don't think that Berg's Violin Concerto's the only tonal serial work...

The problem with completely atonal music is it lacks any sort of organisation, as Schoenberg realised after composing Erwartung. The idea of using note rows (series, hence serialism) was to impose some sort of system in place of chaos. There are plentry of examples of 12-note rows in tonal music. Shostakovich, I think, and even Alwyn after a fashion.

This is the principle problem I have with serial music. Notes are picked for extra-musical reasons - as though "but it has to be Ab because Ab comes after F#" is some kind of valid aesthetic rationale? 

Flaccid in rhythm, anaemic in orchestration - small wonder this effete intellectual affectation fizzled out, and left no legacy behind it.

But any imaginative composer could, I imagine, adapt good old sonata form. Exposition of a few ideas, followed by a development thereof, followed by a grand recapitulation and even grander coda. It doesn't have to rely upon key structure. Or if that does not make him happy he could write an equally good old set of variations. Or perhaps a passacaglia. These things - non-serial non-tonal sonata form, and non-serial non-tonal variations - seem to me the obvious way forward, and they must have been essayed before - can any one cite examples?

The very first work which Webern wrote under the dubious tutelage of Schoenberg was his "Opus 1, Passacaglia".

There's a more well-known passacaglia in Berg's Wozzeck, which serves as an interlude between the 4th and 5th tableaux of the piece (ie Berg wrote it to cover the mechanics of the scenery change).  This passacaglia is linked the character of the Doctor, and suggests the pedantic nature of a medical theoretician in the use of this ancient musical form.

Also, one must distinguish between serialism and total serialism. In classical serialism, pitch is organised according to note-rows, their inversion and retrogrades, but everything else is up to the composer's ear. In total serialism, the same principles are applied to rhythm and dynamics. It has been said that the average listener's reaction to rhythm is actually far more fundamental than their reaction to pitch. Therefore: take away tonality, and the result is not necessarily difficult - think of Bach's experiments with chromaticism. But take away a steady beat, and the listener is lost.

I have been told that Schoenberg, when he was first experimenting with serialism, composed a number of waltzes and polkas based on 12-note rows; but I have never heard any of them.

http://www.lerideau.fr/corentin-boissier/7071