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Serialism and Its Contradictions Author(s): Allan F. Moore Source: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jun., 1995), pp. 77-95 Published by: Croatian Musicological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/836966 . Accessed: 16/03/2014 05:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Croatian Musicological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 193.219.130.250 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 05:48:20 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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  • Serialism and Its ContradictionsAuthor(s): Allan F. MooreSource: International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Jun.,1995), pp. 77-95Published by: Croatian Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/836966 .Accessed: 16/03/2014 05:48

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

    .

    JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

    .

    Croatian Musicological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toInternational Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music.

    http://www.jstor.org

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  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 77

    SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS1

    ALLAN F. MOORE London College of Music, School of Creative, Cultural and Social Studies, Thames Valley University, St Mary's Road, Ealing, LONDON W5 5RF, United Kingdom

    UDC: 78.021

    Original Scientific Paper Izvorni znanstveni 6lanak Received: June 24, 1994 Primljeno: 24. lipnja 1994. Accepted: January 25, 1995 Prihva4eno: 25.

    sijeinja 1995.

    Abstract - Resume

    This article proposes that the demise of se- rialism as a compositional language is due to contradictions inherent within it, relating to such matters as: the status of the serial >orderaggregate>meaning

  • 78 A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    developing into the abstract watercolours of Kandinsky; thus the attack on chro- nological time in the novels of Woolf or Joyce and the disintegration of Eliot's The Waste Land; thus the unadorned functionalism of the Bauhaus and the concept of large-scale, rational and efficient urban planning; thus the fragmentation of melodic gesture first in Erwartung, later in Webem's Symphony. Harvey (1989) employs the image of >>creative destruction< to describe this polyglot aesthetic position, arguing that the social ferment of the fin-de-siecle was such as to prevent the simple linear development of old ways. It is this context which suggests that the preferred view of atonality, and then serialism, as the logical outcome of late-tonal chromaticism is a construction made from the relative security of a carefully structured system.

    Additionally, modernity has been predicated upon the construction of the autonomy of the individual, from Descartes and Kant through to Adorno (see PIPPIN 1991). This became identified with a concept of aesthetic autonomy in- itially through the growing bourgeois demand for leisure commodities through the nineteenth century (see WOLFF 1987) and, subsequently, with the develop- ment of a modernism identified by Middleton as >an outraged and deliberately esoteric response to the new drive towards total commodification.>if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art

  • A. F MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 79

    Martha Hyde has drawn attention to the potential existence of such a field of contradiction:

    Disagreement about the essential nature of Schoenberg's twelve-tone method explains in part why earlier scholars such as Rufer and Leibowitz ... differ in identifying Schoenberg's first real twelve-tone piece. (HYDE 1985:140)

    Hyde goes on to situate the disagreement in the realm of >'primitive' or 'mature' uses of the method< (IBID: 140), and hence calls attention to the difference between >>serial techniques>twelve-tone method

  • 80 A. F MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    a definition of >>serialismoperations on a relatively small, tem- porally serialised pitch collection< refer to? Moreover, as Babbitt points out, the term thus defined has little explanatory power. Provisionally, then, I shall redefine >>serialism>free< permutation, at least not at a level at which a piece is >>serial>twelve-note music>twelve-note mu- sic< for music whose serial attributes may be called into question. Thus in Hyde's article, for instance, her use of the term >>twelve-tone< with reference to Schoen- berg would equate to >>aggregate serialfamiliar>serial< ordering, which has two separate aspects: that the precise order in which local events occur is of systematic relevance; and that the surface of a piece will exhibit a variety of orderings, i.e. set-classes. Bab- bitt tends not to use one fundamental set-class as the basis for an entire work (except for a work like the Second String Quartet), although of course even Schoenberg's work exhibits different set-classes on its surface as a by-product of the simultaneous use of more than one version of the set. In bars 14-15 of the Klavierstiick op. 33a, for example, this aggregate is presented: B b, F, C, E b, B, F #, A, A b, D b, D, E, G, whereas the set of the piece is of the form B b, F, C, B, A, F #, C #, D #, G, G #, D, E. Babbitt appears to hold, far more strongly than did Schoenberg, to the notion that to alter the order of presentation of pitch- classes within the aggregate actually produces a different set. This is, of course,

