Letterman's Serialism
Matthew Vaughan
In article <199805220242...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
trip...@aol.com (Tripletz) wrote:
> I'm not one who much cares for serialism, so I always wind up embroiled
> in debates like the exchange on the Gelb v. Rosen thread. It seems
> as thbought the emotional range depicted by that music is so limitied--great
> for depicting insanity or anxiety, and not much else.
> Still, I try to keep some type of an open mind. So I encourage the
> Serialists here to each submit a "Top 10" List of Serialist Pieces that they
> would urge all to hear. My restriction is that they must be available on cd
> and CURRENTLY represented in the catalog.
Hmm. Should we take your choice of subject header as a subtle indicator
that you'd consider the contents of such a list to be a joke?
;-)
....................................................
MATTHEW VAUGHAN
matthewv at best dot com (damn spammers...)
http://www.best.com/~matthewv/
....................................................
Tripletz
Matthew B. Tepper
In article <199805220242...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
trip...@aol.com spake unto the unwashed masses:
>
> I'm not one who much cares for serialism, so I always wind up
>embroiled in debates like the exchange on the Gelb v. Rosen thread.
>limited--great for depicting insanity or anxiety, and not much else.
> Still, I try to keep some type of an open mind. So I encourage the
>Serialists here to each submit a "Top 10" List of Serialist Pieces
>that they would urge all to hear. My restriction is that they must be
>available on cd and CURRENTLY represented in the catalog.
Well, obviously, the Berg Violin Concerto. Say, the recording by
Kyung-Wha Chung, supplemented by any of Louis Krasner's readings.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://www.deltanet.com/~ducky/index.htm
My main music page --- http://www.deltanet.com/~ducky/berlioz.htm
And my science fiction club's home page --- http://www.lasfs.org/
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
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StoOdin101
>So I encourage the<
>Serialists here to each submit a "Top 10" List of Serialist Pieces that
>they<
>would urge all to hear.
Well, serialism and atonality are two different things, and I am not going to
try to distinguish between them in this list:
1. SCHOENBERG - Funf Orchesterstucke
2. BERG - Violin Concerto
3. WEBERN - Symphony
4. BOULEZ - Pli Selon Pli
5. STOCKHAUSEN - Michael's Reise
6. DALLAPICCOLA - Il Prigioniero
7. LUTOSLAWSKI - Piano concerto
8. WUORINEN - Genesis
9. XENAKIS - Echange
10. PENDERECKI - Capriccio for Violin and Orch
Actually, I could fill a "top 10" list with pieces by Wuorinen. Or Lutoslawski.
Or Xenakis. Very, very fine composers.
David M. Cook
Sessions: Symphony No. 3
Schoenberg: String Trio; Variations for Orchestra; Piano Concerto;
Pierrot Lunaire
Webern: Music for string quartet; Orchestral music; Cantatas
Dave Cook
Eric Schissel
Schoenberg- also the violin concerto (indeed, perhaps in preference to the
piano concerto!)
Frankel- symphonies
Wellesz- later symphonies and string quartets (if anyone ever records
them)
Krenek- string trios, string quartets 6-8 (and especially 7), piano
sonata 6
Sessions- also sym. 4 and string quintet (a very sympathetic, accessible,
but emotionally powerful serial work)
-Eric Schissel
--
schi...@lightlink.com
http://www.lightlink.com/schissel ICQ#7279016
standard disclaimer
David
Let me start by saying that to identify a work as "serial" is to say
relatively little about it. It says more about a tonal work to describe
it as tonal than it says about an atonal work to describe it as serial.
As Charles Rosen once said, in the popular imagination "serialism is a
facile and mechanical procedure for producing unpopular works." In
fact, the "serialism" of a work per se exists at a rather abstract level
of structure. Although that level is not without its impact on what is
actually heard, the real compositional decisions are made above that
level. As Boulez once put it, "People have gone through my music
identifying rows [i.e., series] and the like, and they think they have
explained my music. However much it may have helped me when composing,
it doesn't explain my music, not even the beginning of it."
