# Serialism Reconciling with Tonality



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

The grey area between serialism and tonality, if looked at in terms of advanced serial thought, is struggling to reconcile certain aspects of serialism with tonality. Most listeners here who are vehemently anti-serial are probably unaware of this aspect of serialism.

"All-interval tetrachords" and "all-triad hexachords," are certain sets (out of all the possible sets) which exhibit certain symmetries, such as producing the same set of pitch letter-names under inversion. As I have said in my past posts and blogs, pitch names are tied to pitch identity, a tonal concept, rather than being quantities, as in interval distance.

Thus, using these special-case sets, the composer is able to control the vertical, as well as horizontal consequences of several 'stacked' rows, thus producing controlled harmonic effects, yet never straying from serial principles.

Milton Babbitt is responsible for generating interest in these all-interval sets, although his music (excepting his broadway-style songs) does not reflect an interest in "reconciling" 12-tone ideas with tonality. Elliott Carter comes closer to exemplifying this reconciliation; and George Perle, whose music is largely unknown, espouses these same concepts in his book "Twelve-Tone Tonality."

Excerpts paraphased from Arnold Whitall's Serialism:

Steve Reich said "the reality of cadence to a key or modal center is basic in all the music of the world, Western and non-Western. This reality is also related to the primacy of the intervals of the fifth, fourth, and octave in all the world's music as well as in the physical acoustics of sound. Similarly for the regular rhythmic pulse. Any theory of music that eliminates these realities is doomed to a marginal role in the music of the world. The postman will never whistle Schoenberg."

Reich is not putting-down Schoenberg, but is saying that Schoenberg's best works pre-dated his adoption of the 12-tone system. But Reich is trying to maximise the differences between serialism and his music, minimalism.

Reich does not pursue the possibility that even if serialism eliminates such 'realities' as the acoustic primacy of certain intervals, compositional practice can effectively recontextualize these realities in ways which still remain true to serial method. Elliott Carter is a good example of this.

British composer Richard Barrett (b.1959) wrote in 1988 that "As far as I am concerned, the modernist project is still in its early stages...it is far too early to speculate meaningfully on what the implications of this may end up being."


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