Serialism

Serialism is a compositional method that organizes musical elements into ordered series and uses them to shape a work. It is most commonly associated with arranging pitches in a twelve-tone row.

Twelve-tone technique: A method that uses an ordered arrangement of all twelve pitch classes as the basis for composition. Its pitch rows provide serialism’s best-known model.
Arnold Schoenberg: An Austrian composer who developed the twelve-tone method in the early twentieth century. His method became the central historical model for pitch serialism.
Anton Webern: An Austrian composer whose concise works became influential models for postwar serialists. His compressed textures and rigorous organization shaped later serial practice.
Total serialism: A compositional approach that applies serial ordering to parameters beyond pitch, such as duration and dynamics. It extends serialism’s organizing principle across multiple musical dimensions.
Pierrot lunaire: Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 melodrama for voice and chamber ensemble, written before his twelve-tone method. It shows the atonal style that preceded Schoenberg’s serial system.
Tone row: An ordered sequence of pitch classes used as source material in twelve-tone composition. The row is the series most commonly manipulated in serial works.
Second Viennese School: A group of composers centered on Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Their works established the early sound and practice associated with serial composition.
Pierre Boulez: A French composer and conductor who helped lead postwar avant-garde music. He pushed serial organization beyond pitch into multiple musical parameters.
Free atonality: Atonal music composed without a governing key and without a systematic twelve-tone row. It organizes non-tonal music without serial control of pitch order.
Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31: Schoenberg’s orchestral work of 1926–28, composed using the twelve-tone method. It is an early large-scale demonstration of his method in orchestral form.

Linked from 42 pages