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In music, serialism is a method of
composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
's
twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
, though some of his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as a form of
post-tonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
thinking. Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the
chromatic scale The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce the ...
, forming a
row Row or ROW may refer to: Exercise *Rowing, or a form of aquatic movement using oars *Row (weight-lifting), a form of weight-lifting exercise Math *Row vector, a 1 × ''n'' matrix in linear algebra. *Row (database), a single, implicitly structured ...
or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's
melody A melody (from Greek language, Greek μελῳδία, ''melōidía'', "singing, chanting"), also tune, voice or line, is a Linearity#Music, linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most liter ...
,
harmony In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...
, structural progressions, and
variations Variation or Variations may refer to: Science and mathematics * Variation (astronomy), any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon * Genetic variation, the difference in DNA among individuals ...
. Other types of serialism also work with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series, and extend the technique to other musical dimensions (often called "
parameters A parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, situation, etc.). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when ...
"), such as
duration Duration may refer to: * The amount of time elapsed between two events * Duration (music) – an amount of time or a particular time interval, often cited as one of the fundamental aspects of music * Duration (philosophy) – a theory of time and ...
, dynamics, and
timbre In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...
. The idea of serialism is also applied in various ways in the
visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...
,
design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...
, and
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
, and the musical concept has also been adapted in literature. Integral serialism or total serialism is the use of series for aspects such as duration, dynamics, and register as well as pitch. Other terms, used especially in Europe to distinguish post-World War II serial music from twelve-tone music and its American extensions, are general serialism and multiple serialism. Composers such as Arnold Schoenberg,
Anton Webern Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stea ...
,
Alban Berg Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
,
Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
,
Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mont ...
,
Luigi Nono Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...
,
Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...
,
Elisabeth Lutyens Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE (9 July 190614 April 1983) was an English composer. Early life and education Elisabeth Lutyens was born in London on 9 July 1906. She was one of the five children of Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1874–1964), a me ...
,
Henri Pousseur Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist. Biography Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to ...
,
Charles Wuorinen Charles Peter Wuorinen (; June 9, 1938 – March 11, 2020) was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He performed his works and other 20th-century music as pianist and conductor. He composed more than ...
and
Jean Barraqué Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (17 January 192817 August 1973) was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output. Life Barraqué was born in Puteaux, Hauts-de-Seine. In 1931 ...
used serial techniques of one sort or another in most of their music. Other composers such as
Tadeusz Baird Tadeusz Baird (26 July 19282 September 1981) was a Polish composer. Biography Baird was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, in Poland. His father Edward was Scottish, while his mother Maria (née Popov) was Russian. In 1944 at the age of 16 he was depo ...
,
Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...
,
Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...
,
Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
,
John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
,
Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
,
Ernst Krenek Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...
,
György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" ...
,
Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...
,
Arvo Pärt Arvo Pärt (; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in pa ...
,
Walter Piston Walter Hamor Piston, Jr. (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music, music theorist, and professor of music at Harvard University. Life Piston was born in Rockland, Maine at 15 Ocean Street to Walter Ha ...
,
Ned Rorem Ned Rorem (October 23, 1923 – November 18, 2022) was an American composer of contemporary classical music and writer. Best known for his art songs, which number over 500, Rorem was the leading American of his time writing in the genre. Althou ...
,
Alfred Schnittke Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (russian: Альфре́д Га́рриевич Шни́тке, link=no, Alfred Garriyevich Shnitke; 24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Russian composer of Jewish-German descent. Among the most performed and re ...
,
Ruth Crawford Seeger Ruth Crawford Seeger (born Ruth Porter Crawford; July 3, 1901 – November 18, 1953) was an American composer and folk music specialist. Her music was a prominent exponent of the emerging modernist aesthetic and she became a central member of a g ...
,
Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throug ...
, and
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
used serialism only in some of their compositions or only in some sections of pieces, as did some
jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
composers, such as
Bill Evans William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who worked primarily as the leader of his trio. His use of impressionist harmony, interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block ch ...
,
Yusef Lateef Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston; October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and prominent figure among the Ahmadiyya Community in America. Although Lateef's main instruments ...
, and Bill Smith.


Basic definitions

Serialism is a method, "highly specialized technique", or "way" of
composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...
. It may also be considered "a philosophy of life (''
Weltanschauung A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural p ...
''), a way of relating the human mind to the world and creating a completeness when dealing with a subject". Serialism is not by itself a system of composition or a style. Neither is pitch serialism necessarily incompatible with tonality, though it is most often used as a means of composing
atonal music Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a s ...
. "Serial music" is a problematic term because it is used differently in different languages and especially because, shortly after its coinage in French, it underwent essential alterations during its transmission to German. The term's use in connection with music was first introduced in French by
René Leibowitz René Leibowitz (; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after ...
in 1947, and immediately afterward by
Humphrey Searle Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoen ...
in English, as an alternative translation of the German (
twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
) or (row music); it was independently introduced by Stockhausen and
Herbert Eimert Herbert Eimert (8 April 1897 – 15 December 1972) was a German music theorist, musicologist, journalist, music critic, editor, radio producer, and composer. Education Herbert Eimert was born in Bad Kreuznach. He studied music theory and compo ...
into German in 1955 as , with a different meaning, but also translated as "serial music".


Twelve-tone serialism

Serialism of the first type is most specifically defined as a structural principle according to which a recurring series of ordered elements (normally a
set Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...
—or
row Row or ROW may refer to: Exercise *Rowing, or a form of aquatic movement using oars *Row (weight-lifting), a form of weight-lifting exercise Math *Row vector, a 1 × ''n'' matrix in linear algebra. *Row (database), a single, implicitly structured ...
—of pitches or
pitch class In music, a pitch class (p.c. or pc) is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart; for example, the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves. "The pitch class C stands for all possible Cs, in whatever octave positio ...
es) is used in order or manipulated in particular ways to give a piece unity. "Serial" is often broadly used to describe all music written in what Schoenberg called "The Method of Composing with Twelve Notes related only to one another", or
dodecaphony The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
, and methods that evolved from his methods. It is sometimes used more specifically to apply only to music in which at least one element other than pitch is treated as a row or series. Such methods are often called ''post-Webernian serialism''. Other terms used to make the distinction are ''twelve-note serialism'' for the former and ''integral serialism'' for the latter. A row may be assembled pre-compositionally (perhaps to embody particular intervallic or symmetrical properties), or derived from a spontaneously invented thematic or motivic idea. The row's structure does not in itself define the structure of a composition, which requires development of a comprehensive strategy. The choice of strategy often depends on the relationships contained in a row class, and rows may be constructed with an eye to producing the relationships needed to form desired strategies. The basic set may have additional restrictions, such as the requirement that it use each interval only once.