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  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 81

    strictly true: Schoenberg seems more to have conceived a reordering of pitches as a ?variant< of a previously presented set. Where more than one particular set-class may be in use, as in Babbitt, a reordering within any single presentation will prevent that presentation being recognized as a ?variant? of the unaltered set-class. However, where a single set-class is all-pervasive, as in Schoenberg, deviations from )correct< ordering have the capacity to be perceived as just that. This basic difference in attitude will be taken up again below, when the matter of >,serial significanceserial< are found in post-war uses of serialism in Europe to different degrees. By and large, European com- posers have tended to view the former as a far less important constituent of their methods than has Babbitt. By way of illustration, consider the highly di- vergent cases of Stockhausen and Stravinsky. Babbitt himself remarked that ))Strav- insky recently has asserted that serialism in general interests him more than the twelve-tone system as such< (BABBITT 1963:49). Such a comment is obvious when seen against a background of the >>Ricercar II< of the Cantata and of In memoriam Dylan Thomas, with their thorough employment of non-aggregate sets, but even in an acknowledged twelve-tone work such as Threni, >>Hexachords ... come to be regarded virtually as independent units, subject - as a result - to order al- teration with regard to one another...( (IBID: 50). On a very different level, consider Stockhausen's use of a series as a background device controlling more foreground events. As Harvey (1968) has argued, Stockhausen's use of tempi derived from his belief in the continuity of pitch into duration. In Klavierstiick V, Stockhausen clearly found it unnecessary to maintain twelve tempi at a background level, but is satisfied with six. For a different example, we can perhaps turn to Stock- hausen's choice of a row of thirteen notes (and, thus, a succession of twelve rather than eleven intervals) to generate Mantra. These examples alone point to a basic contradiction within serialism concerning the fundamentality of the ag- gregate, a contradiction which Babbitt's definition (quoted above) engages.

    On the relevance of serial ordering, there appears on the surface to be more agreement. For all the manifest differences between the work of Babbitt and, for example, the Boulez of Structures, book I, they share a reliance on local order (at least) as some sort of constructive principle functioning more deeply than simply considering the whole work as a single set of ordered pitches. In a work like Le marteau sans maftre, however, the position is a little different. Although it is clear that Boulez's partitioning of his initial set (BOULEZ 1975; KOBLYAKOV 1977) is of importance in giving him his basic harmonic complexes, it would not seem that immediate surface ordering has the same degree of systematic relevance that it has in Babbitt's arrays. Here, overt aggregate presentations, as in the be- ginning of movement V, are rare; >>weighted? aggregates, where one or more pitch-classes are repeated within the aggregate, are the norm. Indeed, neither the ?familiar< surface operations of serialism, nor the constructive role of the aggregate can be held to apply to the finished piece with any rigour. Thus, what is by convention >>serial< can seem to shade into ?free twelve-tone music

  • 82 A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    III

    Gerhard's thoughts on compositional method, and hence on the role of se- rialism, appeared particularly in four articles published in The Score magazine between 1952 and 1958. The point Gerhard makes most insistently, and in a va- riety of ways, is that the method which the composer chooses to use can be of no practical value whatever to the listener, thus endorsing Schoenberg's own stated position:

    It cannot, therefore, be too strongly emphasised that it [the twelve-tone method] is entirely and exclusively the concern of the composer. It does not concern the listener at all. (GERHARD 1952:280)

    In the last article, his arguments revolve around the existence of what he terms >>serial significance>... what could the notion of intrinsic serial significance possi- bly mean?< (GERHARD 1958:51). He amplifies a little later: >>...what possible >>significance< could be extracted from consciously registering the file-past of the terms of a given series in the correct order?< (ibid: 51), and:

    There are people who do pretend that they are in fact able to detect and to follow the serial thread in audition. I do not feel that I am unduly assertive in saying that they must not be believed. If they could be believed, theirs would be an odd case of auditory perversion indeed. But then, you may ask, if >>serial manipulation< is not audible, can serialism be of any >>sig- nificance< whatever? The answer is evidently: not to you as a listener or as a performer, since >>knowledge of serial operations is not required for full appreciation of the music< [quoted from STADLEN 1956:16, reporting com- ments of Webern]. To me, as a composer, the question of >>serial significance< is meaningless. (GERHARD 1958:51)

