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It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Now, that's just nuts.

Yes, serial music is a subset of atonal music, larger or smaller depending on how broadly or narrowly you define it. It was a famous early attempt to devise a rigorous system of melody and harmony using the equal tempered 12-tones (or intervals) but without the traditional keys and scales. So no major, minor, diminished or augmented scales. Also no modal, whole tone, pentatonic, hexatonic, or even chromatic.

I view the abandonment of keys and tonal centers as by far the most important innovation of serial music, far more than the particular system used in its place. You say serialism in particular is the problem, yet that particular system allowed Schoenberg to adhere very faithfully and conservatively to many aspects of traditional 19th century classical music other than the admittedly fundamental one of key. Later, atonalists wandered much further afield.

"I contend that serial music is incapable of expressing the lighter side of human nature." That's what's nuts in your otherwise reasonable comments (though many of your comments merely reflect tastes that are vastly different than mine). Maybe Schoenberg, Webern and Berg weren't too interested in expressing the lighter side of human nature in their music. Schoenberg especially was apparently a sourpuss who got no closer to humor than jeering sarcasm. But making such absolute pronouncements is a dangerous game. The precise methods of serialism did not become universal. Even Schoenberg did not invariably use them. But its influence reached composers who did write light music.

Leonard Rosenman was an Oscar-winning film and TV composer and a composition student of Schoenberg, Sessions and Dallapicola. Yes, not everything he did was serial music in a strict sense, or even atonal. But some of it was, or at least significantly influenced by it. Sure, this material is often used in contexts other than comedy. But it is often used in lighter genres, such as science fiction, The Twilight Zone being a famous example. That show had more than a slight streak of sly humor. And no Schoenberg, no Rosenman. No Rosenman or Jerry Goldsmith, another important movie and TV composer influenced by the second Viennese school, no Twilight Zone, or at least not the same distinctive Twilight Zone music.




Edits: 05/11/16 05/11/16 05/11/16 05/11/16

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