Non-twelve-tone serialism

"The series is not an order of succession, but indeed a hierarchy—which may be independent of this order of succession". Rules of analysis derived from twelve-tone theory do not apply to serialism of the second type: "in particular the ideas, one, that the series is an intervallic sequence, and two, that the rules are consistent". For example, Stockhausen's early serial works, such as ''
Kreuzspiel (Crossplay) is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen written for oboe, bass clarinet, piano and four percussionists in 1951 (it was later revised for just three percussionists, along with other changes). It is assigned the number 1/7 in the comp ...
'' and '' Formel'', "advance in unit sections within which a preordained set of pitches is repeatedly reconfigured ... The composer's model for the distributive serial process corresponds to a development of the Zwölftonspiel of Josef Matthias Hauer". Goeyvaerts's ''Nummer 4''
provides a classic illustration of the distributive function of seriality: 4 times an equal number of elements of equal duration within an equal global time is distributed in the most equable way, unequally with regard to one another, over the temporal space: from the greatest possible coïncidence to the greatest possible dispersion. This provides an exemplary demonstration of that logical principle of seriality: ''every situation must occur once and only once''.
Henri Pousseur Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist. Biography Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to ...
, after initially working with twelve-tone technique in works like ''Sept Versets'' (1950) and ''Trois Chants sacrés'' (1951),
evolved away from this bond in ''Symphonies pour quinze Solistes'' 954–55and in the ''Quintette'' 'à la mémoire d’Anton Webern'', 1955 and from around the time of ''Impromptu''
955 Year 955 (Roman numerals, CMLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * August 10 – Battle of Lechfeld (955), Battle of Lechfeld: King Otto I, H ...
encounters whole new dimensions of application and new functions.
The twelve-tone series loses its imperative function as a prohibiting, regulating, and patterning authority; its working-out is abandoned through its own constant-frequent presence: all 66 intervallic relations among the 12 pitches being virtually present. Prohibited intervals, like the octave, and prohibited successional relations, such as premature note repetitions, frequently occur, although obscured in the dense contexture. The number twelve no longer plays any governing, defining rôle; the pitch constellations no longer hold to the limitation determined by their formation. The dodecaphonic series loses its significance as a concrete model of shape (or a well-defined collection of concrete shapes) is played out. And the chromatic total remains active only, and provisionally, as a general reference.
In the 1960s Pousseur took this a step further, applying a consistent set of predefined transformations to preexisting music. One example is the large orchestral work ''Couleurs croisées'' (''Crossed Colours'', 1967), which performs these transformations on the protest song "
We Shall Overcome "We Shall Overcome" is a gospel song which became a protest song and a key anthem of the American civil rights movement. The song is most commonly attributed as being lyrically descended from "I'll Overcome Some Day", a hymn by Charles Albert Ti ...
", creating a succession of different situations that are sometimes chromatic and dissonant and sometimes diatonic and consonant. In his opera '' Votre Faust'' (''Your Faust'', 1960–68) Pousseur used many quotations, themselves arranged into a "scale" for serial treatment. This "generalised" serialism (in the strongest possible sense) aims not to exclude any musical phenomena, no matter how heterogeneous, in order "to control the effects of tonal determinism, dialectize its causal functions, and overcome any academic prohibitions, especially the fixing of an anti-grammar meant to replace some previous one". At about the same time, Stockhausen began using serial methods to integrate a variety of musical sources from recorded examples of folk and traditional music from around the world in his electronic composition ''
Telemusik ''Telemusik'' is an electronic composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is number 20 in his catalog of works. History Through his composition student, Makoto Shinohara, Stockhausen was invited by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation NHK to visit ...
'' (1966), and from
national anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European n ...
s in ''
Hymnen ''Hymnen'' (German for " Anthems") is an electronic and concrete work, with optional live performers, by Karlheinz Stockhausen, composed in 1966–67, and elaborated in 1969. In the composer's catalog of works, it is No. 22. The extended work is ...
'' (1966–67). He extended this serial "polyphony of styles" in a series of "process-plan" works in the late 1960s, as well as later in portions of ''
Licht file:Kürten - Waldfriedhof - Stockhausen 01 ies.jpg, 275px, Karlheinz Stockhausens grave with the score to LICHT . ''Licht'' (Light), subtitled "Die sieben Tage der Woche" (The Seven Days of the Week), is a cycle of seven operas composed by Kar ...
'', the cycle of seven operas he composed between 1977 and 2003.


History of serial music


Before World War II

In the late 19th and early 20th century, composers began to struggle against the ordered system of chords and intervals known as "functional
tonality Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...
". Composers such as Debussy and Strauss found ways to stretch the limits of the tonal system to accommodate their ideas. After a brief period of free atonality, Schoenberg and others began exploring tone rows, in which an ordering of the 12 pitches of the equal-tempered chromatic scale is used as the source material of a composition. This ordered set, often called a row, allowed for new forms of expression and (unlike free atonality) the expansion of underlying structural organizing principles without recourse to common practice harmony. Twelve-tone serialism first appeared in the 1920s, with antecedents predating that decade (instances of 12-note passages occur in Liszt's ''
Faust Symphony ''A Faust Symphony in three character pictures'' (german: Eine Faust-Symphonie in drei Charakterbildern), S.108, or simply the "''Faust Symphony''", is a choral symphony written by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Go ...
'' and in Bach.) Schoenberg was the composer most decisively involved in devising and demonstrating the fundamentals of twelve-tone serialism, though it is clear it is not the work of just one musician. In Schoenberg’s own words, his goal of was to show constraint in composition. Consequently, some reviewers have jumped to the conclusion that serialism acted as a predetermined method of composing to avoid the subjectivity and ego of a composer in favour of calculated measure and proportion.


