Serialism Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Giacomo Manzoni composed his theatrical work Atomtod between 1961 and 1965. It is well known that here the composer resorted to «Stilpluralismus», making use of many different compositional styles and techniques, from jazz to eighteenth... more

Giacomo Manzoni composed his theatrical work Atomtod between 1961 and 1965. It is well known that here the composer resorted to «Stilpluralismus», making use of many different compositional styles and techniques, from jazz to eighteenth century opera’s clichés, to serialism. This article the first in-depth examination of Atomtod’s serialism, and tries as well to contextualize it both within the overall dramatic structure of the work, and in the evolution of Manzoni’s compositional techniques.

The 20th century ushered in an explosion of individual mythology, requiring every artist in the 20th and 21st century to construct a personal mythology to aid in their own artistic practice. Being a 21st composer has forced me to create... more

The 20th century ushered in an explosion of individual mythology, requiring every artist in the 20th and 21st century to construct a personal mythology to aid in their own artistic practice. Being a 21st composer has forced me to create an individual framework of mythologies to structure my compositional and artistic thought. In general, my own music applies a mythologization of post-war serialism and Medieval era music (primarily music of the Ars Nova). This mythological application means that instead of applying the techniques of serial organization or medieval compositional techniques, my music features a superficial “gloss” that establishes a connection between my music and this music of the past.

An analysis of the relationship between Pierre Schaeffer and the musical avant-garde of 1953, with particular reference to Pierre Boulez and to Schaeffer's shift from musique concrète to recherche musicale. The main source is Schaeffer's... more

An analysis of the relationship between Pierre Schaeffer and the musical avant-garde of 1953, with particular reference to Pierre Boulez and to Schaeffer's shift from musique concrète to recherche musicale. The main source is Schaeffer's 'Vers une musique expérimentale' (La revue musicale 236); extensive excerpts are translated here into English. The antagonism between the Paris and Cologne studios is discussed in the light of two different approaches to technology and tradition; for the exponents of elektronische Musik new technology was a means to perfect Western music, while for Schaeffer it was simply a means to make new musical discoveries. [RILM]

This essay analyzes Stockhausen Studie II: Elektronische Musik (1954), focusing on his study of additive synthesis in electronic music. While the first study, Studie I: Elektronische Musik (1953), employs pure sine waves utilizing... more

This essay analyzes Stockhausen Studie II: Elektronische Musik (1954), focusing on his study of additive synthesis in electronic music. While the first study, Studie I: Elektronische Musik (1953), employs pure sine waves utilizing overtones, the second study, Studie II: Elektronische Musik (1954), abandons the harmonic series altogether. Studie II utilizes a serial algorithm to generate its collection of frequencies, which Stockhausen serialistically synthesizes together. Only the second study’s score was published, hence, this analysis will focus on Studie II—written in a spectral graphic score that serialistically controls each sine wave’s organization.
Furthermore, this analysis traces Stockhausen’s use of multiple-serialism within Studie II. It will therefore explore the following serial methods, and attempt to trace what Stockhausen employs and understand how he utilizes them. Such serial methods include elements that serialistically control each sine wave’s (1) generation, (2) selection, (3) additive synthesis, and the score’s overall (4) structure—both at the macro- and micro-level. This essay will also include a spectrograph- and a structural analysis.
Subsequently, this essay poses some practical questions. How does this kind of electronic spectral serialism support Stockhausen’s premise of treating sine waves as “pure” sound elements, uninhibited by human intervention and imperfection? Are these “pure” sine waves completely controllable—to the extent that the score’s realization precisely produces the exact sound that the score prescribes? And if so, can this spectral graphic score be objectively realized electronically, without the subjectivity and influence of human emotion and interpretation?

PhD Thesis, Monash University 2001.

