The Death of Serialism?

[Ken B]

There is often quite a clear harmonic hierarchy in Webern, regardless of the use of tone rows. Babbitt follows suit for the most part too.
One only needs to read the scores to see the way he progresses through different harmonic stabilities, just like the renaissance music he was influenced by, or even Bach. It doesn't take a completely different approach, not at all.
If you wanted to truly understand what is going on, try a Schenker analysis.

You've given the game away. I said serialism was really about the ism, and you have confessed as much. If you need something like "a Schenker analysis" to understand the music then the music is really an exercise in the application of an applied theory -- the ism.

[nathanb]

I have become so fucking jaded with music forums lately.

[Mahlerian]

You've given the game away. I said serialism was really about the ism, and you have confessed as much. If you need something like "a Schenker analysis" to understand the music then the music is really an exercise in the application of an applied theory -- the ism.

You need theory to understand the construction of Bach or Mozart too.  What's your point?

[bwv 1080]

You dont need theory to listen to Webern, just open ears.  The sense of time, phrasing and space that stems from the compostional techniques becomes apparant and requires no knowledge of tome rows, Schenkerian analysis or anything else.  The phrasing is gestural and once you get that, it all falls in place

[Contemporaryclassical]

You've given the game away. I said serialism was really about the ism, and you have confessed as much. If you need something like "a Schenker analysis" to understand the music then the music is really an exercise in the application of an applied theory -- the ism.

Rubbish, that's not what I was saying. What I said is, serialism can be broken down very conveniently just like diatonic music. You don't need any specific method. But regarding Schenker, it is a form of analysis that breaks down whatever the music is, "tonal" or "atonal", to it's fundamental functions. You can do it on Mozart to understand what he's doing. You should probably do it on Bach too, you can do it on Schoenberg, Elliott Carter. The list goes on.

I never stated that it was needed, as you should have payed attention to what I wrote. You can see a linear progression just by looking at a score alone, you don't need analysis tools to realize that there is a series of developing harmonic progressions in a Webern or Schoenberg piece.


And there is no game to give away either Ken

[Contemporaryclassical]

You dont need theory to listen to Webern, just open ears.  The sense of time, phrasing and space that stems from the compostional techniques becomes apparant and requires no knowledge of tome rows, Schenkerian analysis or anything else.  The phrasing is gestural and once you get that, it all falls in place

Exactly

[nathanb]

You need theory to understand the construction of Bach or Mozart too.  What's your point?

You need exponentially more theory to understand either of those two, tbh. Serialism is such a simple concept by comparison.

[nathanb]

Amen brutha! 

Maybe you should give your contemporary forum another shot. I wouldn't mind talking about music more if so many people weren't around to reliably shit all over it.

[Ken B]

Exactly

Exactly what you first denied actually.

[Monsieur Croche]

Schenker -- is a form of analysis that breaks down whatever the music is, "tonal" or "atonal", to it's fundamental functions. You can do it on Mozart to understand what he's doing. You should probably do it on Bach too, you can do it on Schoenberg, Elliott Carter. The list goes on.

Shenker's approach to analysis is laden with the theorist's personal beliefs, and agenda / agendae.
He designed it to 'work' and show that...
1.) Tonal music was not only superior, but the only truly good music.
2.) that his method would (somehow?) reveal that German music was far superior to any other music. [Oy, vey ist mir!]

It is most useful, then, for tonal music, including, I suppose, the later phases of tonality in the late romantic vein and their denser harmonic usage and sometimes greater length.

Elliot Carter -- composer and theorist -- said he had looked into it, and found it 'useful,' to, for example, see if over the course of its duration a piece had, say, dropped down one octave;  he found it of little or no other usefulness at all ;-)

'Normal' Roman numeral analysis can get you so bogged down in step-by-step details that it is possible to miss the larger point.  Ergo, the premise of looking at a piece more widely and globally, i.e. more of an overview from its beginning its end, is good;  following Shenker's specific methods or 'rules' is not always so applicable, or good.