After World War II

Along with
John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
's
indeterminate music Indeterminacy is a composing approach in which some aspects of a musical work are left open to chance or to the interpreter's free choice. John Cage, a pioneer of indeterminacy, defined it as "the ability of a piece to be performed in substantially ...
(music composed with the use of chance operations) and
Werner Meyer-Eppler Werner Meyer-Eppler (30 April 1913 – 8 July 1960), was a Belgian-born German physicist, experimental acoustician, phoneticist and information theorist. Meyer-Eppler was born in Antwerp. He studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry, fir ...
's
aleatoricism Aleatoricism or aleatorism, the noun associated with the adjectival aleatory and aleatoric, is a term popularised by the musical composer Pierre Boulez, but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti, for compositions resulting from "action ...
, serialism was enormously influential in postwar music. Theorists such as
Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...
and
George Perle George Perle (6 May 1915 – 23 January 2009) was an American composer and music theorist. As a composer, his music was largely atonal, using methods similar to the twelve-tone technique of the Second Viennese School. This serialist style, an ...
codified serial systems, leading to a mode of composition called "total serialism", in which every aspect of a piece, not just pitch, is serially constructed. Perle's 1962 text ''Serial Composition and Atonality'' became a standard work on the origins of serial composition in the music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. The serialization of
rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recu ...
, dynamics, and other elements of music was partly fostered by the work of Olivier Messiaen and his analysis students, including
Karel Goeyvaerts Karel August Goeyvaerts (8 June 1923 – 3 February 1993) was a Belgian composer. Life Goeyvaerts was born in Antwerp, where he studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, Royal Flemish Music Conservatory; he later studied musical composition, ...
and Boulez, in postwar
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. Messiaen first used a chromatic rhythm scale in his '' Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus'' (1944), but he did not employ a rhythmic series until 1946–48, in the seventh movement, "Turangalîla II", of his ''
Turangalîla-Symphonie The ''Turangalîla-Symphonie'' is the only symphony by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). It was written for an orchestra of large forces from 1946 to 1948 on a commission by Serge Koussevitzky in his wife's memory for the Boston Symphony Orches ...
''. The first examples of such integral serialism are Babbitt's ''Three Compositions for Piano'' (1947), ''
Composition for Four Instruments ''Composition for Four Instruments'' (1948) is an early serial music composition written by American composer Milton Babbitt. It is Babbitt's first published ensemble work, following shortly after his ''Three Compositions for Piano'' (1947). In ...
'' (1948), and ''
Composition for Twelve Instruments ''Composition for Twelve Instruments'' (1948, rev. 1954) is a Serialism, serial music composition written by American composer Milton Babbitt for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, harp, celesta, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. I ...
'' (1948). He worked independently of the Europeans. Several of the composers associated with Darmstadt, notably Stockhausen, Goeyvaerts, and Pousseur, developed a form of serialism that initially rejected the recurring rows characteristic of twelve-tone technique in order to eradicate any lingering traces of thematicism. Instead of a recurring, referential row, "each musical component is subjected to control by a series of numerical proportions". In Europe, some serial and non-serial music of the early 1950s emphasized the determination of all parameters for each note independently, often resulting in widely spaced, isolated "points" of sound, an effect called first in German " punktuelle Musik" ("pointist" or "punctual music"), then in French "musique ponctuelle", but quickly confused with "
pointillistic Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...
" (German "pointillistische", French "pointilliste"), the term associated with the densely packed dots in
Seurat Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as Divisionism, chromoluminarism and pointillism and used Conté, conté crayon for drawings on pa ...
's paintings, even though the concept was unrelated. Pieces were structured by closed sets of proportions, a method closely related to certain works from the
de Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body o ...
and
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...
movements in design and architecture some writers called " serial art", specifically the paintings of
Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...
,
Theo van Doesburg Theo van Doesburg (, 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He was married to artist, pianist and choreographer Nelly ...
, Bart van Leck, Georg van Tongerloo, Richard Paul Lohse, and
Burgoyne Diller Burgoyne A. Diller (January 13, 1906 – January 30, 1965) was an American abstract painter. Many of his best-known works are characterized by orthogonal geometric forms that reflect his strong interest in the De Stijl movement and the work of ...
, who had sought to "avoid repetition and symmetry on all structural levels and working with a limited number of elements". Stockhausen described the final synthesis in this manner:
So serial thinking is something that's come into our consciousness and will be there forever: it's relativity and nothing else. It just says: Use all the components of any given number of elements, don't leave out individual elements, use them all with equal importance and try to find an equidistant scale so that certain steps are no larger than others. It's a spiritual and democratic attitude toward the world. The stars are organized in a serial way. Whenever you look at a certain star sign you find a limited number of elements with different intervals. If we more thoroughly studied the distances and proportions of the stars we'd probably find certain relationships of multiples based on some logarithmic scale or whatever the scale may be.
Stravinsky's adoption of twelve-tone serial techniques shows the level of influence serialism had after the Second World War. Previously Stravinsky had used series of notes without rhythmic or harmonic implications. Because many of the basic techniques of serial composition have analogs in traditional counterpoint, uses of
inversion Inversion or inversions may refer to: Arts * , a French gay magazine (1924/1925) * ''Inversion'' (artwork), a 2005 temporary sculpture in Houston, Texas * Inversion (music), a term with various meanings in music theory and musical set theory * ...
, retrograde, and
retrograde inversion Retrograde inversion is a musical term that literally means "backwards and upside down": "The inverse of the series is sounded in reverse order." Retrograde reverses the order of the motif's pitches: what was the first pitch becomes the last, and ...
from before the war do not necessarily indicate Stravinsky was adopting Schoenbergian techniques. But after meeting
Robert Craft Robert Lawson Craft (October 20, 1923 – November 10, 2015) was an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate professional relationship with Igor Stravinsky, on which Craft drew in producing numerous recordings and books. ...
and other younger composers, Stravinsky began to study Schoenberg's music, as well as that of Webern and later composers, and to adapt their techniques in his work, using, for example, serial techniques applied to fewer than twelve notes. During the 1950s he used procedures related to Messiaen, Webern and Berg. While it is inaccurate to call them all "serial" in the strict sense, all his major works of the period have clear serialist elements. During this period, the concept of serialism influenced not only new compositions but also scholarly analysis of the classical masters. Adding to their professional tools of
sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle ...
and
tonality Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...
, scholars began to analyze previous works in the light of serial techniques; for example, they found the use of row technique in previous composers going back to Mozart and Beethoven. In particular, the orchestral outburst that introduces the
development section Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ...
halfway through the last movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 is a tone row that Mozart punctuates in a very modern and violent way that Michael Steinberg called "rude octaves and frozen silences".
Ruth Crawford Seeger Ruth Crawford Seeger (born Ruth Porter Crawford; July 3, 1901 – November 18, 1953) was an American composer and folk music specialist. Her music was a prominent exponent of the emerging modernist aesthetic and she became a central member of a g ...
extended serial control to parameters other than pitch and to formal planning as early as 1930–33 in a fashion that goes beyond Webern but was less thoroughgoing than the later practices of Babbitt and European postwar composers.
Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
's 1906 song "The Cage" begins with piano chords presented in incrementally decreasing durations, an early example of an overtly arithmetic duration series independent of meter (like Nono's six-element row shown above), and in that sense a precursor to Messiaen’s style of integral serialism. The idea of organizing pitch and rhythm according to similar or related principles is also suggested by both
Henry Cowell Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 202 ...
's ''New Musical Resources'' (1930) and the work of
Joseph Schillinger Joseph Moiseyevich Schillinger (Russian: Иосиф Моисеевич Шиллингер, (other sources: ) – 23 March 1943) was a composer, music theorist, and composition teacher who originated the Schillinger System of Musical Composition ...
.