    Strong words indeed, in which he leaves his reader in no doubt as to his support for what he believes to be Webern's position. And this is, of course, a perennial problem. Paul Griffiths' criticism of Xenakis takes exactly the same line: >>Xenakis' methods must give one cause for extreme doubt that the sophistication of his mathematics is expressed in his music< (GRIFFITHS 1981:111 - my empha- sis). The same accusation has also been levelled at Babbitt. In discussing Philomel, the critic John Rockwell asks:

    But if his best music >>works< so directly, what are we to make of the fierce unapproachability of his theory? Is the alluring surface merely inadvertent, the gift wrapping for the actual musical content? (ROCKWELL 1985:29)

    A more recent, accommodating position is taken by theorist Joseph Straus: When we listen to twelve-tone music, we don't need to be able to identify the forms of the series. Instead, we need to hear the musical consequences of the series, the musical results of its ongoing transformations... As we hear our way through a piece, our ear is often led via a chain of invariants. (STRAUS 1990:147)

    Gerhard, I think, would still disagree.

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  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 83

    Compare Babbitt the theorist. He quotes Stravinsky's own comments on his Mouvements for piano and orchestra: >No theorist could determine the spelling of the note order in, for example, the flute solo near the beginning ... simply by knowing the original order< (BABBITT 1963:51) and insists:

    Certainly, Stravinsky could not have been implying that the relations and associations which endow these particular places in the Mouvements with their compositional coherence are undetectable in terms of the premises of the system and of the work; for if they are, they are irrelevant... (IBID: 52)

    which appears to be just Gerhard's point3. At first glance, it would have seemed that there might be a measure of com-

    mon ground between Gerhard and Babbitt in the latter's use of derived sets, which yield a surface permutation of a particular set-class, and the former's fond- ness for >>metamorphosed interval-relations>order< of the row is seen as something of a work-specific con-

    vention, analogous to the >order< of a scale4 (viewed as the compositional basis of tonal melody) or even of a motif:

    My rigid series begins to throw up images... or (if you like) metamorphoses already of bare interval-relations. The simple spelling of the 12-note series forwards and backwards in the correct order seems to me too much like copying the flower of my wallpaper-pattern [referring to a previous anal- ogy]. I attend only to its metamorphoses. (GERHARD 1956b:69)

    This is used as a justification for a principle of unsystematic permutation: All these variations affecting the position of the notes within the unit, whether it be the triad [in Rameau's explanation of harmony] or a hexachord, are,

    3 It should certainly be acknowledged here that Mead (1984) makes a strong case for both the significance and the audibility of the ,,serial thread

  • 84 A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    of course, the result of permutation. And this, in my opinion, is precisely what is shown in Von Heute auf Morgen, namely the acceptance of the prin- ciple of permutation (within antecedent and consequent) based on a recog- nition of the fact that beyond the actual series there is an ultimate ground, an abstract archetype - represented by the coupled hexachords - of which the individual series is only one aspect, that is, one of the possible permu- tations. (GERHARD 1952:33)

    In this respect, Gerhard's >permutations< are far indeed from Babbitt's derived sets. For Babbitt, a derived set points (among other things) to the set-class from which it was derived, since it arises from the internal ordering of that set-class. For Gerhard, a permutation only points to the unordered paired hexachords which lie in the work's conceptual background. The emphasis is on content here, not order, and so is diametrically opposed to the emphasis Babbitt has drawn in an important distinction:

    Given a collection of available elements, the choice of a subcollection of these as a referential norm provides a norm that is distinguishable by content alone; such a system, and the traditional tonal system is such, is therefore combinational. But if the referential norm is the totality of elements, there is but one such norm in terms of content, and deviations from this norm cannot exist within the system. But if an ordering is imposed upon this to- tality, and taken as a norm, this norm is so distinguished ... from the .. other possible permutations. (BABBITT 1960:247-8)

    As we can see, the issue of permutation (the method or absence of method through which ordinal positions are altered) raises a profound contradiction at the heart of serialism.

