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A way into serialism

Alex S

carbon based lifeform
I'm making some progress, and also starting to comprehend the theory. Can someone please give me a few landmark compositions (and preferably recordings available on Qobuz) of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Boulez, Stockhausen et al (I know serialism was not the only thing some of these composers did). I'm happy with voices but find Berg operas tricky (and stupidly sold the vinyl years ago), what else can I try?
 
I’m likely biased as I far prefer chamber music to any other classical form, and whilst maybe on the extreme end I’d go for Webern’s string quartets. There’s only an album’s worth of them. I have this Quartetto Italiano one on vinyl, and it is superb. Even the cover suggests they aren’t messing around. They may even have come to put your dog down. Whatever modern chamber music is, this is the Napalm Death/late-period Coltrane of it, and it is wonderful.

That consumed I’d personally look towards solo piano, Schoenberg did a lot of lovely stuff. I’m also a big fan of Berg’s Wozzeck, one of very few operas I actually enjoy. I have the 1965 Böhm DGG LP and it is a beautiful thing.

PS Boulez is obviously very good and many people’s reference when it comes to this stuff, but I find him rather dry and cold somehow. Same goes for his own compositions. I do like them, but I’d finish up there rather than prioritise them.
 
I'm making some progress, and also starting to comprehend the theory. Can someone please give me a few landmark compositions (and preferably recordings available on Qobuz) of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Boulez, Stockhausen et al (I know serialism was not the only thing some of these composers did). I'm happy with voices but find Berg operas tricky (and stupidly sold the vinyl years ago), what else can I try?

These aren't so much "landmark" but good ways in.

Schoenberg -- Fahben from 5 orchestral pieces op 16; the Comodo and largo from the fourth string quartet, the third quartet, the piano pieces op 11 and op 25 (Gould very good in op 25!), Moses und Aaron

Webern -- Symphony op 21 (try Eliahu Inbal), Concerto for 9 instruments, 4 pieces for violin and piano op 7, the string quartet, the piano variations op 27 (Idil Biret is worth trying for this)

Berg -- Wozzeck (I don't know Berg so well) - but you say you found it tricky. Did you see it? That could make a difference. There’s a piano sonata which people love, I’m not sure it’s serial though.

Boulez -- Start with David Fray's recording of the 12 notations, and follow it with the Sonatine and the central sections of Pli selon Pli

Stockhausen -- I'm going to make an off the wall suggestion, but I know I'm right. I think you should listen to some of the pieces from the first part of Klang -- Hoffnung or Schönheit or Balance or even Freude. I don't know that you'll find these on Qobuz though, you will have to use youtube. The third and fourth sections of Hymnen is a good way into his electronic music.

The difficulty with Boulez and Stockhausen is that some of their most impressive pieces are spacialised - they have music coming from different parts of the hall and the effect is from that interaction in space. It’s very hard to appreciate at home
 
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Thank you, both. As for tricky, I just tend to get bored of opera, even when I go to see it. Must try harder, I guess. I did enjoy Gardner’s Peter Grimes today at home. I clearly didn’t like Wozzeck and Lulu enough to keep them 25 years ago but I regret that now.

PS Tony the complete Webern Quartetto Italiano is on Qobuz so I’ll give that a go.
 
Thank you, both. As for tricky, I just tend to get bored of opera, even when I go to see it. Must try harder, I guess. I did enjoy Gardner’s Peter Grimes today at home. I clearly didn’t like Wozzeck and Lulu enough to keep them 25 years ago but I regret that now.

Then scrub Wozzeck and try the Lulu Suite. Wozzeck is rather like Peter Grimes formally (interludes) and the main characters are both outsiders who kill themselves. I speak from experience when I say that Berg’s operatic style is something you really can get very used to. There was a time when Lulu was very fashionable in London and I saw it at least three times in different performances in a period of about 18 months. In the end the musical idiom felt totally natural and rather beautiful. I could never enjoy Lulu at home though, but I used to have this DVD of Wozzeck which I loved.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7959972--berg-wozzeck

Another thing by Berg worth a shot is the Altenberg Lieder, but it’s more like expressionist Strauss than serial music.
 
On the chamber side, look at Schoenberg's string quartets. If you get a complete set it will show the move from late romanticism into serialism in context.
 
On the chamber side, look at Schoenberg's string quartets. If you get a complete set it will show the move from late romanticism into serialism in context.

That’s probably the best approach, Schoenberg really defined the arc.

PS I’m a weirdo, I was exposed to serialism back in my teens and just instinctively liked it. As a textural thing as much as anything. I still barely understand it, though I don’t think that is necessary. The odd thing is I connected real fast with this stuff but had to work at late-period Coltrane etc free jazz (which I now love). There is something ‘right’ about serialism that I connected to on a subconscious level somehow. I can’t articulate it better than that.
 