Reactions to serialism

Some music theorists have criticized serialism on the basis that its compositional strategies are often incompatible with the way the human mind processes a piece of music.
Nicolas Ruwet Nicolas Ruwet (December 31, 1932 – November 15, 2001) was a linguist, literary critic and musical analyst. He was involved with the development of generative grammar.
(1959) was one of the first to criticise serialism by a comparison with linguistic structures, citing theoretical claims by Boulez and Pousseur, taking as specific examples bars from Stockhausen's '' Klavierstücke I & II'', and calling for a general reexamination of Webern's music. Ruwet specifically names three works as exempt from his criticism: Stockhausen's ''
Zeitmaße ''Zeitmaße'' (; German for "Time Measures") is a chamber-music work for five woodwinds (flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and bassoon) composed in 1955–1956 by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; it is Number 5 in the composer's catalog. ...
'' and ''
Gruppen ''Gruppen'' (german: Groups) for three orchestras (1955–57) is amongst the best-known compositions of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and is Work Number 6 in the composer's catalog of works. ''Gruppen'' is "a landmark in 20th-century m ...
'', and Boulez's ''
Le marteau sans maître ''Le Marteau sans maître'' (; The Hammer without a Master) is a chamber cantata by French composer Pierre Boulez. The work, which received its premiere in 1955, sets surrealist poetry by René Char for contralto and six instrumentalists. It i ...
''. In response, Pousseur questioned Ruwet's equivalence between phonemes and notes. He also suggested that, if analysis of ''Le marteau sans maître'' and ''Zeitmaße'', "performed with sufficient insight", were to be made from the point of view of
wave theory In historical linguistics, the wave model or wave theory (German ''Wellentheorie'') is a model of language change in which a new language feature (innovation) or a new combination of language features spreads from its region of origin, affecting ...
—taking into account the dynamic interaction of the different component phenomena, which creates "waves" that interact in a sort of
frequency modulation Frequency modulation (FM) is the encoding of information in a carrier wave by varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. The technology is used in telecommunications, radio broadcasting, signal processing, and Run-length limited#FM: .280. ...
—the analysis "would accurately reflect the realities of perception". This was because these composers had long since acknowledged the lack of differentiation found in punctual music and, becoming increasingly aware of the laws of perception and complying better with them, "paved the way to a more effective kind of musical communication, without in the least abandoning the emancipation that they had been allowed to achieve by this 'zero state' that was punctual music". One way this was achieved was by developing the concept of "groups", which allows structural relationships to be defined not only between individual notes but also at higher levels, up to the overall form of a piece. This is "a structural method par excellence", and a sufficiently simple conception that it remains easily perceptible. Pousseur also points out that serial composers were the first to recognize and attempt to move beyond the lack of differentiation within certain pointillist works. Pousseur later followed up on his own suggestion by developing his idea of "wave" analysis and applying it to Stockhausen's ''Zeitmaße'' in two essays. Later writers have continued both lines of reasoning.
Fred Lerdahl Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and cogn ...
, for example, in his essay " Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems", argues that serialism's perceptual opacity ensures its aesthetic inferiority. Lerdahl has in turn been criticized for excluding "the possibility of other, non-hierarchical methods of achieving musical coherence," and for concentrating on the audibility of tone rows, and the portion of his essay focusing on Boulez's "multiplication" technique (exemplified in three movements of ''Le Marteau sans maître'') has been challenged on perceptual grounds by Stephen Heinemann and Ulrich Mosch. Ruwet's critique has also been criticised for making "the fatal mistake of equating visual presentation (a score) with auditive presentation (the music as heard)". In all these reactions discussed above, the "information extracted", "perceptual opacity", "auditive presentation" (and constraints thereof) pertain to what defines serialism, namely use of a series. And since Schoenberg remarked, "in the later part of a work, when the set
eries The Erie people (also Eriechronon, Riquéronon, Erielhonan, Eriez, Nation du Chat) were Indigenous people historically living on the south shore of Lake Erie. An Iroquoian group, they lived in what is now western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania ...
had already become familiar to the ear", it has been assumed that serial composers expect their series to be aurally perceived. This principle even became the premise of empirical investigation in the guise of "probe-tone" experiments testing listeners' familiarity with a row after exposure to its various forms (as would occur in a 12-tone work). In other words the supposition in critiques of serialism has been that, if a composition is so intricately structured by and around a series, that series should ultimately be clearly perceived or that a listener ought to become aware of its presence or importance. Babbitt denied this: Seemingly in accord with Babbitt's statement, but ranging over such issues as perception, aesthetic value, and the "poietic fallacy", Walter Horn offers a more extensive explanation of the serialism (and atonality) controversy. Within the community of modern music, exactly what constituted serialism was also a matter of debate. The conventional English usage is that the word "serial" applies to all twelve-tone music, which is a subset of serial music, and it is this usage that is generally intended in reference works. Nevertheless, a large body of music exists that is called "serial" but does not employ note-rows at all, let alone twelve-tone technique, e.g., Stockhausen's ''Klavierstücke I–IV'' (which use permuted sets), his ''
Stimmung ''Stimmung'', for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work n ...
'' (with pitches from the
overtone series A harmonic series (also overtone series) is the sequence of harmonics, musical tones, or pure tones whose frequency is an integer multiple of a ''fundamental frequency''. Pitched musical instruments are often based on an acoustic resonator su ...
, which is also used as the model for the rhythms), and Pousseur's ''
Scambi ''Scambi'' (Exchanges) is an electronic music composition by the Belgian composer Henri Pousseur, realized in 1957 at the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano. History ''Scambi'' is Pousseur's second electronic-music work, following ''Seis ...
'' (where the permuted sounds are made exclusively from filtered
white noise In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines, ...
). When serialism is not limited to twelve-tone techniques, a contributing problem is that the word "serial" is seldom if ever defined. In many published analyses of individual pieces the term is used while actual meaning is skated around.


Theory of twelve-tone serial music

Due to Babbitt's work, in the mid-20th century serialist thought became rooted in set theory and began to use a quasi-mathematical vocabulary for the manipulation of the basic sets. Musical
set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly conce ...
is often used to analyze and compose serial music, and is also sometimes used in tonal and nonserial atonal analysis. The basis for serial composition is Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, where the 12 notes of the chromatic scale are organized into a row. This "basic" row is then used to create permutations, that is, rows derived from the basic set by reordering its elements. The row may be used to produce a set of intervals, or a composer may derive the row from a particular succession of intervals. A row that uses all of the intervals in their ascending form once is an all-interval row. In addition to permutations, the basic row may have some set of notes derived from it, which is used to create a new row. These are ''derived sets''. Because there are tonal chord progressions that use all twelve notes, it is possible to create pitch rows with very strong tonal implications, and even to write tonal music using twelve-tone technique. Most tone rows contain subsets that can imply a
pitch center In music, the tonic is the first scale degree () of the diatonic scale (the first note of a scale) and the tonal center or final resolution tone that is commonly used in the final cadence in tonal (musical key-based) classical music, popul ...
; a composer can create music centered on one or more of the row's constituent pitches by emphasizing or avoiding these subsets, respectively, as well as through other, more complex compositional devices. To serialize other elements of music, a system quantifying an identifiable element must be created or defined (this is called " parametrization", after the term in mathematics). For example, if duration is serialized, a set of durations must be specified; if tone colour (timbre) is serialized, a set of separate tone colours must be identified; and so on. The selected set or sets, their permutations and derived sets form the composer's basic material. Composition using twelve-tone serial methods focuses on each appearance of the collection of twelve chromatic notes, called an
aggregate Aggregate or aggregates may refer to: Computing and mathematics * collection of objects that are bound together by a root entity, otherwise known as an aggregate root. The aggregate root guarantees the consistency of changes being made within the ...
. (Sets of more or fewer pitches, or of elements other than pitch, may be treated analogously.) One principle operative in some serial compositions is that no element of the aggregate should be reused in the same contrapuntal strand (statement of a series) until all the other members have been used, and each member must appear only in its place in the series. Yet, since most serial compositions have multiple (at least two, sometimes as many as a few dozen) series statements occurring concurrently, interwoven with each other in time, and feature repetitions of some of their pitches, this principle as stated is more a referential abstraction than a description of the concrete reality of a musical work that is termed "serial". A series may be divided into subsets, and the members of the aggregate not part of a subset are said to be its ''complement''. A subset is ''self-complementing'' if it contains half of the set and its complement is also a permutation of the original subset. This is most commonly seen with ''hexachords'', six-note segments of a tone row. A hexachord that is self-complementing for a particular permutation is called ''prime combinatorial''. A hexachord that is self-complementing for all the canonic operations—
inversion Inversion or inversions may refer to: Arts * , a French gay magazine (1924/1925) * ''Inversion'' (artwork), a 2005 temporary sculpture in Houston, Texas * Inversion (music), a term with various meanings in music theory and musical set theory * ...
, retrograde, and
retrograde inversion Retrograde inversion is a musical term that literally means "backwards and upside down": "The inverse of the series is sounded in reverse order." Retrograde reverses the order of the motif's pitches: what was the first pitch becomes the last, and ...
—is called ''all-combinatorial''.