    And yet, though >serial significance< (the significance for the listener of local ordering per se) is not, for Gerhard, a part of what serialism is, or even conceivably could be, about, there is clearly some notion of local ordering which he finds important. He states:

    L'invention contraride is evidently what Schoenberg's restrictive rules are aimed at. Constraint is the whole purpose, the very raison d'etre of the method. From which it is easy to see how little the meaning of Schoenberg's idea has been understood by practitioners of a so-called >>free twelve-tone techniqueonly one of the possible permutations>rigid series

  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 85

    The couple: pitch-set, time-set is to be understood in the manner of an ar- bitrarily chosen system of co-ordinates, the >arbitrarinessarpeggiatedstyle< (the conventions he asks a listener to use) does not equate to the techniques of serialism, even as he employs them. I shall return to this point below, but even here it must be asked whether such qualitative divergence can be encompassed by serial practices.

    At first audition, the work of Gerhard's last decade may seem to have much in common with the doubly-decried ?free twelve-tone technique

  • 86 A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    nevertheless as downright silly to disparage or deplore the use of other tech- niques which other people may find more congenial. (GERHARD 1956b:63)

    Of course, ?free 12-tone technique< may not be considered a technique at all, but rather a catch-all for any number of less-determined ones.

    It seems, then, that we must differentiate not only serialism from aggregate serialism, but also distinguish between a Gerhardian permutational serialism (where the role of the aggregate is uncertain on the musical surface although ensured in the theory) and a free twelve-tone technique, and recognize that all four represent contradictory expressions of Schoenberg's invention. It should be clear from all that has gone before that Gerhard's conception of >>twelve-tone technique< is radically different from Babbitt's. And yet it seems remarkable that, by 1952, Gerhard became (to the best of my knowledge) the first composer in Europe to openly acknowledge the fundamental importance of Schoenberg's uti- lisation of hexachordal combinatoriality, a technique crucial to the development of Babbitt's style:

    According to its structure, a series can be shown to belong to one of three possible types: (a) series whose antecedent (notes 1 to 6) is reproduced by transposition in the consequent (notes 7 to 12) either in the same order or in crab-form, or else in a new permutational form ...; (b) series whose an- tecedent is inverted in the consequent, again either in the original or in the reverse order, or else in permutation ...; and (c) asymmetrical series, that is, series whose antecedent and consequent are structurally different ... Schoen- berg has consistently favoured series of the second type ... (GERHARD 1952: 30-31)

    Of all possible taxonomies, Gerhard has chosen that which highlights hexachor- dal combinatoriality as the deciding factor. Indeed, we find him asking:

    In effect, why should any surface group of interval-relations - in the hori- zontal or the vertical - which the naked eye [sic - not the ear!] can pin-point on the stave that spells the >code?, be granted privilege or priority over all the potential relations which only the combinatorial operation of the code can actualize - if we agree that the oars combinatoria

  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 87

    maftre or even to Stravinsky. Boulez' series, like Gerhard's, seems to be employed to >>throw up images< (harmonic rather than motivic) in which the series is em- bedded, but which destroy the identity of the series with the exception that the destruction process, in Boulez' case, is recorded (BOULEZ 1975:40), whereas in Gerhard's, it is not. There is, however, an important difference. Boulez calls at- tention to the >irrationalthere is a sort of natural invention which is irrational and is due almost to your temperament and talents>invention which can be brought on rationally by creating for oneself the conditions necessary to stimulate it>controlled< pre- dominates over the former ?spontaneous? approach for Boulez. And yet, both types of invention employ serialism as a way of removing from the rational intellect the burden of inventing possible candidates for ?next noteboth pitch-values and duration-values are based on number, since they are measurable ... Pitch-values can therefore be translated into duration-values, and vice-versa.< (IBID: 62 - my emphasis). Although the detailed way in which such a scheme works out (in the First String Quartet, for instance) is very different to the way Boulez' scheme works out in Structure la, the basis for such a stance is remarkably similar. Ligeti has gently criticised this approach on the precise grounds that pitch transposition produces a new sequence of ordinal numbers but the same interval sequence, whereas that new sequence of ordinal numbers applied to rhythm produces a wholly different configuration (LIGETI 1960:39). Roger Savage argues that such criticisms in the 1950s and 1960s directed attention away from the serial >pro- gramme< towards such composer-specific minutiae, and he develops this to- wards a critique of the derivation of serial >form< from the characteristics of serial rows (SAVAGE 1989:14-18). While Savage's point is well taken, it seems to me that those very minutiae can direct us to the larger problem I am outlining here.