This study seeks to determine the extent to which selected works by Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), and Tristan Murail (b. 1947) support or contradict the notion of “rupture” in the Parisian musical establishment... more

This study seeks to determine the extent to which selected works by Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), and Tristan Murail (b. 1947) support or contradict the notion of “rupture” in the Parisian musical establishment during the twentieth century. Aesthetic and political considerations of the historical narrative frame comparative analyses of Murail’s Territoires de l’oubli (1977) to the ethos of Messiaen’s Sept haïkaï (1962) and Couleurs de la cité celeste (1963), and to the technique of Boulez’s Structures II for two pianos (1956-61). It is concluded that Messiaen’s influence on Murail was largely one of ethos and not technique. It is determined that Boulez and Murail share similarities in their approaches to form and the manipulation of piano sonority and resonance. It is thus considered that their aesthetic divide is of little substance to the content of their music.

The musical output of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933-2010) is commonly perceived and evaluated in the West from the point of the astounding commercial success of his Symphony No. 3 “Symfonia pieśni żałosnych” (1977), resulting in a fixed... more

The musical output of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933-2010) is commonly
perceived and evaluated in the West from the point of the astounding commercial success of his Symphony No. 3 “Symfonia pieśni żałosnych” (1977), resulting in a fixed and highly limited reference point to the composer’s earlier musical output. The musical trajectory of Górecki’s stylistic development is often mythologized in the press and media to create a narrative of divinatory or spiritual “revelation” surrounding Górecki’s post-Symphony No. 3 output (1977-2010), grouping him rather
erroneously as a “holy minimalist”, along with John Tavener (1944-2013) and Arvo Pärt (1935-). While these characterizations helped bolster Górecki’s mystique and reputation in the West, it frequently undermined and occasionally disparaged the composer’s roots in the Polish avant-garde and his artistic contribution to this musical environment.
From a surfaced viewpoint, it appears that Górecki’s earlier and later works are like oil and water, but in reality they form a continuous stream of artistic progress, unified by both an ardent personality and an unrelenting hunger for reconfiguration and development as a composer. This paper will argue that Górecki’s mature works are the result of a gradual stylistic morphologization, passing through periods of various
aesthetic fixations that define several “eras” in his composition output from 1960 to 1974.

The collection of articles, by a diverse set of musicians and scholars (21 in all), focuses on the playful side of Milton Babbitt's music, on the performance and recording of his music, and on adapting his music and ideas to such... more

The collection of articles, by a diverse set of musicians and scholars (21 in all), focuses on the playful side of Milton Babbitt's music, on the performance and recording of his music, and on adapting his music and ideas to such activities as improvisation and cross-stylistic arrangements and recompositions. The collection is replete with new interviews, recently discovered compositions, and archive-based revelations.
The intro article is open-access.
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gcmr20/40/2-3
Feel free to contact any of the co-editors ( jmailman@alumni.uchicago.edu, awmead@indiana.edu, zbernstein@esm.rochester.edu ) or authors for info (or offprints)

Características principales de la obra

During the last two decades many scholars have focused on Maderna’s works, sketches and letters of the 1940s. Nevertheless, his First String Quartet (ca. 1943- 1945) has been left aside by this “Maderna Renaissance”. In this article I... more

During the last two decades many scholars have focused on Maderna’s works, sketches and letters of the 1940s. Nevertheless, his First String Quartet (ca. 1943- 1945) has been left aside by this “Maderna Renaissance”. In this article I focus thus on this work in order to show why it constitutes an extraordinary viewpoint on Maderna’s pre-serial harmonic conceptions and on some forgotten sources of his poetics – such as Bartók and Hindemith. A specific “harmonic atmosphere”, i.e. octatonicism, informs the entire Quartet. Firstly, the symmetrical and acoustic qualities of the octatonic scale are the basis for recovering the dialectical principle of sonata form and for arranging the structures of the work (i.e. a palindrome) according to symmetrical criteria. Secondly, the octatonic collection is a way to problematise the historical dimension of the musical material – tonality and modality coexist with quartal harmony – and to avoid a perfect symmetrical construction. Because of its crucial relation to Bartók, I conclude that Maderna’s “War” Quartet ushers in an Italian Bartókian Wave during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Moreover, I postulate a continuity between this early work and Maderna’s serial works – a continuity based on the quest for a generative and homogeneous principle in musical composition as well as on a need for deconstructing preformed schemas and fixed points of reference.

