Musical Sudoku: Serialism's History and Techniques 

Here is what hte composer Robert Simpson said about the unnaturalness of atoniality: "The human sense of tonality has many times been modified, but cannot be abolished. To attempt to abolish it is to cease to be comprehensive, to be narrowly exclusive. If I appreciate the kind of expression Schoenberg achieved (I hap-pen to dislike it), my sense of tonality, though it may be deliberately anaesthetized for the time being, is by no means abolished…. I cannot feel that such music is comprehensive. It is certainly concentrated, but that alone will not make it “symphonic”; if you lose a leg, you have to concentrate in order to move about without it, but however hard you concentrate, you cannot escape the conclusion that it is better to have two legs…. With one leg you can hop about, but will find it difficult to invent new dance steps that have more than the temporary appeal of oddity."

no kidding. they missed the entire 20th century in a way visual artists did not.

And yet, Jazz learns from Stravinsky and Schoenberg colour and method that they have yet to find elsewhere. (Bitonality, Serialism just to name a few) And for what matters, European musician has been more open to the sound world in the 20th (still until now) century than they have ever been. You are making a hefty claim, a hefty generalisation.

@@edwardgivenscomposer Oh ok. I assume you focus on the latter.

not at all. citation on who exactly in the early jazz world "learned" from Schoenberg? If you say Gershwin I'll laugh - there's a big difference between taking a few lessons and actually affecting someone's style or output. (I do remember Monk mentioning Ravel as an influence.) or at least name one serial or bitonal Jazz piece.

those theories already exist independently, why do other systems need them?

Luigi Dallapiccola's music is a wonderful antidote to this-Berg, too, but he plays faster and looser with row forms. The ideological roots of those who were attracted to serialism were typically anti-Romantic, thus skeptical (at best) of melody and lyricism.

I did a massive livestream bookshelf tour earlier this year when I was packing up to move apartments.

The title engages in a bit of proto-clickbait, but having read it, I can very much understand how the editor got that impression. Babbitt favored music as a theoretical, research-fueled exercise, which I respect, but disagree with all the same.

No my friend, half steps are, as the name, half a note and if you look to a piano half steps are the distance between a white note and a black one and viceversa (except for E going to F and B going do C) they are the smallest interval in modern music. So if you count all these half steps from D to Ab you would find D, Eb, E, F, Gb, G and Ab which gives us 6 half steps ;)

Hah! I think that polar distinction applies to pretty well EVERY musical trend.

@@fictionmusicproductions Yes, I knew exactly how JS Bach felt about his kids.

I want to say that quote was in a book by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross in his 2007 book _The Rest is Noise,_ which I do not possess, but read through when I borrowed it from my composition professor several years ago.

Boulez is now in the request pool!

@@ClassicalNerd I thought his name was pronounced boo-lay, not boo-lez

@@robertridley9279 Considering the funkiness of French pronunciation rules, that _would_ make sense ... but I based this pronunciation off of people who actually had met him, who have universally pronounced the Z.

It's already 8th in the queue-check it out at lentovivace.com/requestqueue.html

Did you watch it later

There is nothing that has no place in music. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. And saying serialism is all cerebral mathemathics is completely ignorant. Pieces like pli selon pli by Boulez and basically any stockhausen piece are full of expressivity and showcase emotions that can't be expressed in standard tonal music.

Lets be honest right here (my opinion, still...) Why would you play music on piano or on any instrument in general if its not to be heard and liked by the audience? whats the point in creating music nobody and I mean literally nobody, not even the composer itself, wants to listen too.

@@johannesf1373 I have never encountered such a situation and don't believe that is ever the case. What music are you referring to that "nobody not even the composer likes"? Surely that isn't the case for serial music, neither for audiece nor for the composer. There may be better and worse pieces, but that has nothing to do with the serial technique. And there is always music that is more easily consumable and there is music that can be quite exhausting listening to, both of which are totally accetable forms of listening experiences.

@@MSchultheis This composing style is the flagship of not being made because it sounds good. Some Composers or some pieces sounded good for sure, but this technique is literally made because it doesn't care if its harmonic if anyone likes it. There are so many pieces that were hated because the human mind cant process all this terrible notes... xd

@@johannesf1373 If you argue with what "sounds good", then you have to first define that, which is impossible. You can answer that for yourself of course, but even that changes during your life time. "Sounds good" is not a criteria that has any meaninful value in judging music, because there is no such thing as universal understanding of what sounds good. The composer might have a very diffrent opinion than you do, and so might I. So, serial music is not made to sound good in a way YOU define sounding good, that may be true. The idea in the 20th century was to widen the spectrum of what are acceptable sounds to be used in music. Today we are even much much farther in this regard, so much of todays contemporary classical music works with complex sounds that barely remind their instrumental origin. Things change and one can adapt to this, there is no right or wrong. It's like using a palette with 6millions colours instead of just 16. And serialism is way of making these new colours available. If you want to hear music thats fit in your more conventional expectation of music, than these palette is not what youre looking for. I was not always so open minded, but the more I got used to it, the more interesting I found it and the more limited the idea of using only sounds that were described "good" centuries ago. This composing style offered so much new possibilities to break out from that postromantic idiom of those days where everything had been said. And this idea today still is an incredibly effective tool for composition, with very different possible outcomes! Stay open-minded!

@@MSchultheis i actually dont wanna argue because you trained yourself into liking it which is not the same what I mean.. just for e.g. you can even train yourself to like pain. What I mean is that without training you like it. And obviously not everybody has the same taste which is completely fine but there are even scientific studies that in many seriel composition because of the tone sequence your brain cant process you are not even able to produce the happy or "liking" hormones. And I´m not saying that every piece is bad or that I personally dislike every piece. But why would you stick to a composing style in which many cases the outcome is very hard to listen to and actually many (besides you who "trained" to like it" ) cant really enjoy that. U can for sure compose some pieces that sound good, written with the "serial style" just without having to stick to any style because you are free and you can try anything you want. This simple "sticking to the method" logic makes no sense for me when you cna create something beautiful instead of making something which u didn't even really compose because its just a coincidence ton sequence...

I've heard the same! He was apparently a fantastic jazz pianist.

More episodes are forthcoming! I've made a lot of progress and right now I'm basically trying to figure out the best way of relaying what I've been up to in a succinct manner.

I don't have any personal disdain towards Mozart; there have just been a lot of requests! Mozart was already in the pool of requests, and your request [ at lentovivace.com/requestqueue.html ] has been noted.

Mozart was "of the devil".

I have a whole Wuorinen video in the works right now! Just waiting on a few things to come in on ILL for B-roll purposes. (I don't get into the details of that particular piece-he wrote over 200, after all!-but it should give some insight into his serial thought processes.)

All info in the description.

By bad, Ty

Yes: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6BfQtAAatq4.html

This is basically like madness to me...

because it creates music completely different in feel to tonal music, it's like asking Kandinsky to keep painting pretty landscapes.

While the "official music" of communist regimes was Socialist Realism, which was the opposite of serialism, what I'm talking about are the attitudes of Western composers writ large in the serial heyday. It's communism in the sense of a model of social conformity. Communism is a very collectivist mentality, and it's a profound irony of music history that composers in a supposedly anti-communist West followed in such lock-step with the serial establishment. Many composers in this era were not accepted by academic (or otherwise "serious") circles if they weren't serialists (or not serial _enough,_ as was often Boulez's complaint). George Rochberg is a good example of someone who went against this serialist collectivism and paid the price in the press and in terms of his overall reputation.