Notable composers

* Hans Abrahamsen *
Gilbert Amy Gilbert Amy (born 29 August 1936) is a French composer and conductor. Career Born in Paris, Amy entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1954, where he was taught and influenced by Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud and studied piano with Yvonne Lo ...
*
Louis Andriessen Louis Joseph Andriessen (; 6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021) was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although ...
*
Denis ApIvor Denis ApIvor (14 April 191627 May 2004) was a British composer, best known for his ballet score ''Blood Wedding''. He had a parallel career as a consultant anaesthetist.Leach, Gerald. ''British Composer Profiles'' (3rd. Ed, 2012), p. 10 Biograph ...
*
Hans Erich Apostel Hans Erich Apostel (22 January 1901 – 30 November 1972) was a German-born Austrian composer of classical music. From 1916 to 1919 he studied piano, conducting and music theory in Karlsruhe with Alfred Lorenz. In 1920 he was Kapellmeister and R ...
*
Kees van Baaren Kees van Baaren (;In isolation, ''van'' is pronounced . 22 October 1906 – 2 September 1970) was a Dutch composer and teacher. Early years Van Baaren was born in Enschede. His early studies (1924–29) were in Berlin with Rudolph Breithaup ...
*
Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...
*
Tadeusz Baird Tadeusz Baird (26 July 19282 September 1981) was a Polish composer. Biography Baird was born in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, in Poland. His father Edward was Scottish, while his mother Maria (née Popov) was Russian. In 1944 at the age of 16 he was depo ...
*
Osvaldas Balakauskas Osvaldas Jonas Balakauskas (born December 19, 1937 in Miliūnai) is a Lithuanian composer of classical music and diplomat. Career Balakauskas graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical University in 1961. After his mandatory service in the Soviet Arm ...
*
Don Banks Donald Oscar Banks (25 October 19235 September 1980) was an Australian composer of concert, jazz, and commercial music. Early life and education Jazz was Banks' earliest and strongest musical influence. He learned the saxophone as a boy in Aust ...
*
Jean Barraqué Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué (17 January 192817 August 1973) was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output. Life Barraqué was born in Puteaux, Hauts-de-Seine. In 1931 ...
*
Jürg Baur Jürg Baur (11 November 1918 – 31 January 2010) was a German composer whose works include ''Incontri and Mutazioni.'' Baur studied at the Cologne University of Music and taught there in his later years. Baur was also awarded the Federal Cro ...
*
Alban Berg Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( , ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
* Gunnar Berg * Arthur Berger *
Erik Bergman Erik Valdemar Bergman (24 November 1911, in Nykarleby – 24 April 2006, in Helsinki) was a composer of classical music from Finland. Bergman's style ranged widely, from Romanticism in his early works (many of which he later prohibited from bein ...
*
Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...
*
Karl-Birger Blomdahl Karl-Birger Blomdahl (19 October 1916 – 14 June 1968) was a Swedish composer and conductor born in Växjö. He was educated in biochemistry, but was primarily active in music and by his experimental compositions he became one of the big names ...
*
Konrad Boehmer Konrad Boehmer (24 May 1941 – 4 October 2014) was a German-Dutch composer, educator, and writer. Life Boehmer was born in Berlin. A self-declared member of the Darmstadt School, he studied composition in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Go ...
*
Rob du Bois Rob du Bois (28 May 1934 – 28 August 2013) was a Dutch composer, pianist, and jurist. Background and education Rob (Robert Louis) du Bois was born in Amsterdam. His French ancestry can be seen from his name, and he maintained a sympathy for the ...
*
André Boucourechliev André Boucourechliev (28 July 1925 – 13 November 1997) was a French composer of Bulgarian origin. Born in Sofia, Boucourechliev studied piano at the Conservatory there. Subsequently, he studied in Paris at the École Normale de Musique de Pari ...
*
Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mont ...
*
Martin Boykan Martin Boykan (April 12, 1931 – March 6, 2021) was an American composer known for his chamber music as well as music for larger ensembles. Biography Boykan was born in New York City. He studied composition first with Walter Piston at Harvard ...
* Ole Buck * Jacques Calonne *
Niccolò Castiglioni Niccolò Castiglioni (17 July 1932 – 7 September 1996) was an Italian composer, pianist, and writer on music. Castiglioni was born and raised in Milan, where he began studying piano at the age of 7. He received his performer's diploma from th ...
*
Aldo Clementi Aldo Clementi (25 May 1925 – 3 March 2011) was an Italian classical composer. Life Aldo Clementi was born in Catania, Italy. He studied the piano, graduating in 1946 at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome. His studies in composition began ...
*
Salvador Contreras Salvador Contreras Sánchez (10 November 1910 – 7 November 1982) was a Mexican composer and violinist, a member of the Grupo de los cuatro. Life Contreras was born in Cuerámaro, Guanajuato, the son of José Contreras and Nemoria Sánchez. H ...
*
Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
*
Luigi Dallapiccola Luigi Dallapiccola (February 3, 1904 – February 19, 1975) was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions. Biography Dallapiccola was born in Pisino d'Istria (at the time part of Austria-Hungary, current Pazin, Croa ...
*
Franco Donatoni Franco Donatoni (9 June 1927 – 17 August 2000) was an Italian composer. Biography Born in Verona, Donatoni started studying violin at the age of seven, and frequented the local music academy. Later, he studied at the Milan Conservatory ...
*
Hanns Eisler Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
*
Manuel Enríquez Manuel Enríquez Salazar (17 June 1926 – 26 April 1994) was a Mexican composer, violinist and pedagogue. He was a fellow member of the Academy of Arts of Mexico, of the National Seminary of Mexican Culture and the music director of the Nationa ...
*
Karlheinz Essl Karlheinz Essl (born 15 August 1960) is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser, and composition teacher. Biography Essl was born in Vienna. His studies at the University of Music in Vienna included: composition (under Friedr ...
* Franco Evangelisti *
Brian Ferneyhough Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and ...
*
Jacobo Ficher Jacobo Ficher (russian: Яков (Хакобо) Фишер; 15 January 1896 – 9 September 1978) was an Argentine composer, violinist, conductor, and music educator of Russian birth. Life Ficher was born in Odessa, Russia, to Alexander Ficher, ...
*
Irving Fine Irving Gifford Fine (December 3, 1914 – August 23, 1962) was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neoclassical, romantic, and serial elements. Composer Virgil Thomson described Fine's "unusual melodic grace" while Aaron Copland noted ...
*
Wolfgang Fortner Wolfgang Fortner (12 October 1907 – 5 September 1987) was a German composer, composition teacher and conductor. Life Fortner was born in Leipzig. From his parents, who were both singers, Fortner very early on had intense contact with music. ...
*
Roberto Gerhard Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder (; 25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Spanish Catalan composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia as Roberto Gerhard.Malcolm MacDonald. 'Gerhard, Roberto' in ''Grove Music Onl ...
*
Frans Geysen Frans Geysen (born 29 July 1936) is a Belgian composer and a writer on music topics. Biography Frans Geysen was born in Oostham, and studied music at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, and at the conservatories of Antwerp and Ghent. In 1962 h ...
*
Michael Gielen Michael Andreas Gielen (20 July 19278 March 2019) was an Austrian conductor and composer known for promoting contemporary music in opera and concert. Principally active in Europe, his performances are characterized by precision and vivacity, aid ...
*
