Klarinet Archive - Posting 000929.txt from 2000/07

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Serialism
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:36:55 -0400

A very nicely outlined and articulated mini-treatise on the serial and
12-tone compositional techniques, Andrea.

-- Neil

--- Andrea Bergamin <a.bergamin@-----.it> wrote:

> Serialism is a way to control "some" aspect of the composition.
> Generally speaking, you can organize pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres...
> in a sort of matrix. Dodecaphony or "twelve note composition" involves only
> pitches. You have to take 12 notes enclosed in an octave with none of them
> omitted or used twice, in an orders called series or row.
> For example... Webern's String Quartet op.28...
> the row is : sib la do si re# mi do# re solb fa lab sol (the beginning (sib
> la do si) is the name BACH)...

> There are 12 notes, no repetition and no omission.
> This is the ORIGINAL row (or "basic set" as it's called in the USA). You can
> read it reversed (from right to the left) and you have the RETROGADE.
> Then you can invert it (ascending intervals in the original become
> equivalent descending intervals and vice versa) for the INVERSION and revert
> it to obtain the RETROGADE INVERTED.
>
> You can have 4 row of 12 notes multiplied for 12 transposition and you have
> 144 rows. The total number of possible twelve-note series is 479,001,600 but each
> composer designs the series he uses to each individual composition.
> as exercise... take the row I've written above and built the RI beginning
> with sib then the R and the I beginning with sol and you will discover one
> of the secrets of this particular series. (there are 2 secrets left...)

> I agree with Sean. Serialism is a failure because the esthetical background
> is changed.
> With the series music became a mathematical or statistical problem: you have
> to define a matrix and the score will be just a writing exercise.
> It is some sort of neo-medieval concept of art and artist role.
> The composer refuses his own conceptual and creative power and this is the
> emancipation of music. Music doesn't need the composer and, more deeply,
> music doesn't need the man.
> This need MANY messages... I hope you has understand my english.

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