I’m easing my way in with this:

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Karajan is probably nobody’s choice any more but he’s very good and accessible with this. Also, I was lucky enough to see him just before he died and Schoenberg was on the menu. (He was rather doddery and uninspired to be honest).
 
For Schoenberg, I think the second string quartet is key, inviting you to breathe the air of other planets, as it moves emphatically towards serialism during the course of the work. The other work that comes to mind is the less well known Septet, op. 29, that I have always found to be quite an optimistic and cheerful piece.

For Berg, the Lyrische Suite for string quartet is pre-eminent, and one of the most significant works of that time - there is much more colour and drama for me in this piece than in Schoenberg or Webern, frankly.

Moving forward, post WW2 the ideas behind serialism developed rapidly and significantly, from what was seen as a relatively narrow focus on pitch (ie, Schoenberg’s approach), towards an all encompassing theory covering every aspect of sound. Despite most of his work not being serial in nature, the key person, in my view, was Olivier Messiaen, as both a theorist and teacher, and also composer, and particularly his Mode de valeurs et d'intensités (the second part of Quatre Études de Rythme). This piece, along with Karel Goeyvaerts’ Sonata of Two Pianos, and Michel Fano’s Sonata for two pianos, heavily influenced both Boulez in the writing of Structures, and Stockhausen in the writing of Kreuzspiel. All of these pieces, from the late 1940s and early 1950s, were hugely influential in defining the way in which post-WW2 music developed, along with the establishment of Le Domaine Musical by Boulez, where this strange music could meet an audience. Other highly significant pieces followed soon during the 1950s, including;

Boulez - Le Marteau sans maître - to my ears, a sublime and unparalleled blend of austerity and eroticism, with a piquant dish of surrealism on the side.

Messiaen - Catalogue d’Oiseaux - the surface descriptions of landscape and birdsong are underpinned by multiple layers which explore spiritual, transcendental and archetypal elements arising from Messiaen's experience - a Golden Bough of contemporary music, if you will. (By the way, one of my main interests is the music of this period, and how both classical music and jazz then developed and interacted during the 1960s, and then what followed - the Catalogue is one of the most influential pieces, in my view - you can hear it in Cecil Taylor, Keith Jarrett and William Parker, and also Harrison Birtwistle and James Dillon, for example).

Stockhausen - Gesang der Jünglinge, and Kontakte.

Running in parallel, I'd also mention Elliott Carter's first string quartet of the early 1950s, which introduces ideas about how music can reflect both external (or real) time, and inner dream time. I think this work has some linkages to Berg's Lyrische Suite, (which I need to do some more research on).

Paul Griffiths’ book Modern Music and After describes very well many of the ways in which contemporary classical music subsequently developed, after the intensity of the 1950s. Alternatively, you could look at the discography of the Arditti Quartet, and especially the series of recordings on Montaigne Naive, which move from the 2VS through to the present day. Discovering composers like Julio Estrada and Roger Reynolds through this series was a revelation for me.
 
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They all belong in very different boxes IMO. Zappa is likely the closest, but his influence was more Varese as I understand it. Mainly as an introduction to dissonance, he went off on his own from there. He certainly cited Varese’s Ionisation as a core influence. Cage had a playful and thoroughly inclusive humour to all aspects, I don’t associate him with serialism at all, far more interested in chance than calculation. The only jazz I feel belongs here is Anthony Braxton. That’s assuming he’s jazz! I was tempted to mention him upthread. Definitely worth a look.

 
I think that's too rigidly compartmentalised. The dialogue between Boulez and Cage in the early 1950s illustrates unusually clearly how composers were thinking through ideas together, and how they shared common interests, even if the approaches they then took differed. This concert note by Steven Schick neatly summarises this;

Boulez endeavored to extend the rational project of Anton Webern and the rhythmic one of Olivier Messiaen—in essence rephrasing the past—whereas Cage, equally rigorously, had embarked on the search for new chance structures rooted in the ontology of the unknown and thereby to divorce himself from the past. One of them wanted to remember and the other to forget.

In the late 1960s, there was an exodus from the US of black jazz musicians, mainly from Chicago, to Paris, and the New York scene then followed. There was a febrile sense of revolution, as the black panther movement met French revolutionary politics. A real melting pot, where the boundaries between different forms of music often fell away. Braxton was certainly part of it, but others' music was arguably more successful. Look at the BYG label for good examples (Alan Silva, Clifford Thornton, etc), and how they and others collaborated with European musicians and composers. Similar, but different music developed in Germany (eg, Fluxus, FMP), Italy, Denmark and the UK (SME, Incus, etc). As rock music rapidly became commercialised and reactionary, this music remained largely underground - one of the reasons why it is interesting to explore, and why the dissolving of genre is so important, as part of its original impulse reflects both a reaction to American racism, and the development of the European avant garde.
 
