Editing Serialism (section)

==Basic definitions==
Serialism is a method,{{sfn|Griffiths|2001|p=116}} "highly specialized technique",{{sfn|Wörner|1973|p=196}} or "way"{{sfn|Whittall|2008|p=1}} of [[Musical composition#Composing music|composition]]. It may also be considered "a philosophy of life (''[[Worldview|Weltanschauung]]''), a way of relating the human mind to the world and creating a completeness when dealing with a subject".{{sfn|Bandur|2001|p=5}}

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 [[atonality|atonal music]].{{sfn|Griffiths|2001|p=116}}

"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.{{sfn|Frisius|1998|p=1327}} The term's use in connection with music was first introduced in French by [[René Leibowitz]] in 1947,{{sfn|Leibowitz|1947}} and immediately afterward by [[Humphrey Searle]] in English, as an alternative translation of the German {{lang|de|Zwölftontechnik}} ([[twelve-tone technique]]) or {{lang|de|Reihenmusik}} (row music); it was independently introduced by Stockhausen and [[Herbert Eimert]] into German in 1955 as {{lang|de|serielle Musik}}, with a different meaning,{{sfn|Frisius|1998|p=1327}} 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 (music)|set]]—or [[Tone row|row]]—of pitches or [[pitch class]]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",{{sfn|Schoenberg|1975|p=218}}{{sfn|Anon.|2008}} or [[Twelve-tone technique|dodecaphony]], 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Carey |first=Christian |date=January 2024 |title=The Cambridge Companion to Serialism, ed. Martin Iddon, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 418 pp. £29.99. - Joseph N. Straus, The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis, Thirty-Three Graphic Analyses, Oxford University Press, 2022, 230 pp. £64.00. |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0040298223000712/type/journal_article |journal=Tempo |language=en |volume=78 |issue=307 |pages=97–101 |doi=10.1017/S0040298223000712 |issn=0040-2982|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

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.{{sfn|Mead|1985|pp=129–130}}

The basic set may have additional restrictions, such as the requirement that it use each [[interval (music)|interval]] only once.{{cn|date=December 2020}}

===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".{{sfn|Boulez|1954|p=18}}{{sfn|Griffiths|1978|p=37}}

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".{{sfn|Maconie|2005|p=119}} For example, Stockhausen's early serial works, such as ''[[Kreuzspiel]]'' and ''[[Formel (Stockhausen)|Formel]]'', "advance in unit sections within which a preordained set of pitches is repeatedly reconfigured&nbsp;... The composer's model for the distributive serial process corresponds to a development of the Zwölftonspiel of Josef Matthias Hauer".{{sfn|Maconie|2005|loc=56}} Goeyvaerts's ''Nummer 4'' <blockquote>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''.{{sfn|Sabbe|1977|p=114}}</blockquote>
[[Henri Pousseur]], after initially working with twelve-tone technique in works like ''Sept Versets'' (1950) and ''Trois Chants sacrés'' (1951),<blockquote>evolved away from this bond in ''Symphonies pour quinze Solistes'' [1954–55] and in the ''Quintette'' [''à la mémoire d’Anton Webern'', 1955], and from around the time of ''Impromptu'' [1955] encounters whole new dimensions of application and new functions.</blockquote>
<blockquote>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.{{sfn|Sabbe|1977|p=264}}</blockquote>
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]]", creating a succession of different situations that are sometimes chromatic and dissonant and sometimes diatonic and consonant.{{sfn|Locanto|2010|p=157}} 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".{{sfn|Bosseur|1989|pp=60–61}}

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]]'' (1966), and from [[national anthem]]s in ''[[Hymnen]]'' (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]]'', the cycle of seven operas he composed between 1977 and 2003.{{sfn|Kohl|2002|pp=97 et passim}}