Alberto Ginastera Alberto Evaristo Ginastera (; April 11, 1916June 25, 1983) was an Argentinian composer of classical music. He is considered to be one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas. Biography Ginastera was born in Buen ...
* Lucien Goethals *
Karel Goeyvaerts Karel August Goeyvaerts (8 June 1923 – 3 February 1993) was a Belgian composer. Life Goeyvaerts was born in Antwerp, where he studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, Royal Flemish Music Conservatory; he later studied musical composition, ...
*
Jerry Goldsmith Jerrald King Goldsmith (February 10, 1929July 21, 2004) was an American composer and conductor known for his work in film and television scoring. He composed scores for five films in the ''Star Trek'' franchise and three in the Rambo (franchise) ...
*
Henryk Górecki Henryk Mikołaj Górecki ( , ; 6 December 1933 – 12 November 2010) was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. According to critic Alex Ross, no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as Górecki. He became a l ...
*
Glenn Gould Glenn Herbert Gould (; né Gold; September 25, 1932October 4, 1982) was a Canadian classical pianist. He was one of the most famous and celebrated pianists of the 20th century, and was renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard works of Johann ...
*
Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (21 November 1932 – 27 June 2016) was a Danish composer. Biography Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was the son of the sculptor Jørgen Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. He studied at the Royal ...
*
César Guerra-Peixe César Guerra-Peixe (March 18, 1914 – November 26, 1993) was a Brazilian violinist, composer, and conductor. Guerra-Peixe was born in Petrópolis, son of Portuguese immigrants with Romani origins. Throughout his lifetime, Guerra-Peixe held nume ...
*
Lou Harrison Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his form ...
* Jonathan Harvey *
Josef Matthias Hauer Josef Matthias Hauer (March 19, 1883 – September 22, 1959) was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is best known for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of th ...
*
Paavo Heininen Paavo Johannes Heininen (13 January 1938 – 18 January 2022) was a Finnish composer and pianist. Biography He was born in Helsinki, where he studied at the Sibelius Academy and was taught composition by Aarre Merikanto, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Ei ...
*
Hermann Heiss Hermann Heiss (29 December 1897 – 6 December 1966) was a German composer, pianist, and educator. His work was part of the music event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics. Life Heiss was born in Darmstadt and studied compositio ...
*
Hans Werner Henze Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as t ...
*
York Höller York Höller (; born 11 January 1944) is a German composer and professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. Biography Höller was born in Leverkusen. Between 1963 and 1970 he studied at the Cologne Musikhochschule: composition with ...
*
Heinz Holliger Heinz Robert Holliger (born 21 May 1939) is a Swiss virtuoso oboist, composer and conductor. Celebrated for his versatility and technique, Holliger is among the most prominent oboists of his generation. His repertoire includes Baroque and Classic ...
* Bill Hopkins *
Klaus Huber Klaus Huber (30 November 1924 – 2 October 2017) was a Swiss composer and academic based in Basel and Freiburg. Among his students were Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Jarrell, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, and Kaija Saariaho. ...
*
Karel Husa Karel Husa (August 7, 1921 – December 14, 2016) was a Czech-born classical composer and conductor, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Music and 1993 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. In 1954, he emigrated to t ...
*
Hanns Jelinek Hanns Jelinek (5 December 1901 – 27 January 1969) was an Austrian composer of Czech descent who is also known under the pseudonyms Hanns Elin, H. J. Hirsch, Jakob Fidelbogen. Biography Jelinek was born and died in Vienna. His father was a ma ...
* Ben Johnston *
Nikolai Karetnikov Nikolai Nikolayevich Karetnikov (russian: Николáй Николáeвич Карéтников; 28 June 1930 in Moscow – 9 October 1994 in Moscow) was a Russian composer of the so-called Underground music, Underground – alternative or Dissen ...
*
Rudolf Kelterborn Rudolf Kelterborn (3 September 1931 – 24 March 2021) was a Swiss musician and composer. Life Born in Basel, Kelterborn studied in Basel, Detmold, Salzburg, and Zürich, among other places, with the composers Walther Geiser, Willy Burkhard, Bor ...
*
Gottfried Michael Koenig Gottfried Michael Koenig (5 October 1926 – 30 December 2021)"In Memoriam Got ...
* Józef Koffler *
Ernst Krenek Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...
*
Meyer Kupferman Meyer Kupferman (July 3, 1926 – November 26, 2003) was an American composer and clarinetist. Life Meyer Kupferman was born in New York City to Jewish parents.
*
René Leibowitz René Leibowitz (; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after ...
*
Ingvar Lidholm Ingvar Natanael Lidholm (24 February 1921 – 17 October 2017) was a Swedish composer. Early years: 1921–1940 Ingvar Lidholm was born in Jönköping. The actual family home was in Nässjö, some 40 kilometers to the southeast. Neither of his pa ...
*
Witold Lutosławski Witold Roman Lutosławski (; 25 January 1913 – 7 February 1994) was a Polish composer and conductor. Among the major composers of 20th-century classical music, he is "generally regarded as the most significant Polish composer since Szyman ...
*
Elisabeth Lutyens Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE (9 July 190614 April 1983) was an English composer. Early life and education Elisabeth Lutyens was born in London on 9 July 1906. She was one of the five children of Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1874–1964), a me ...
* John McGuire *
Bruno Maderna Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer. Life Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.Interview with Maderna‘s thr ...
*
Ursula Mamlok Ursula Mamlok (February 1, 1923 – May 4, 2016) was a German-born American composer and teacher. Education and influences Mamlok was born as Ursula Meyer in Berlin, Germany, into a Jewish family, and studied piano and composition with Professor G ...
*
Philippe Manoury Philippe Manoury (born 19 June 1952) is a French composer. Biography Manoury was born in Tulle and began composition studies at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris with Gérard Condé and Max Deutsch. He continued his studies from 1974 to 197 ...
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Donald Martino Donald James Martino (May 16, 1931 – December 8, 2005) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer. Biography Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Martino attended Plainfield High School. He began as a clarinetist, playing jazz for fun and p ...
*
Paul Méfano Paul Méfano (March 6, 1937 – September 15, 2020), was a French composer and conductor. Biography Paul Méfano was born in Basra, Iraq. He pursued musical studies at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and then later at the Paris Conservat ...
*
Jacques-Louis Monod Jacques-Louis Monod (25 February 1927 – 21 September 2020) was a French composer, pianist and conducting, conductor of 20th century music, 20th century and Contemporary classical music, contemporary music, particularly in the advancement of th ...
* Robert Morris *
Luigi Nono Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...
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Per Nørgård Per Nørgård (; born 13 July 1932) is a Danish composer and music theorist. Though his style has varied considerably throughout his career, his music has often included repeatedly evolving melodies—such as the infinity series—in the vein o ...
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Krzysztof Penderecki Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best known works include ''Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'', Symphony No. 3, his '' St Luke Passion'', ''Polish Requiem'', ''A ...