After World War II, Milton Babbitt and the composer-theorists collected around him at Princeton University extended Schoenbergian serial and social practices. After Stravinsky’s serial turn, Babbitt reevaluated his music, courting his... more

After World War II, Milton Babbitt and the composer-theorists collected around him at Princeton University extended Schoenbergian serial and social practices. After Stravinsky’s serial turn, Babbitt reevaluated his music, courting his legacy: the cover of the “Princeton School journal,” Perspectives of New Music, to this day reproduces Stravinsky’s drawing representing his serial music. In the late 1960s, some members of the Princeton School “dropped out,” writing experimental texts and improvising. Joseph Kerman suggested, contentiously, that this dissolution of the Princeton School around 1971 occurred because of Stravinsky’s death that year.
In this talk I discuss Stravinsky reception within the Princeton School. After discussing Stravinsky’s advice to leave the academy, Babbitt’s reading of Stravinsky’s proto-serial procedures in The Rake’s Progress, and Babbitt’s reading of Stravinsky’s “verticals” in Movements, I discuss Princeton composer Benjamin Boretz’s readings of Stravinsky’s incorporation of pitch structure into durational structure in the first scene of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring generally. I discuss Princeton composer J. K. Randall’s compositional use of series of pitches fewer than twelve as a Stravinskian conceit. I discuss an influential article by Princeton composer Edward T. Cone which shows continuity across Stravinsky’s serial turn. Lastly, I discuss Babbitt and Boretz’s purging of impressionistic language in favor of formalist discourses as a kind of Stravinskian poetics.
This combination of Stravinskian poetics and serialism with the oft-discussed Schoenbergian socialization and serialism demonstrates an attempt by members of the Princeton School to unite the two principal strands of European modernism in their own American high-modernism.

Esta pesquisa sistematiza um catálogo de experimentos constituído de estudos musicais e seus algoritmos geradores, organizando procedimentos para composição assistida por computador orientados por regras derivadas de análises musicais de... more

Esta pesquisa sistematiza um catálogo de experimentos constituído de estudos musicais e seus algoritmos geradores, organizando procedimentos para composição assistida por
computador orientados por regras derivadas de análises musicais de contexto pós-tonal.
Os procedimentos são inspirados em apontamentos de estudos sobre pós-tonalidade no compositor Béla Bartók, encontrados nas obras de Lendvai (1971), Antokoletz (1984),
Cohn (1991) e Suchoff (2004). Problematizam-se aqui os conceitos de ciclos intervalares, eixos de simetria, polimodalismo e peculiaridades de coleções referenciais de classes de altura - conforme sugestões de Forte (1973), Straus (2004) e Susanni e Antokoletz (2012).
São detalhadas questões computacionais para esta implementação, utilizando como base as ferramentas OpenMusic e biblioteca Python Music21.

Analyzing the early work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker-and particularly Rosas danst Rosas (1983)-this article examines the notion of "the storyless" in relation to the role: that pillar of dance, and especially choreography,... more

Analyzing the early work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker-and particularly Rosas danst Rosas (1983)-this article examines the notion of "the storyless" in relation to the role: that pillar of dance, and especially choreography, which enables the individuation, transmission, and exchange of each dancer's part. Set in relation to the principles of serial music that De Keersmaeker had already explored in Fase (1982) and to the idea of seriality itself, the role provides a way to consider how "storylessness" could be both emancipatory and feminist. It responds to identitarian models of feminist argumentation by suggesting that a virtue of certain forms of abstraction lies in the pleasurable ways that dance's roles demonstrate the circulability and exchangeability of the self.

Open access link:... more

This is the second chapter from my dissertation entitled "Anton Webern's Use of Guitar in Op. 18 and its Influence on His Late works." This chapter describes the various methods used in order to make a case for the connection between... more

This is the second chapter from my dissertation entitled "Anton Webern's Use of Guitar in Op. 18 and its Influence on His Late works." This chapter describes the various methods used in order to make a case for the connection between Webern's use of the serial method, his voice-leading practices, and the physical manifestations of these practices as they appear on the guitar.

