# Is Serialism dead?



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I'll couch this dialectic in different terms. "Tone-centric" music will never die, because it is part and parcel of the way our ears hear sound. Tonality is based largely (but not exclusively) on the harmonic model, that of a fundamental tone with its higher-pitched, more subservient harmonics. In this sense, the fundamental "1" will always be what our ears gravitate toward; therefore, "tone-centric" music will always be a fundamental part of the way we hear music and sound (that guy's lawnmower is producing a tri-tone; it must need oil).

At the same time, Western music will never be totally "tone-centric," unless Harry Partch, Lamont Young, and Terry Riley's ideas take over; or unless North Korea bombs the Western world into oblivion, while simultaneously being destroyed by already-launched ICBMs, then India emerges as the world power, with its never-modulating ragas which use perfect, "just" intervals.

Western (tonal) music will always want to modulate. Therein lies the dilemma; our 12-note ET system is arbitrary, has always been arbitrary, and will continue to provide the means for its own destruction; to be "debauched" from the innocence of the fundamental, the "root," the "1," into a modulatory excursion further and further away from "momma root," into distant areas of chromatic underbrush, lost, wandering, like the character in Milton's _Paradise Lost.

_Western music has struggled, and will continue to struggle with the desire for "natural" resonance, versus geometric division of the octave and inherent symmetries of "twelve-ness." It's all Pythagoras' fault, for selling his soul to the "devil" of geometry in his flawed quest to divide "1" by other prime numbers. An impossibility, to be sure. Just as John Cage pledged to "devote his life to beating his head against that wall" that Schoenberg said would always be there, we will continue to "beat our heads" against the wall of natural resonance vs. geometry...

I'm feeling quite philosophical these days. I think I shall begin writing poetry. What better occupation for a philosopher?
_




_I'm thinking of 200 Motels; but Zappa was such an eclectic. I've been accused of this same eclecticism; I'm a man who does not recognize his own limitations. My dear COAG, you sell "serialism" short. It's not just a style, it's a way of life, of thinking, of being. "Serialism" will never die, nor will tonality. As long as there's a guy left on earth with a loin-cloth playing a bamboo flute, there'll be another guy trying to figure out how to make a different-keyed flute, and how to space the holes...

For me, serialism is just the symptom of a larger "problem." Thus, to pose "serialism" against tonality, as if it were the opposite, dark counterpoint of tonality, is flawed. We need to apply the same modicum of "tough love" to tonality as we do to the rest of it; if Dr. Phil were a music theorist, he would have us closely examine the imperfections of tonality, and not let it "get away" with a thing.


----------

