![]() | Marcel Duchamp: Nude Descending Staircase |
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Duchamp does more than paint a walking figure; he dissects the image into component motions, allowing us to see the order of them. | 1912 |
45.1 BACKGROUND
SERIALISM is the language which is completely unique to the 20th century. The use of cells in Expressionism was haphazard, and it was difficult to keep all pitches equally important. Schönberg stopped composing for almost ten years while he developed a system which culminated in the creation of the twelve-tone row, or SERIES. The precept of the 12-tone series could not be simpler: each of the 12 chromatic pitches is presented in order, without repetition, until all 12 are used. Once the series is complete, another series may be used.
Schönberg made a conscious decision to avoid traditional Common Practice Period idioms which would suggest tonality, such as melodic or harmonic octaves, major and minor triads, and three or more pitches which sound like scale patterns. He would continue the use of pointillism and klangfarben of Expressionism. Listen to more information about it at Arnold Schönberg's Twelve-Tone Method.
The twelve chromatic pitches can be arranged into almost half a billion combinations, and the compositional unity is achieved through the ORDER OF INTERVALS. All tone rows contain exactly the same pitches, but the intervallic structure of a given tone row is unique and unchanged in all its forms. It is important to understand the 12-tone row is a tool, an abstraction of pitch classes, and is not the music itself. The row simply provides organic unity, generally subliminal in nature, to a piece of music.
Serialism is a much maligned style. Read more about it by clicking here.
If you would like to experience a brilliant, thought-provoking, and really funny presentation, go to Twelve Tones on YouTube. It's a little on the long side, but is well worth the time, and you will think about music differently afterwards.
45.2 COMPOSERS ASSOCIATED WITH SERIALISM
45.3 MUSICAL ELEMENTS
Serialism | Tonality | Vocabulary | Texture | Sonority | Time |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
basically maintains: | |||||
generally modifies: | |||||
completely changes: | x | x | x | x | x |
Serialism is a direct development of Expressionism. From this point on, it becomes irrelevant to organize by the five elements (tonality, vocabulary, texture, sonorities, and time organization) of the Common Practice Period. The break from the past is so complete that comparisons are unproductive.
The two retrograde forms of the row use the ordinal numbers in reverse (12. 11. 10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.) since the intervals are presented in reverse order.
Reading P 0 backwards reveals the retrograde form and is labelled R 0. Reading I 0 backwards reveals the retrograde inversion form and is labelled RI 0. Note that both retrograde forms are identified by their last pitch.
Once you have completed a few matrices on your own, you can have a matrix generated automatically at musictheory.net
Using the generated matrix, check to see if the first 12 pitches are P 0. Go to next page for the answer.
Voice: | I0 | -- | -- | P0 | -- | -- | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Piano: | P0 | P0 | RI0 | I0 | R0 | RI0 | P0 |
In this excerpt (the song is not complete), the rows are chosen for the following reasons:
Also, in measure 12, F# (ordinal "3.") is used in both the voice and piano to complete P 0 and R 0, measure 14 with A (two different ordinals complete P 0 and RI 0), and measure 16 with F - D - C# (ordinals "10.-11.-12." completing P 0 in the voice and P 0 in the piano).
A larger conclusion is that there are three parts to this excerpt:
Invariance is evident only when two row forms use one note to complete each series.
Another way to consider combinatoriality is that the first hexachord of P 0 above contains exactly the same pitches as the second hexachord of I 1, but in a different order.
ASSIGNMENTS:
SUGGESTED LISTENING
ANALYSIS
Isolate the tone rows and locate all the musical elements that are typical, characteristic, or unique to Serialism in the following pieces in Music for Analysis:
SYNTHESIS
Write a Serial piece for two different wind or bowed instruments played by class members but which you do not play; both parts must be written at concert pitch. This must be one page or less and a complete musical thought. Consider the musicality of your work. Play back your work on the computer through MIDI (or better yet, have the two class members perform it for you) to guide you. The final result must be playable.
To prepare this writing assignment properly, use the notation guidelines appendix, located at Basic Principles of Music Notation, Semester IV.
Submit a MIDI file via email in addition to a print-out of the project.
The grading for this project:
45.4 TOTAL SERIALISM
Classical Serialism orders the intervals (pitch events) only, but Schönberg allowed the rows to influence phrasing, and his student Anton Webern also attached register as a function of the row. In the 1940's, Olivier Messiaen began to explore ways to integrate pitch with rhythm, articulations, and register, leading the way to TOTAL SERIALISM.
Total Serialism, also known as INTEGRAL SERIALISM, allows other events to be serialized, such as rhythm, articulations, dynamics, register, or even the row forms themselves. This basically means that the course of a piece is decided pre-compositionally. Total Serialism provides a process which imposes an organic unity to all aspects of a piece of music. If performed correctly, all performances should sound exactly alike (which in reality is highly unlikely).
Although Total Serialism never really became popular, its extreme precision led logically into electronic music and music written by computers, and gave composers new ideas about relationships of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and dynamics. Pierre Boulez (a student of Messiaen's) and Milton Babbitt developed Total Serialism separately, and created enormously complicated mathematical systems to generate matrices for the integration of events. A simpler path will be followed as musical elements are examined; this will describe one possibility, out of many, of how music can be generated through Total Serialism.
45.5 COMPOSERS ASSOCIATED WITH TOTAL SERIALISM
45.6 MUSICAL ELEMENTS OF TOTAL SERIALISM
The following musical elements describe simply one way a piece of Total Serialism may be created. Students may find it useful to study the sample project at the end of this chapter to see how all these elements might be put together to create a piece of Total Serialism.
Replace the pitches with cardinal numbers only.
P0: | 0 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 11 | 4 | 10 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 6 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Indicates: | P 0 | P 1 | P 3 | P 9 | P 2 | P 11 | P 4 | P 10 | P 7 | P 8 | P 5 | P 6 |
ASSIGNMENTS:
SUGGESTED LISTENING
ANALYSIS
SYNTHESIS
Write an example of Total Serialism for two melody/mallet percussion instruments, one page or less, which is a complete musical thought.
To prepare this writing assignment properly, use the notation guidelines appendix, located at Basic Principles of Music Notation, Semester IV.
Submit a MIDI file via email in addition to a print-out of the project. Include the following:
The grading for this project:
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