Several scholars pointed already out the very quick evolution of Xenakis' style in his early works, from the folklorist tendancy of his first attempts to Dipli and Tripli Zyia (1952), the Anastenaria's cycle and finally Metastasis... more

Several scholars pointed already out the very quick evolution of Xenakis' style in his early works, from the folklorist tendancy of his first attempts to Dipli and Tripli Zyia (1952), the Anastenaria's cycle and finally Metastasis (53-54). However documents held in Xenakis' archives at the French National Library bring new lights on Xenakis' evolution during those years and make possible to evaluate even more precisely the early building of his creative personnality. On Anastenaria cycle whose genesis has so far remained somewhat unclear, notebooks and sketches enlighten the processes brought into play and the links with Metastasis, seen wrongly at the present time as the third part of the cycle. The study of these processes will make possible to understand Xenakis' evolution particularly during the year 1953 that appears as a real turning point in his artistic path.

This article addresses the role played by Allen Forte in establishing the Journal of Music Theory as a journal of record for the American discipline of music theory, as it emerged and evolved in the 1960s. The journal was founded at Yale... more

This article addresses the role played by Allen Forte in establishing the Journal of Music Theory as a journal of record for the American discipline of music theory, as it emerged and evolved in the 1960s. The journal was founded at Yale University in 1957 by editor David Kraehenbuehl. When he left his position at both the university and the journal in 1960, the editorship passed to Allen Forte, who functioned in that capacity for the next seven years, making him not only the longest-serving editor in the journal’s history, but also one at an especially crucial period, when conceptions of the field were beginning to crystallize and circulate in the forms recognizable today. This article explores, in turn, the path Forte took to the journal (and Yale); aspects of editorship, design, and production during his time; the personal imprint he made on the journal, in terms of his editorial agenda; and his departure from the editorship and the legacy he left behind. Quotations from the author’s interviews with Forte are included.

It is well known that university students often suffer from high levels of stress, which can lead to higher rates of mental health concerns and the use or abuse of alcohol and illicit drugs. This stress may also be... more

It is well known that university students often suffer from high levels of stress, which can lead to higher rates of mental health concerns and the use or abuse of alcohol and illicit drugs. This stress may also be relieved by channelling it into humour and taking risks with assessment. This paper provides a personal reflection and explanation of the process of composing an original work for string quartet, using previously collected survey response data. Several manual algorithms used to generate the score are described, along with an explanation of other musical choices. The completed score and audio file are available for download.

This unpublished analysis of Metastasis, written by Xenakis himself, brings with many details the serial structure of its median part to light. The composer develops his very personal and original conception of serialism,trying to go... more

This unpublished analysis of Metastasis, written by Xenakis himself, brings with many details the serial structure of its median part to light. The composer develops his very personal and original conception of serialism,trying to go beyond what he thinks to be its limits. This conception reveals also very clearly the consistency and continuity of Xenakis' compositional ideas. In this text, he explains also the totally new concept of " differential duration " that he is using for the first time in Metastasis and that will become a key piece in his writing of rhythm. This text is of great importance not only because of the new light it brings on this work, bu mostly by the further developments it is bearing in seeds.

Milton Babbitt has been a controversial and iconic figure, which has indirectly led to fallacious assumptions about how his music is made, and therefore to fundamental misconceptions about how it might be heard and appreciated. This video... more

Milton Babbitt has been a controversial and iconic figure, which has indirectly led to fallacious assumptions about how his music is made, and therefore to fundamental misconceptions about how it might be heard and appreciated. This video (the first of a three-part video essay) reconsiders his music in light of both his personal traits and a more precise examination of the constraints and freedoms entailed by his unusual and often misunderstood compositional practices, which are based inherently on partial ordering (as well as pitch repetition), which enables a surprising amount of freedom to compose the surface details we hear. The opening of Babbitt’s Composition for Four Instruments (1948) and three recompositions (based on re-ordering of pitches) demonstrate the freedoms intrinsic to partial ordering. http://doi.org/10.30535/smtv.5.1

