Serialism - History of Serial Music

History of Serial Music

Serialism first appeared in the 1920s, with antecedents predating that decade. 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 (Whittall 2008, 1).

The serialization of rhythm, dynamics, and other elements of music was partly fostered by the work of Olivier Messiaen and his analysis students, including Karel Goeyvaerts and Boulez, in post-war Paris.

Read more about this topic:  Serialism

Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, serial and/or music:

    Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.
    —G.M. (George Macaulay)

    When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.
    William James (1842–1910)

    And the serial continues:
    Pain, expiation, delight, more pain,
    A frieze that lengthens continually, in the lucky way
    Friezes do, and no plot is produced,
    Nothing you could hang an identifying question on.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    The harp that once through Tara’s halls The soul of music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls As if that soul were fled.
    Thomas Moore (1779–1852)