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Re Cage and Serialism, it’s a good question. I’m sorry to say, I am now going to go into seminar paper mode. You may not want to read on.

The thing to know is that serialism is a very technical thing, it’s to do with the processes the composer uses to create his pieces. It’s a bit like amp topologies - class A/B, class A etc.

Boulez for a while used the process called serial, Cage never did as far as I know.

Serial music is very “controlled”. Basically, the first thing you do when you want to write serial music is construct a set of rules for how you’ll manage the pitches, textures, durations etc in your work.

In most of his music, Cage was exactly the opposite of this - he wanted to reduce the amount of control he exerted on his musical pieces. He even used random things (we say chance operations) like the I Ching to determine the pitches and textures and durations. Or he left lots and lots of aspects of the music to the performers’ discretion, offering them no more than some inspirational ideas for the sounds to make.

The two approaches can sound very similar. This is because the rules serial composers follow are sometimes really opaque to the listener - they’re there in the design principles, but they’re not really audible. You have to study the score to see them, just like you’d have to look at the circuit diagram to see the amp’s topology.

The result is that the serial music can sound random to the listener. And that explains why so many people don’t like it - they can’t make sense of it aurally. They can’t sense patterns and musical landmarks, so they feel disoriented.

Now for the most important thing I’ve got to say. The trick for the listener is to realise that random sounding things can be beautiful, like the stars in the night sky are randomly arranged but are beautiful to look at. You’ve got to get into that mindset for some of Boulez and most of Babbitt. And much of Cage.

To get what I’m talking about, listen to a highly managed serial piece by Boulez like Structures Ia. And compare it with a piece constructed with chance operations by Cage like any of the Etudes Australes. The Cage is aleatoric, the Boulez is very serial - it’s the most serial thing he wrote in fact.
 
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My most played Schoenberg pieces are Moses und Aron and of course Gurrelieder which starts in Romantic mode but ends up in Serialistic mode. An interesting transition.

There is a huge variety of music by Stockhausen but it must involve Stockhausen himself in the band to be authentic in me view. Some is on YouTube but most of my CD collection comes from his Verlag in Germany (expensive), You may be invited to go on a course as well!
 
Stravinsky also had his own way with serialism, starting from the later movements of the septet


and ending up here

 
Re Cage and Serialism, it’s a good question. I’m sorry to say, I am now going to go into seminar paper mode.

Good points, you’ve articulated what I was trying to say, but far better. From my perspective as someone who just stumbled across interesting and unusual music at random without any formal musical education I initially had no idea serial was highly calculated with complex and rigid rules, nor that Cage was so playful, curious, inclusive, and effectively rejected all rules. Polls apart conceptually, but I have always enjoyed both and barely noticed the differences.

PS I need to take a closer look at Boulez. Any recommendations? I’ve got this Complete Works box so should have a version of any suggestions. I’ve not paid much attention to it to be honest, as is the way with the large and cheap multi-CD box sets that were around a decade or more ago. I’ve got so many!
 
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This is a very useful thread. I'm a bit like you Tony in as much as I tend to respond to music instinctively and it's as much about texture and feel as anything else. So I listen to Stockhausen, Cage and Coltrane much in the same way I listened to Sonic Youth and 9th generation death metal bootlegs as a teenager and the theory tends to go over my head.

@mandryka your post about Cage reminds me of John Zorn's game pieces. I once commented to someone that I found recordings of them hard work without being able to see what Zorn was asking of the performers. I didn't realise I was talking to someone who'd played on several of the recordings.. oops! Just out of interest how does this all work for his pieces for prepared piano? I'm assuming there's a conventional score but how specific are the instructions for modifying the instrument?
 
I don’t understand it fully (slowly learning) but this Cage score for Fontana Mix is fantastic:

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@mandryka Just out of interest how does this all work for his pieces for prepared piano? I'm assuming there's a conventional score but how specific are the instructions for modifying the instrument?


The score looks totally conventional, at least at first glance. There are bar lines and clefs and metronome indications of tempos and crotchets and quavers etc. The instructions for preparing the instrument are here

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Joanna MacGregor once said to me that she wanted to create an authentic prepared piano, one which used the nuts and bolts that Cage used for the ballets, as these make a significant difference to the sound. Unfortunately these old American pieces of hardware are very hard, maybe impossible, to obtain now . . .

But this is not serial music in any way . . .

(You know that Cage studied with Schoenberg? Schoenberg said something like "this man just can't get his head round harmony." I'll dig out the quote later.)
 


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