*
Goffredo Petrassi Goffredo Petrassi (16 July 1904 – 3 March 2003) was an Italian composer of modern classical music, conductor, and teacher. He is considered one of the most influential Italian composers of the twentieth century.Petrassi, Goffredo. (2008). ...
*
Michel Philippot Michel Paul Philippot (2 February 1925 – 28 July 1996) was a French composer, mathematician, acoustician, musicologist, aesthetician, broadcaster, and educator. Life Philippot was born in Verzy. His studies of mathematics were interrupted by Wo ...
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Walter Piston Walter Hamor Piston, Jr. (January 20, 1894 – November 12, 1976), was an American composer of classical music, music theorist, and professor of music at Harvard University. Life Piston was born in Rockland, Maine at 15 Ocean Street to Walter Ha ...
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Henri Pousseur Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist. Biography Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to ...
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Einojuhani Rautavaara Einojuhani Rautavaara (; 9 October 1928 – 27 July 2016) was a Finnish composer of classical music. Among the most notable Finnish composers since Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), Rautavaara wrote a List of compositions by Einojuhani Rautavaara, gre ...
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Roger Reynolds Roger Lee Reynolds (born July 18, 1934) is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, and for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds with those newly enabled by t ...
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Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for it ...
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George Rochberg George Rochberg (July 5, 1918May 29, 2005) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. Long a serial composer, Rochberg abandoned the practice following the death of his teenage son in 1964; he claimed this compositional technique ...
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Leonard Rosenman Leonard Rosenman (September 7, 1924 – March 4, 2008) was an American film, television and concert composer with credits in over 130 works, including ''East of Eden (film), East of Eden'', ''Rebel without a Cause'', ''Star Trek IV: The Voyage Ho ...
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Cláudio Santoro Cláudio Franco de Sá Santoro (23 November 1919 – 27 March 1989) was an internationally renowned Brazilian composer, conductor and violinist. Biography Early life A native of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas, Santoro started to study violin ...
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Peter Schat Peter Ane Schat (5 June 1935, in Utrecht – 3 February 2003, in Amsterdam) was a Dutch composer. Schat studied composition with Kees van Baaren at the Utrecht Conservatoire and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague from 1952 until 1958, and then ...
* Leon Schidlowsky *
Dieter Schnebel Dieter Schnebel (14 March 1930 – 20 May 2018) was a German composer, theologian and musicologist. He composed orchestral music, chamber music, vocal music and stage works. From 1976 until his retirement in 1995, Schnebel served as professor of e ...
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Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
, considered the founder of serialism *
Humphrey Searle Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoen ...
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Ruth Crawford Seeger Ruth Crawford Seeger (born Ruth Porter Crawford; July 3, 1901 – November 18, 1953) was an American composer and folk music specialist. Her music was a prominent exponent of the emerging modernist aesthetic and she became a central member of a g ...
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Mátyás Seiber Mátyás György Seiber (; 4 May 190524 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born British composer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1935 onwards. His work linked many diverse musical influences, from the Hungarian tradition of Bartó ...
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Roger Sessions Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and ...
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Nikos Skalkottas Nikos Skalkottas ( el, Νίκος Σκαλκώτας; 21 March 1904 – 19 September 1949) was a Greek composer of 20th-century classical music. A member of the Second Viennese School, he drew his influences from both the classical repert ...
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Roger Smalley John Roger Smalley (26 July 1943 – 18 August 2015) was an Anglo-Australian composer, pianist and conductor. Professor Smalley was a senior honorary research fellow at the School of Music, University of Western Australia in Perth and honorary ...
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Ann Southam Ann Southam, (4 February 1937 – 25 November 2010) was a Canadian electronic and classical music composer and music teacher. She is known for her minimalist, iterative, and lyrical style, for her long-term collaborations with dance choreogra ...
* Leopold Spinner *
Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
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Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the ...
*
Robert Suderburg Robert Charles Suderburg (28 January 1936 in Spencer, Iowa – 22 April 2013 in Williamstown, Massachusetts) was an American composer, conductor, and pianist. Biography The son of a jazz trombonist, Suderburg studied composition with Paul Fetle ...
* Richard Swift *
Louise Talma Louise Juliette Talma (October 31, 1906August 13, 1996) was an American composer, academic, and pianist. After studies in New York and in France, piano with Isidor Philipp and composition with Nadia Boulanger, she focused on composition from 193 ...
*
Camillo Togni Camillo Togni (18 October 1922 – 28 November 1993) was an Italian composer, teacher, and pianist. Coming from a family of independent means, he was able to pursue his art as he saw fit, regardless of changing fashions or economic pressure. ...
* Gilles Tremblay *
Fartein Valen Olav Fartein Valen (25 August 1887 – 14 December 1952) was a Norwegian composer, notable for his work in atonal polyphonic music. He developed a polyphony similar to Bach's counterpoint, but based on motivic working and dissonance rather th ...
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Wladimir Vogel Wladimir Rudolfowitsch Vogel (17 February/29 February 1896 – 19 June 1984) was a Swiss composer of German and Russian descent. Life Born in Moscow, Vogel first studied composition in Moscow with Alexander Scriabin, then between 1918 and 1924 wi ...
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Anton Webern Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stea ...
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Hugo Weisgall Hugo David Weisgall (October 13, 1912 – March 11, 1997) was an American composer and conductor, known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions. He was born in Ivančice, Moravia (then part of Austria-Hungary, later in his childhood ...
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Peter Westergaard Peter Talbot Westergaard (28 May 1931 – 26 June 2019) was an American composer and music theorist. He was Professor Emeritus of music at Princeton University. Biography Westergaard was born on 28 May 1931 in Champaign, Illinois. He pursued ...
*
Stefan Wolpe Stefan Wolpe (25 August 1902, Berlin – 4 April 1972, New York City) was a German-Jewish-American composer. He was associated with interdisciplinary modernism, with affiliations ranging from the Bauhaus, Berlin agitprop theater and the kibbutz mo ...
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Charles Wuorinen Charles Peter Wuorinen (; June 9, 1938 – March 11, 2020) was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He performed his works and other 20th-century music as pianist and conductor. He composed more than ...
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La Monte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best kno ...


