# Total Serialism Appreciation Thread



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Total serialism: probably indefensible in theory. But what about in practice?

I'm not well-versed in this area myself, but I like these works:

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte

I think this was the first piece from the Darmstadt school era I heard and liked. If you're curious, Stockhausen explains his serial procedure a little bit in this Q&A, and it sounds absolutely insane. Why would anyone write that way? But the effect is disorienting, mesmerizing and weirdly ecstatic.

Milton Babbitt - Philomel

People whose whole opinion of Babbitt rests on The Essay will be surprised at how expressive this is. Still the only Babbitt piece I really like, though.

Luigi Nono - Il Canto Sospeso (music starts at 9:07)

From some cursory reading I gather that Nono's use of total serial procedures is not that strict, but they're present. This is the only work of his I really know; I keep meaning to explore the rest. It's a cantata setting letters by political prisoners. Bleak and haunting.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I like the works you mentioned, and would not normally see Kontakte as a serial work, but if you post a statement, I can't argue with the creator. What I mean is, I hear Kontakte as improvisatory and airy, loose...I would put Zietmasse and Kontrapunkte more squarely in the realm of serialism, aesthetically. And the Klavierstucke, of course.

Philomel is a wonderful work as well, and exists in two performances, one by Judith Bettina and one by Bethany Beardslee; I like the Beardslee best. Other Babbitt you might like are Ensembles for Synthesizer, and the Tzadik disc. 

I've been listening to that hard-core piano sonata by Barraque after somebody posted a YouTube of it...it is unrelenting, and uncompromising. It challenges you.

Davis Froom is an interesting composer, as are Wourinen and Theo Verbey, and Peter Schat. I find George Perle interesting as well. There's probably tons of other, newer things I have not heard. Maybe some other serial fans will enlighten us.


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## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

I always feel that the Italian school of serial composers goes somewhat unnoticed for the most part.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Are those Donatoni works available on CD?


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Total serialism: probably indefensible in theory. But what about in practice?
> 
> I'm not well-versed in this area myself, but I like these works:
> 
> ...


Thanks for starting this thread,

When a anti-serialist shows up we can direct them to the 12-tone thread.


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## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

science said:


> Are those Donatoni works available on CD?


The quartet is only available on LP, but the Piano work is on CD with a lot of his other piano music.


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## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> I've been listening to that hard-core piano sonata by Barraque after somebody posted a YouTube of it...it is unrelenting, and uncompromising. It challenges you.


I'm surprised you feel that way, since I find it to be one of the most accessible serial works. The second movement sounds almost Debussy-ian to my ears.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Le marteau sans maître.

:tiphat:

ça va sans dire.

I'm going to play it this evening, in memory of a great Boulezian, CoAG, who left the cyberspace for the real world. Good luck to him!


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I wouldn't know Total serial from corn flakes, but I'll be watching this thread with interest.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Is anyone a fan of Boulez's second piano sonata? And if so, can you explain why? I have yet to find an entry point.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> View attachment 78718
> 
> 
> Is anyone a fan of Boulez's second piano sonata? And if so, can you explain why? I have yet to find an entry point.


I respect the work, have had moments of lucidity regarding it while listening, and can remember the opening gesture very well. It's difficult for me to follow, though, and maybe one of these days I'll have to sit down and listen to it a bunch of times until it sinks in. Boulez's later music is far easier to understand.

It's not a total serialist work, though, as far as I'm aware. I thought that in Boulez's output that was limited to experiments like Polyphonie X and Structures I and II, none of which I particularly like as music.

I think that total serialism is one of those ideas which was interesting in the degree to which it failed combined with the fact that many of the composers who tried it without success turned around and immediately learned from that failure to create more engaging music.


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

Donald Martino (1931-2005) was a Pulitzer Prize winning composer who wrote some pretty engaging serial music. He was a student of Babbitt and Sessions, and like Babbitt was interested in jazz.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLttYBWHHf3pCUgBd8z6GWJYmcKWV08LJa


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Mahlerian said:


> I respect the work, have had moments of lucidity regarding it while listening, and can remember the opening gesture very well. It's difficult for me to follow, though, and maybe one of these days I'll have to sit down and listen to it a bunch of times until it sinks in. Boulez's later music is far easier to understand.


Now I'm definitely intimidated if _you_ have trouble with it. I wonder if I can appreciate it as sounds at least.


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## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> Is anyone a fan of Boulez's second piano sonata? And if so, can you explain why? I have yet to find an entry point.


It's one of the most engaging piano works imo. I have listened to it over 50 times probably, and it still yields new riches. I find it much more exciting than his Structures, while still having the incredible sophistication of it. It has moments of fury, but it is a more refined fury than you would find in Xenakis, Penderecki, or Ginastera.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I think the the Babbitt string quartets make up one of the most interesting cycles of the 20th century'. I think the Barraque sonata is really expressive and accessible, but not as interesting as his clarinet concerto. 


The best Boulez piano for me is the third sonata, Constellation-Miroir. 

I am a great lover of late Webern, especially the cantatas. Pure serialism? I dunno. 

I'm also a great lover of Nono, just recently I was listening to Canto di vita e d'amore, and I really wonder if more humane, more moving, music has been written by anyone ever. And Prometeo seems to me just obviously a work of genius. 

I have no idea if Holliger is serial, but he's good and instantly accessible -- the second quartet, the Partita, the Scardanelli Zyklus. 

And similarly for Finnissy and Ferneyhough.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Regarding the overall context, to me serialism represents a certain aesthetic dialectic which is concerned with pitch, primarily. This makes it connected to the traditional elements of music and instrumental practice. For example, the Boulez Sonatas do not ask the player to go in to the back of the piano and pluck strings, or things of that nature. It's just fingers on keys.
For example, I hear Boulez as "gestures" and as moving "masses" of sound in various ways.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

As a listener, that is how I hear it, too. I did spend some time reading about 'total serialism', which I had already read about years ago :tiphat: but it never made much sense to me, except for the pitch aspect.

"*Integral serialism* or *total serialism* is the use of series for aspects such as duration, dynamics, and register as well as pitch" (Wikipedia).


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Regarding the Boulez sonata, now that I am home and can listen, I find I can indeed enjoy it in the same way as most other Boulez, as an interesting conversation I can just barely follow. It's rhythmically surprising, but not so far out there as to become rubbish. 

I do miss the percussive sounds of xylophone, etc., he seems to favor in many of his other works, but it's on my radar in the want list.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Weston said:


> I wouldn't know Total serial from corn flakes, but I'll be watching this thread with interest.


:lol::clap: Just out of this world hilarious...


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Lots to explore in this thread already. Keep it coming!

I had thought the Boulez sonata used integral serial elements. I find Structures IA even more impenetrable, I'm afraid.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Even Boulez himself considered Structures to be a failed experiment, aesthetically, but it did prove to him that a system could be self-generating. It has a certain curious sense of entropy, of something with no forward progression, but a stasis.

His Sonatas are much more dynamic and full of life. I hear them as series of gestures. For example, even though a lower-register tone cluster might be based on some permutation of a series, its net result is that of a cluster of sound. The pitches are not discernable, but are experienced as a low mass of sound, and its placement and relation to other sounds is as "gesture." There are moments in Varese like this.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Yes. Pitch is not important in this music in the same way as it is in tonal music or in early 12-tone music.

What you are aware in terms of pitch is

-texture (density of pitches, voicing)
-_change_ in pitch material from one moment to the next
-degree of dissonance, sometimes
-register

My difficulty with some of this music may stem from the fact that I want pitch to have more meaning than this in music. The Italian serialists seem to have achieved this.


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