Best regards.

[millionrainbows]

Not sure I agree, but granting everything you say - so what? Should I listen to Webern's or Babbitt's music differently? 

When I listen to Webern, I listen for areas of intervals which seem to crop up; areas of fifths, tritones, thirds, etc, but as intervals, not as tonal steps in reference to a tonic. This is going to be the harmonic substance of 12-tone and serial music; the ordering of pitches not only creates themes, motifs, and linear entities, but the ordering also fixes interval relationships between adjacent notes. Babbitt was interested in special-case rows or sets which remained 'the same' under different transformations (inversions, etc), and "all-interval" sets. The reason for this is that it increased the 'predictability' of the material, both horizontally and vertically. This would allow him to produce areas where certain intervals would dominate or recur in the same ways, thus producing a "12-tone tonality" as George Perle called it.

As such, serial music and music based on the above principles will always sound "atonal" and will not create an overriding sense of tonality. If it does produce emphasis on localized tone centers or pitch-centricities, these will also be discreet as "intervallic shapes," independent from any single pitch reference. As such, these will be independent templates which move freely. There will be no dominating pitch reference or "tonality" in this kind of music.

Otherwise, music created from harmonic considerations, creating an hierarchy of reference, will always sound like some form of tonality.

Most music around the world has no concept of harmony but is tonal.

The only requirement for tonality is a central tonic note. Additionally, it can be tonal for other reasons that are not 'harmonic' (as in simultaneous sounding of notes). For example, Thai music is strictly melodic, but it uses a 7-note scale. Scales divide the octave, and have 'starting notes' or are presented as scales in this way. These characteristics of scales imply tonality, as well as repetition, what's the lowest note, etc. Scales are a device of harmonically based music, even if used strictly melodically.

The concept of harmony really came about in the 17th century and carried through contemporary popular music and other genres.  Carter's music is very harmonic but certainly atonal under any definition of the word.

I disagree that traditional harmony, based on tonal hierarchies, 'carried through' to Elliott Carter and the like.

in a strict, literal definition, "harmony" is the simultaneous sounding of more than one pitch. That's not what I mean by "harmonically based music." We must clarify the distinction between "harmony" as used in tonality with functions in relation to a key note, and "harmony" as simply meaning stacks of pitches.

Any music based on symmetrical scales, like Debussy's whole tone pieces or Messiaen's early music will necessarily lack a tonal center, but wont be fully chromatic.

I've already explained the Debussy elsewhere. The whole tone scale does not "lack" a tonal center: it can have seven possible tonal centers, and no stable fifth to go with any of them, so it implies an "unstable" tonality. Debussy places a bass note under it at the end of the piece (Voilies or whatever it was).

The tonality of many late romantic pieces like Liszt's Nuages Gris is also debatable.

Lizst is harmonically-based tonal music.

Also, its not that difficult to write a rigorous 12-tone piece that uses conventional triads and melodic movement and make it sound like late romantic chromaticism.

Now we are getting into gray areas of tonality in its most weakened states, and obscuring the principles which make tonality "tonal" and 12-tone music not tonal. I've had to argue these points countless times.

Even simpler, just play some rows over a drone.

This would be chromatic tonality, because the drone is a reference. Miles Davis did this on "The Cellar Door Sessions."

[millionrainbows]

There is often quite a clear harmonic hierarchy in Webern, regardless of the use of tone rows. Babbitt follows suit for the most part too.

I'm skeptical of the use of 'harmonic hierarchy' in this way. It conflates the idea of a "tonal hierarchy" (which creates tonality) with an unspecified, vague use of the term as applied to Webern and Babbitt. Explanation is called for.

"Harmonic stability" is not tonality.