This edited transcript of a public pre-concert discussion with composer, theorist and critic Benjamin Boretz not only touches on early personal encounters with Babbitt but also ranges over issues of reception of his music, listening... more

This edited transcript of a public pre-concert discussion with composer, theorist and critic Benjamin Boretz not only touches on early personal encounters with Babbitt but also ranges over issues of reception of his music, listening experiences, transfor- mations of music’s temporality, connections to Schoenberg, Webern, Cage, and postmodernism, stylistic changes over Babbitt’s career and composerly poetics, as well as motivations and consequences for pre- compositional structures and systems. The discussion took place on 22 November 2015, at the first of three recitals during the 2015–16 concert season at Spectrum, in New York City, in which Augustus Arnone for the second time performed all of Milton Babbitt’s solo piano works, this time in honour of the composer’s centenary. (Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0040298216000322)

In this paper I will show how the evolution of Anton Webern’s orchestration and composition style from his early atonal works through to his mature works is made possible largely through his inclusion of the guitar in Op. 18 which, in... more

In this paper I will show how the evolution of Anton Webern’s orchestration and composition style from his early atonal works through to his mature works is made possible largely through his inclusion of the guitar in Op. 18 which, in this light, becomes more of a pivotal work than previously considered and displays the composer moving towards the full realization of his aesthetic.
Webernʼs musical style evolves towards pointillist orchestration that features wide leaps, mixed rhythms and sharp attacks up to his early 12-tone works through to Op. 16. His use of guitar in Op. 18 and 19 is not only necessary to the development of his already emerging style, but it also enables Webern to take his style the next logical step by furthering the extremes of range and texture. The pointillist composition style that Webern develops through his early works, as well as a desire to connect his music to folk traditions as inspired by Gustav Mahler, leads him to the guitar, which in turn set him on the path to his mature composition style.
The scoring in Op. 17 is considerably lighter and the ensemble considerably less active than in the Op. 18 songs. In addition, the soprano is not required to navigate quite as many large leaps between registers in Op. 17 when compared to Op. 18. I argue that the addition of guitar, in both the Op. 18 songs of 1925 as well as the more fully scored Op. 19 from the following year, Webern finds himself liberated in terms of range and spacing. The guitar aids in supporting increasingly disjunct melodic lines traversed by the voice as well as the Eb clarinet that is used both as an extension and in support of the vocal line allowing for increased melodic abstraction.
The guitar’s ability to perform music that is based principally on consistency of interval content rather than on specific, tonal, voice leading rules is advantageous to Webern. It is possible to play uniquely voiced chords that would be difficult, or impossible on any other instrument. Its folk characteristics were perhaps the impetus behind his selection of the guitar, but it also serves as the means to another end in that it provides the composer with an instrument that can support an ensemble not simply from a harmonic standpoint but also that of melodic support in the form of negotiating large leaps and extremes of range. Kathryn Bailey asserts that Webern’s Opp. 17-19 stand as his “pre-serial” work and most agree that the Op. 20 trio marks the beginning of Webern’s fully realized serial compositions. I feel that this observation places these underappreciated works in a position that should garner them further analysis.
Despite a new musical language, Webern suggests the natural evolution of Lieder through use of common texts, and folk instruments, with the guitar playing a pivotal and foundational role. The pieces that I aim to discuss do not simply indicate an evolution in Webern’s organizational ideas about pitch but also considerations of orchestration, and voicing of simultaneity.
It is with these considerations that I assert the importance of the guitar to Anton Webern’s compositional evolution. It is also with these considerations that I assert a higher degree of importance and attention should be placed upon these “pre-serial” works, Opp. 17-19.

