Rosas, the Storyless, and Roles

Analyzing the early work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker—and particularly Rosas danst Rosas (1983)—this article examines the notion of “the storyless” in relation to the role: that pillar of dance, and especially choreography, which enables the individuation, transmission, and exchange of each dancer’s part. Set in relation to the principles of serial music that De Keersmaeker had already explored in Fase (1982) and to the idea of seriality itself, the role provides a way to consider how “storylessness” could be both emancipatory and feminist. It responds to identitarian models of feminist argumentation by suggesting that a virtue of certain forms of abstraction lies in the pleasurable ways that dance’s roles demonstrate the circulability and exchangeability of the self.

Serialism

Since Arnold Schoenberg developed the twelve-tone system in the early 1920s, serialism has been the subject of a continuous torrent of scholarship. At least in part, this is the result of an experimental attitude that has marked serialism since its inception. No two major serial composers have used the same set of tools; indeed, the creation of new serial techniques seems to have been a necessary stage in the growth of a serial composer. This individuality naturally has consequences for scholarship. For one, it has meant a profusion of writing by composers. Some of this writing comes as compositional theory, as composers—from some mixture of a desire to share fruitful research, to facilitate the comprehension of their music, and to stake claims on their inventions—have written about serial procedures that interest them creatively. Some comes as aesthetic manifesto, as composers seek to justify their unique approaches. The great diversity of serial compositional techniques and aesthetics has also led to a flourishing of analysis, as analysts work to define and interpret the many separate practices composers have developed. Yet serialism’s individuality has also contributed to dramatic critical pushback: a running theme among commentators has been that serial music is inaccessible to nonspecialists. The prose written by serial composers has also generated much critical commentary, for many justifications given for their work have been shown to be problematic from political, cultural, and historical perspectives. The sources included in this bibliography give a sampling of the best work from all of these discursive branches as well as a selection of more general resources to help new students of serialism find their footing. Finally, a word about the scope of the article is in order. In the English-language literature, “serialism” and, interchangeably, “serial music” refer broadly to music based on systematic permutations of pitch classes or other elements. Twelve-tone music, accordingly, is the first prominent instance of serialism. French scholarship uses a similarly broad connotation of “musique sérielle,” which encompasses “Le dodécaphonisme” or “musique dodécaphonique” (i.e., twelve-tone music). German scholars, in contrast, have tended to differentiate between “Zwölftonmusik” (twelve-tone music) and “serielle Musik,” the latter distinguishing itself by the application of serial techniques to rhythm, timbre, intensity, and other musical dimensions. This article adopts the English-language definition of serialism.

Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso no. 1

This book provides for the first time an accessible, comprehensive study of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1 (1977). One of Schnittke’s best-known and most compelling works, the Concerto Grosso no. 1 sounds the surface of late Soviet life, resonating as well with contemporary compositional currents around the world. This innovative monograph builds on existing publications about the Concerto Grosso no. 1 in English, Russian, and German, augmenting and complicating them. It adds new information from underused primary sources, including Schnittke’s unpublished correspondence and his many published interviews. It also engages further with his sketches for the Concerto Grosso no. 1 and contemporary Soviet musical criticism. The result is a more objective, historical appraisal of this rich, multifaceted composition. The Concerto Grosso no. 1 provided a utopian model of the contemporary soundscape. It was a decisive point in Schnittke’s development of the approach he called polystylism, which aimed to contain in a single composition the wide range of contemporary musical styles, including jazz, pop, rock, and serial music. Thanks to it and his other similar compositions, Schnittke became one of the most-performed and most-recorded living composers at the end of the twentieth century. The novel structure of this book engages the Concerto Grosso no. 1 conceptually, historically, musically, and phenomenologically: the six movements of the composition frame the six chapters. The present volume thus provides a holistic accounting of Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso no. 1, its influences, and its impact on subsequent music making in the Soviet Union and worldwide.

Musical Exchange and Interaction between Eisler and Schoenberg, Evidenced by their Serial Music

This study demonstrates that Hanns Eisler's serial music composed in the early 1920s and his cantatas created in the 1930s are interrelated with Arnold Schoenberg's serial music. The specific purpose is to reveal the musical interactions between the two composers, such as how Eisler was influenced by Schoenberg, and how Eisler himself influenced Schoenberg. The former aspect is highlighted by the analysis of Schoenberg's Suite für Klavier (1923) and Eisler's Zweite Sonate für Klavier (1925). The latter is shown while Eisler's Deutsche Symphonie from the 1930s and Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw (1947) are subjected to a comparative analysis. Eisler was not simply a pupil who renounced Schoenberg's teachings, but a “true disciple” who succeeded Schoenberg's serial technique in a manner comparable to that of Webern and Berg and who, in addition, was a musical companion of Schoenberg, influencing Schoenberg's later music.

Autism

Autism and twelve-tone serial music are related, mutually reinforcing forms of cultural modernism. Both have been understood as excessively isolated or alone, with each entity self-contained and self-enclosed; as uncommunicative, or communicating in atypical ways, with an excess of private meanings and self-references; as demonstrating an unproductive preference for routines and rituals; as incongruously hypertrophied in certain respects (often hyperrational) and atrophied in others (often emotionally or expressively defective). They have also been understood as inaccessible fortresses; as incomprehensible aliens; as cold, unfeeling machines (especially computational machines); and as idiot savants (with isolated islands of excellence in a sea of cognitive deficiency).

Generating New Musical Works in the Style of Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt is noted for composing twelve-tone and serial music that is both complex and highly constrained. He has written extensively on a variety of topics in music and his writings have had a profound and lasting impact on musical composition. In this article, we first review in detail his compositional process and the techniques he developed, focusing in particular on the all-partition array, time-point system, and equal-note-value strings used in his later works. Next, we describe our proposed procedure for automating his compositional process using these techniques. We conclude by using our procedure to automatically generate an entirely new musical work that we argue is in the style of Babbitt.

Magical Serialism: Modernist Enchantment in Elisabeth Lutyens's O Saisons, O Châteaux!

Elisabeth Lutyens's music of the 1940s and 1950s provides one important, but frequently overlooked, link between British music and modernism before the so-called Manchester School. I argue that the main reason that the composer and her music have not yet received much attention is that early twentieth-century modernism, as it is commonly understood, has been gendered masculine. This article engages with the composition, texts, and reception of Lutyens's 1946 cantata O saisons, ô châteaux! in the context of other Lutyens pieces in order to argue that the composer sought to transcend what she perceived as a complex of disadvantages in the reception of her music (both regarding her gender and composition technique): the Cantata is an essentially melodic piece of ‘magical serialism’. Rather than ‘taming’ or ‘feminizing’ her serial music, Lutyens thus carves out a place for herself as Arthur Rimbaud's magician, reflecting on the set text of O saisons, ô châteaux! and anticipating her later ‘credo’, in which she declares her music's allegiance with secret science rather than note counting or personal branding.