Serialism

In the music theory of European classical music serialism is a set of methods for composing and analyzing works of music based on structuring those works around the parameterization of parts of music: that is, ordering pitch, dynamics, instrumentation, rhythm, and on occasion other elements into a row or series in which each gradation is assigned a numerical value within that series. In its strict definition each pitch, dynamic, colour or rhythmic element should only be used in its order in the series and used only once until the series repeats. The terms total serialism, integral serialism, and multiple serialism describe music which is serial in several parameters.

Basic definition

Serialism is most specifically defined as the structural principle according to which a recurring series of ordered elements (normally a set - or 'row' - of pitches or 'pitch classes') which are used in order, or manipulated in particular ways, to give a piece unity. Serialism is often broadly applied to all music written in the what Arnold Schoenberg called "The Method of Composing with Twelve Tones related only to one another", or dodecaphony, and methods which evolved from his methods. It is sometimes used more specifically to apply only to music where at least one other element other than pitch is subjected to being treated as a row or series. The term Schoenbergian serialism is sometimes used to make the same distinction between use of pitch series only, particularly if their is an adherence to post-Romantic textures, harmonic procedures, voice-leading and other audible elements of 19th century music. In such usages post-Webernian serialism will be used to denote works which extend serial techniques to other elements of music. Another term used to make the distinction is 12 tone serialism.

Related Topics:
Set - Row - Pitches - Pitch classes - Arnold Schoenberg - Dodecaphony

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Serialism has been described by its practioners as an extension and formalisation of earlier methods of 'cellular' thematic and motivic unification in classical and romantic music. This extension and formalisation is seen as having been motivated by the intensifying drive towards chromatic saturation and the resulting need to unify without using tonality.

Related Topics:
Classical - Romantic - Chromatic - Tonality

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Most serial music is deliberately structured as such. A row may be assembled 'pre-compositionally' (perhaps to embody particular intervallic or symmetrical properties), or it may be derived from a spontaneously invented thematic or motivic idea. Composing a serial work involves continually re-rhythmicising the various reappearances of the row in its Original, Retrograde, Inverted and Retrograde-Inverted forms as these are distributed through the various elements of the texture and employed to create accompaniments and subordinate parts as well as the main themes; each of these forms may also be transposed to begin on any note of the chromatic scale.

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This row or series is used in one form as the "basic set", which constitutes the "center" of gravity for the piece. Each row or series is supposed to have three other forms: retrograde, or the basic set backwards, inverted, or the basic set "upside down" and retrograde-inverted, which is the basic set upside down and backwards. The basic set is usually required to have certain properties, and may have additional restrictions, such as the requirement that it use each interval only once. The most common requirement is that first half and second half of the row not be inversions of each other. The series in itself may be regarded as pre-compositional material: in the process of composition it is manipulated by various means to produce musical material.

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