See also

*
Pitch interval In musical set theory, a pitch interval (PI or ip) is the number of semitones that separates one pitch from another, upward or downward.Schuijer, Michiel (2008). ''Analyzing Atonal Music: Pitch-Class Set Theory and Its Contexts'', Eastman Studie ...


References


Sources

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Further reading

* Delaere, Marc. 2016. "The Stockhausen–Goeyvaerts Correspondence and the Aesthetic Foundations of Serialism in the Early 1950s". In ''The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward'', edited by M. J. Grant and Imke Misch, 20–34. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag. . * Eco, Umberto. 2005. "Innovation & Repetition: Between Modern & Postmodern Aesthetics". ''
Daedalus In Greek mythology, Daedalus (, ; Greek: Δαίδαλος; Latin: ''Daedalus''; Etruscan: ''Taitale'') was a skillful architect and craftsman, seen as a symbol of wisdom, knowledge and power. He is the father of Icarus, the uncle of Perdix, an ...
'' 134, no. 4, 50 Years (Fall): 191–207. . . * Essl, Karlheinz. 1989
"Aspekte des Seriellen bei Stockhausen"
In ''Almanach Wien Modern 89'', edited by L. Knessl, 90-97. Vienna: Konzerthaus. * Forte, Allen. 1964. "A Theory of Set-Complexes for Music". ''
Journal of Music Theory The ''Journal of Music Theory'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It was established by David Kraehenbuehl (Yale University) in 1957. According to its website, " e ''Journal of Music Theory'' fosters c ...
'' 8, no. 2 (Winter): 136–184. * Forte, Allen. 1973. ''The Structure of Atonal Music''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. * Forte, Allen. 1998. ''The Atonal Music of Anton Webern''. New Haven: Yale University Press. * Fürstenberger, Barbara. 1989. ''Michel Butors literarische Träume: Untersuchungen zu Matière de rêves I bis V''. Studia Romanica 72. Heidelberg: C. Winter. . * Gollin, Edward. 2007. "Multi-Aggregate Cycles and Multi-Aggregate Serial Techniques in the Music of Béla Bartók." ''
Music Theory Spectrum ''Music Theory Spectrum'' () is a peer-reviewed, academic journal specializing in music theory and analysis. It is the official journal of the Society for Music Theory, and is published by Oxford University Press. The journal was first published ...
'' 29, no. 2 (Fall): 143–176. . * Gredinger, Paul. 1955. "Das Serielle". ''
Die Reihe ''Die Reihe'' () was a German-language music academic journal, edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen and published by Universal Edition (Vienna) between 1955 and 1962 (). An English edition was published, under the original German ...
'' 1 ("Elektronische Musik"): 34–41. English as "Serial Technique", translated by Alexander Goehr. ''Die Reihe'' 1 ("Electronic Music"), (English edition 1958): 38–44. * Knee, Robin. 1985. "Michel Butor's ''Passage de Milan'': The Numbers Game". ''
Review of Contemporary Fiction The Review of Contemporary Fiction is a tri-quarterly journal published by Dalkey Archive Press. It features a variety of fiction, reviews and critical essays on literature that has an experimental, avant-garde or subversive bent. Founded in 1980 ...
'' 5, no. 3:146–149. * Kohl, Jerome. 2017. ''Karlheinz Stockhausen: Zeitmaße''. Landmarks in Music Since 1950, edited by Wyndham Thomas. Abingdon, Oxon; London; New York: Routledge. . * Krenek, Ernst. 1953. "Is the Twelve-Tone Technique on the Decline?" ''
The Musical Quarterly ''The Musical Quarterly'' is the oldest academic journal on music in America. Originally established in 1915 by Oscar Sonneck, the journal was edited by Sonneck until his death in 1928. Sonneck was succeeded by a number of editors, including Car ...
'' 39, no 4 (October): 513–527. * Lerdahl, Fred, and
Ray Jackendoff Ray Jackendoff (born January 23, 1945) is an American linguist. He is professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and, with Daniel Dennett, co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has always str ...
. 1983. ''A Generative Theory of Tonal Music''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. * Meyer, Leonard B. 1967. ''Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture''. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. (Second edition 1994.) * Miller, Elinor S. 1983. "Critical Commentary II: Butor's ''Quadruple fond'' as Serial Music". ''Romance Notes'' 24, no. 2 (Winter): 196–204. * Misch, Imke. 2016. "Karlheinz Stockhausen: The Challenge of Legacy: An Introduction". In ''The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward'', edited by M. J. Grant and Imke Misch, 11–19. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag. . * Perle, George. 1962. ''Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern''. Berkeley: University of California Press. * Rahn, John. 1980. ''Basic Atonal Theory''. New York: Schirmer Books. * Ross, Alex. 2007. ''
The Rest Is Noise ''The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century'' is a 2007 nonfiction book by the American music critic Alex Ross, first published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It recounts the history of European and American music, starting in 1900, an ...
: Listening to the Twentieth Century''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, . * Roudiez, Leon S. 1984. "Un texte perturbe: ''Matière de rêves'' de Michel Butor". ''Romanic Review'' 75, no. 2:242–255. * Savage, Roger W. H. 1989. ''Structure and Sorcery: The Aesthetetics of Post-War Serial Composition and Indeterminancy''. Outstanding Dissertations in Music from British Universities. New York: Garland Publications. . * Schwartz, Steve. 2001.
Richard Yardumian: Orchestral Works
. Classical Net. *
Scruton, Roger Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views. Editor from 1982 t ...
. 1997. ''Aesthetics of Music''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. . Quoted in Arved Ashbey, ''The Pleasure of Modernist Music'' (University of Rochester Press, 2004) p. 122. . * Smith Brindle, Reginald. 1966. ''Serial Composition''. London, New York: Oxford University Press. * Spencer, Michael Clifford. 1974. ''Michel Butor''. Twayne's World Author Series TWS275. New York: Twayne Publishers. . * Straus, Joseph N. 1999.
The Myth of Serial 'Tyranny' in the 1950s and 1960s
(Subscription access). ''
The Musical Quarterly ''The Musical Quarterly'' is the oldest academic journal on music in America. Originally established in 1915 by Oscar Sonneck, the journal was edited by Sonneck until his death in 1928. Sonneck was succeeded by a number of editors, including Car ...
'' 83:301–343. * Wangermée, Robert. 1995. ''André Souris et le complexe d'Orphée: entre surréalisme et musique sérielle''. Collection Musique, Musicologie. Liège: P. Mardaga. . * White, Eric Walter, and Jeremy Noble. 1984. "Stravinsky". In ''The New Grove Modern Masters''. London: Macmillan.


External links


Serial and twelve-note works by American composers
(26 July 2012). {{Authority control 20th-century classical music Mathematics of music