[millionrainbows]

You dont need theory to listen to Webern, just open ears.  The sense of time, phrasing and space that stems from the compostional techniques becomes apparant and requires no knowledge of tome rows, Schenkerian analysis or anything else.  The phrasing is gestural and once you get that, it all falls in place

True; you listen to Webern as music.

But when I do, I don't try to hear a tonality, and I have confidence in listening this way, gained by the knowledge that tonality is not there, regardless. I listen to Webern more linearly, for motifs, intervals, and shapes.

[Karl Henning]

Shenker's approach to analysis is laden with the theorist's personal beliefs, and agenda / agendae.
He designed it to 'work' and show that...
1.) Tonal music was not only superior, but the only truly good music.
2.) that his method would (somehow?) reveal that German music was far superior to any other music. [Oy, vey ist mir!]

Ravi Shenker?

[millionrainbows]

To understand serial music, you have to understand tonal music, and what makes it tonal.

Also, you have to realize that tonal music had become more & more chromatic by Wagner's and Schoenberg's time.

Originally, tonality was based on 7-note scales, with key areas & key signatures, and modulated to different keys. Also, tonality was originally based on triads and their consonances: root, major third, and fifth.

The 12-note scale developed out of Pythagoran procedures of "stacking" fifths. At the 12th cycle (C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-F), they stopped, thinking that the cycle had overlapped on to itself, but this was merely a "close enough" stopping point, in order to "close" the octave. Thus, the Pythagoran comma, as it is called, was adjusted by 2 cents (a very small amount) to make all the notes equal.

Thus, the present day chromatic scale favors fifths (only 2 cents flat), but major thirds suffered: they became 14 cents sharp.

So "tonality" works fine if you stay in one or two keys, and maybe modulate 2 or three keys away (C-G-D-E) or (C-F-Bb-Eb). This is where Valotti and mean-tone temperaments came in, to give better thirds within a close range. Outside this range produced what are called "wolf fifths" which do not work.

So when chromaticism come in, tonality does not work as well. Its original basis of consonant triads is gone, replaced by equally "out-of-tune" triads.

With all 12 keys in use, the chromatic scale must be as even as possible throughout its range; thus the gradual rise and achievement of equal-tempered tuning, in use today.

After late Romantic tonality became almost totally chromatic, musical thinking began to turn to the 12-note chromatic scale as its starting point. This was a natural consequence of chromaticism; the reference back to tonality, cited by Wagner aficionados as "extended tonality" was only paying lip-service to tonal tradition; the "sound" of tonality was already gone, and tonality further became an abstracted, idealized idea of what it was originally intended to be: consonant sound.

[kishnevi]

If someone wants to follow-up on Shenker,  Charles Rosen discusses him the in "The Classical Style". It's too long to quote here, but can be found in Part I, Chapter 2, starting on page 32. He found Shenker more useful than Carter did, but thought his method of limited use, and no use at all in nontonal works.

[Cato]

Here is the 13th note, and the 14th, and the 15th...etc.

https://www.youtube.com/v/ivsHkXY5LMk

[Karl Henning]

If someone wants to follow-up on Shenker,  Charles Rosen discusses him the in "The Classical Style". It's too long to quote here, but can be found in Part I, Chapter 2, starting on page 32. He found Shenker more useful than Carter did, but thought his method of limited use, and no use at all in nontonal works.

Now you remind me, I do recall.  Entirely to the point. Worth specifically noting that even for tonal music, the use is limited.  One story I remember is Schoenberg being shown a Shenkerian graph for the Eroica, and responding, "But where is my favorite passage in the first movement?  Oh, these tiny notes over here."

[kishnevi]

Now you remind me, I do recall.  Entirely to the point. Worth specifically noting that even for tonal music, the use is limited.  One story I remember is Schoenberg being shown a Shenkerian graph for the Eroica, and responding, "But where is my favorite passage in the first movement?  Oh, these tiny notes over here."

Rosen included that anecdote in his discussion of Shenker.

[Karl Henning]

Must be where I read it!