Yes, what is serialism? Is it something to do with breakfast vitality? Or perhaps Lois Lane’s conquest of Superman extended over a 13½ episodes? Well, look at it this way - it depends on how you spell it… if you spell it beginning with a “s” it means Lois Lane and her schmaltzy boy-friend from Krypton. If you spell it with a “c” it means perforation of the eardrum from exploding rice-bubbles. If you spell it beginning with anything else, you’re a FINK.
No. quite seriously, serialism is a serious business as far as a method in composition is concerned. It was first used by a chap called Hauer, and a type-writer mechanic called Arnold Schoenberg. The latter has proved to be by far the most important.
Romanticism, (or should it be called Esoteric-erratic-erotic-unethical-evasivism), in central Europe, was beginning to stagnate rapidly, with a cloying effect covering everything with thick treacle, and with the death of Wagner and Liszt, tonality was its place, tonality being very thing with the Tonic, Dominant chords losing their power almost completely. A characteristic work of this period (early 1900’s) is Schoenberg’s “Verklarte Nacht” (“Transfigured Night”) for String sextet, written as early as 1899, later orchestrated by the composer in 1917 for string orchestra. When received by the public in the early 1900’s it was considered too way out and dissonant for their plebeian tastes. It must be remembered that today his first works are “classified” as belonging to the romanticism of the post-Wagnerian era and it must be borne in mind, that at the time they were written, Tristanian chromaticism was still hotly debated; and the chromaticism of Schoenberg’s early works, driven to the borderline of tonality, hardly could be called a generally accepted idiom. In fact, much of it was “disturbingly” new. To him, the possibilities of the chromatic idiom within the framework of a system in which each sound referred to a tonal centre seemed exhausted. Consequently, in order to retain the rich melodic expressiveness of chromaticism, i.e. the use of all 12 notes within the octave, it became necessary to him to free chromaticism from the shackles of traditional harmony. The prevalence of the consonance, which forces the ear, at least by implication, to hear tonal centres, had to give way to the prevalence of the dissonance.
In 1909, with his “Three Pieces for Piano”, Op. 11, the new idiom made its appearance. You can imagine the reaction of the squares at the time, twisting madly to Offenbach. Anyway, Our Man in Vienna refused to dig the whims of the middle-class bourgeois finks and in 1912 appeared Schoenberg’s melodrama. “Three times seven poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire”. This was the ultimate in chromaticism, and Schoenberg, who was a shrewd type-wrter mechanic, realised the dangers of musical anarchism (sounds good anyway) in “boundless atonality” (nothing to do with the refrain to our traditional “Botany Boy” folk-song), and formalised his ideas into a strict system, commonly known as the 12-note system (in other words S(C)erialism, you clots).
After wasting much time and space giving you ignorant readers (those who are stupid enough to read this ridiculous paper) a lead up to serialism, I shall sprout my superior knowledge (of girls) and dilate something about serialism itself. It is basically this. Like, you discover first of all that there are 11 (oops) notes in an 8ve, and find a pair of dice and toss for the order in which you are going to place the notes. Hence you get the serial, (or basic tone-row). What you do with these 12 notes, I dunno. Actually, your composition which you are going to execute, whether it be a Symphony, Opera, 2¾ bar Oratorio, Blues, T.V. Commercial, or Con. School song, should consist entirely of these 12 notes (naturally, as all Western music is made up of a 12 note octave). More specifically, they are to be used exactly in the same order every time. So therefore you get exactly the same order every time. So therefore you get the same notes repeated 642 times. No, it's not as simple as that; if you wish to use note no.5, you must use the four preceding notes as a chord, a scale, or a counterpoint against it. As well as using the basic tone-row, there are three other immediate alternatives: A) Inversion of the tone-row B) Retrograde motion to the tone-row and C) Inversion of the retrograde motion. And as there are 12 notes to the ‘ve, then there are 48 versions of the original tone-row (4 versions of every note in the 8ve).
Of course, each composer has his own arbitrary rules, for instance Schoenberg forbad himself any repeated notes, but later on conceded himself the liberty of repetition, but only for rhythmic purposes. But with Webern, any repeated material was taboo. It is a fairly recognised fact that consecutive 8ves are endsville, along with 5ths. To bring some order to the seemingly pointless use of serial, Schoenberg reverted to the use of strict counterpoint, and once again, as in the Renaissance, mirror canons were used. (A mirror canon is a device where 2 or more parts appear on a paper simultaneously both the right way up and upside down, i.e. as if a mirror lay between them, making one the reflection of the other). Also the use of the “canon cancrizans”, a canon in which the imitating voice gives out the theme not as the first voice gave it, but with the notes in reverse order (retrograde motion). This gives the shamozel some sort of guideposts on which to lean. Webern had a different approach to serialism than did Schoenberg, and all traditional or classical features were out, and as I said before he avoided any repeated matter, and we get tiny little forms emerging, some only 9 bars long. His longest serial work (his Symphony) is only 10 minutes long (compared to Wagner’s 22 hours for his Ring Cycle. Care to join me for a spot of morning-tea time, Wagner?) Webern helped to develop a style of music (or rather a technique in music) called Pointalism, a term borrowed from painting (where it refers to the use of separate dots of pure colour instead of mixed pigments) and applied to music where the notes seemed to be applied in isolated “dots” rather than in normal melodic curves (you know, like a company directors graph). This was later exploited by Stockhausen and Nono in certain parts of their music (namely, the beginning and the last note).
Well, well, all you sloshy lovers of romantic garbage, now you know how to write note serialism, try your hand at Total Serialism. Actually, it’s quite good fun, all you’ve got to do is:
Read a dictionary and find out the names of the notes, where they appear on the stave, find out how many notes there are in the 8ve, and toss for your order of notes.
Find yourself a roulette or raffle wheel, work out a common unit of time, and spin for your relative units of time and give one for each respective note.
See if you can devise 12 different levels of dynamics, and assign one level to each note.
Guess how many versions of the serial you want and write them out.
Sharpen pencil (actually, a pen would be better, because there is no chance of making a mistake, unless you’re normal like me).
Try to pucker up your face into a horrible grimace, froth at the mouth, have a photo of a tin-can sculpture in front of you for inspiration.
Attack manuscript with vigour.
Consult a Macquarie Street Psychiatrist to put you away for being so ridiculous for attempting to write such (yeccch) tripe, and hand yourself into the police to murder music as it stands.
Try your hand at G. and S.
This article was originally published in Con-Script Opus 1, No. 1, of November 1964, published by the Conservatorium Students' Union (the former name of the Association). The physical copy can be found in the Archive of the State Library of New South Wales; it has been digitised by Alexander Poirier.