Before his radical reassessment of serialism in « La crise de la musique sérielle », Xenakis tried to improve a very personal approach to serialist technique by, linking pitches and durations considered as intervals. I published two... more

Before his radical reassessment of serialism in « La crise de la musique sérielle », Xenakis tried to improve a very personal approach to serialist technique by, linking pitches and durations considered as intervals. I published two studies in 2003 and 2011, first in the critical edition of “Metastassis-Analyse”, an auto-analysis written by Xenakis in 1954, but which had remained unpublished (« MÉTASTASSIS-Analyse: un texte inédit de Iannis Xenakis sur Metastasis », Revue de Musicologie 89/1, juil. 2003, p. 129-187) and later, when Xenakis’s archives were made available at the BnF, by consulting voluminous sketch material associated with Metastasis, I was able to understand the last developments of Xenakis’s own practice in this work (« Xenakis et le sérialisme: l’apport d’une analyse génétique de Metastasis », Intersections – Revue Canadienne de Musique 31/2, nov. 2011, p. 3-22.). These articles complete one another and should ideally be read as a pair.

Resumo: É quase impossível traçar uma reflexão acerca das diversas abordagens composicionais atuantes na segunda metade do Século XX, sem passar, necessariamente, por um comentário sobre a função exercida pelo código musical no processo... more

Resumo: É quase impossível traçar uma reflexão acerca das diversas abordagens composicionais atuantes na segunda metade do Século XX, sem passar, necessariamente, por um comentário sobre a função exercida pelo código musical no processo composicional e os diversos sistemas notacionais emergentes nesse período. O trabalho que segue, objetiva analisar dialeticamente (sob a luz da teoria da linguagem) a função dada a notação musical, de modo a apontar certas contradições e descompassos entre o desenvolvimento formal do código e sua função linguística.
//
Abstract: It is almost impossible to draw a reflection about the different compositional approaches active in the second half of the twentieth century without passing necessarily by a comment on the role of musical code in the compositional process and the various emerging notational systems employed in this period. The work that follows, aims to analyze dialectically (in the light of the theory of language) the function given to the musical notation, to point certain contradictions and dissonances between the formal development of the code and its linguistic function.

Before his radical reassessment of serialism in « La crise de la musique sérielle », Xenakis tried to improve a very personal approach to serialist technique by, linking pitches and durations considered as intervals. I published two... more

Before his radical reassessment of serialism in « La crise de la musique sérielle », Xenakis tried to improve a very personal approach to serialist technique by, linking pitches and durations considered as intervals. I published two studies in 2003 and 2011, first in the critical edition of “Metastassis-Analyse”, an auto-analysis written by Xenakis in 1954, but which had remained unpublished (« MÉTASTASSIS-Analyse: un texte inédit de Iannis Xenakis sur Metastasis », Revue de Musicologie 89/1, juil. 2003, p. 129-187) and later, when Xenakis’s archives were made available at the BnF, by consulting voluminous sketch material associated with Metastasis, I was able to understand the last developments of Xenakis’s own practice in this work (« Xenakis et le sérialisme: l’apport d’une analyse génétique de Metastasis », Intersections – Revue Canadienne de Musique 31/2, nov. 2011, p. 3-22.). These articles complete one another and should ideally be read as a pair.

The article begins with a semiotic analysis of the first movement of Arnold Schoenberg's Third String Quartet, Op.30, the purpose of which is to investigate the extent to which order-number partitioning plays a supporting role in the... more

The article begins with a semiotic analysis of the first movement of Arnold Schoenberg's Third String Quartet, Op.30, the purpose of which is to investigate the extent to which order-number partitioning plays a supporting role in the overall form of the movement. Contrary to standard semiotic practice, the entire series, rather than the motif, is used as the unit of signification. Each individual series statement is assigned to a particular category based on order-number partitioning. The results of the analysis show a strong correlation between order-number partitioning and the arch form of the work. I interpret this as a contrast or 'dialectical opposition' of contiguous versus fragmented order-number partitioning between thematic and developmental areas. This opposition between thematic and developmental treatment of material, which I understand as pivotal to the creation of dramatic contrast within the movement, is then used as a model for the investigation of other serial and non-serial dialectical oppositions, which are analysed in terms of the extent to which they play a part in this overarching opposition. The article concludes with a summary of the oppositions examined, showing how their interaction with the general thematic / developmental opposition assists in the creation of dramatic contrast.