    In stating his position in such terms, Gerhard places himself on the rough end of Babbitt's words, so to speak:

    Mathematics - or, more correctly, arithmetic, is used ... as a compositional device, resulting in the most literal sort of >programme musicprogrammetotal organization? is achieved by applying dissimilar, essentially unrelated criteria of organization to each of the com- ponents, criteria often derived from outside the system, so that - for example - the rhythm is independent of and thus separable from the pitch structure.< (BABBITT 1955:55)

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  • 88 A. F MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    In his own later article devoted to >>twelve-tone rhythm>in the manner of a motive

  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 89

    Thus, in four years, Gerhard has moved from the position which is held by >>lesser< serial composers6 to a front rank, wholly contemporary position which attempts to take serialism on what he sees as its own merits. This position is, of course, supported by pieces such as Gemini or the fourth symphony. Gerhard's conception does not rely seriously on the constructive powers of the aggregate, nor on those of an invariant ordered series. And yet, we are led to believe that Gerhard espouses nothing so unsystematic as a >>free twelve-tone technique>listening between one and three intervals back

  • 90 A. E MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    a failure of communication, because the structure a composer puts into his or her work is not perceived by the listenerrhetoric

  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 91

    When the listener believes that the music he hears is based on a rigorous use of compositional techniques, and yet he cannot perceive their structural significance, he equally believes, with some justification, that any attempt to relate the two is futile. (SAVAGE 1989:26)

    It is also the import of a recent comment of Robert Morgan. He points out that, for many recent pieces,

    once one has described how the piece was made... one has also described the composition itself... The construction of the system has itself become an essential and inseparable component of the creative act. (MORGAN 1977:39)

    The piece therefore becomes hermetic, in that the processes which give it sub- stance are not transferable to the experience of other pieces. This is why a rhe- torical overlay is necessary, for it is the rhetoric which forms the substance of the >>communication(< and also the Greenian >>style((. We thus have not a failure of communication, but its re-interpreted presence, for if there is no >agreed(( syntax, if each piece is hermetic, based on what codes can signification take place?

    V

    With this we are, finally, back where we began. It is not part of the modernist aesthetic for its products to have communication as an aim. Krenek, for one, states this explicitly: >one of the parameters that obviously cannot be controlled by premeditation ... is the communicative aspect of music ... it so happens that serial composers are not thinking in such termscondition of modemity

  • 92 A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    brate the end of the modem project. Indeed, as another ethnomusicologist John Blacking pointed out, >>ambiguity ... is necessary for people to make sense of musical communication>Some aspects of twelve-tone composition>Twelve-tone invariants as compositional determinants>Twelve-tone rhythmic structure and the electronic mediumRemarks on the recent StravinskyMusical invention>Groping towards Gruppen

  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 93

    Martin BRODY: 1993 >>Music for the Masses: Milton Babbitt's Cold War Music TheoryMusical form and the development of Schoenberg's twelve-tone method>Boulez' 'Le Marteau sans maitre': analysis of pitch structure

  • 94 A. E MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95

    Ernst KRENEK: 1960 >Extents and limits of serial techniques>Some applications of communication theory to the study of twelve-tone music>Pierre BoulezRecent developments in the music of Milton BabbittComposition with Twelve Tones (1)< in Leonard Stein (ed.): Style and Idea; Faber. Arnold SCHOENBERG (1946): 1984 >New music, outmoded music, style and idea< in Leonard Stein (ed.): Style and

    Idea; Faber. Peter STADLEN: 1956 >Serialism reconsidered

  • A. F. MOORE, SERIALISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS, IRASM 26 (1995) 1, 77-95 95

    Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN: 1959 >...how time passes...verzije>sveukupne serijalnostislobodne dvanaesttonske tehnikeseri- jalnog znarenja>povr'inske