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Dodecaphonic works you admire and adore

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Author Topic: Dodecaphonic works you admire and adore  (Read 6441 times)
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ahinton
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« Reply #45 on: February 04, 2014, 10:59:59 am »

Serial composition was an intellectual affectation which quickly fizzled out, and which has had no influence whatsoever on the music of the C20th.

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

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.
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.

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