I will also concede that, in the period right before World War I when
they wrote most of their very most original "atonal" (but not yet
serial) music, the emotional range of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg was
largely restricted to an almost hysterical expressivity. But even in
that period Schoenberg wrote the breath-takingly lyrical and
otherworldly Four Orchestral Songs, Op. 22, while Berg wrote the sultry
Altenberg Lieder, with their "unique blend of sentiment and irony," to
quote Pierre Boulez. Furthermore, the limited expressive range of the
three Viennese in this period is not a limitation of atonality in
general but the limitation of a period style. While certain post-war
composers such as Roger Sessions remained fairly closely tied to the
kind of expressivity characteristic of Schoenberg's style, others have
not: for example, Stravinsky admired Elliott Carter's Double Concerto
for "its newfound good spirits" (but then Carter was deeply engrossed in
Verdi's Falstaff, a Carter work avant la lettre, at the time of the
Double Concerto's composition). The essentially contemplative postwar
styles of Boulez and Stockhausen, too, are light years removed in their
expressivity from Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg.
Rather than providing a few possible paths into "serialism," let me
recommend some relatively accessible "atonal" works without regard for
whether or not they are "serial":
1. Stravinsky's Agon (parts of which are serially organized)
2. Berg's Violin Concerto
3. Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 15 (start with the first
two)
4. Boulez's Derive
5. Berio's Continuo
Once you have absorbed these works, try dipping into the following:
1. Berg's Der Wein
2. Berg's Lyric Suite
3. Berg's Lulu
4. Boulez's ...explosante/fixe...
5. Boulez's Repons (due out on DGG in November)
Berg's almost neo-tonal late style embodied a rapprochement with
tradition that one might not have predicted from his earlier fiercely
concentrated expressionist works, while the Boulez of recent decades has
become a serene and refined master of exquisite colors and textures.
(In other words, in Berg's case it is precisely his serial atonality
that is most accessible!)
Finally, each of the major atonalists has produced teeming works of an
unprecedented labyrinthine complexity. Among them, I recommend the
following:
1. Schoenberg: Erwartung
2. Berg: Three Orchestral Pieces, Op. 6
3. Stockhausen: Gruppen
4. Stockhausen: Carre
5. Stockhausen: Punkte
6. Boulez: Pli selon pli
7. Boulez: Figures, Doubles, Prismes
8. Carter: Double Concerto
9. Carter: Concerto for Orchestra
10. Carter: Symphony of Three Orchestras
These are among the hardest nuts to crack in all of Western Art Music,
but they are well worth the effort.
-david gable
Tripletz
> Should we take your choice of subject header as a subtle indicator
>that you'd consider the contents of such a list to be a joke?
>
>;-)
>
>....................................................
>MATTHEW VAUGHAN
>matthewv at best dot com (damn spammers...)
>http://www.best.com/~matthewv/
>....................................................
No, I just wanted a catchy title, and the Letterman show is famous for the top
10 concept.
Tripletz
thanks to all in this thread. What interests me is that I already
know the works by the 2nd Viennese School composers; most of the selections are
based upon them. I would like to hear the
Frankel works but they are hard to locate here in Chicago.
I am curious that not mention of Roberto Gerhard; he seems about the most
accessible of all serialist Composers save Berg.
The relative paucity of works by the followers of Schoenberg/Webern/Berg
seemingly reinforces my conception that Serialism is a very limited form,
incapable of a wide
emotional range.
David
> The relative paucity of works by the followers of
> Schoenberg/Webern/Berg
> seemingly reinforces my conception that Serialism is a very limited
> form,
> incapable of a wide
> emotional range.
First of all, "serialism" is not a "form." And serialism per se does
not limit in advance the expressive character of the music written using
it.
Second, what do you mean by followers of S/W/B? Did Mozart have
"followers"? Do you mean students of Schoenberg? No other composition
teacher in history had TWO students of the stature of Webern or Berg.
There were a lot of other students, too, already largely forgotten,
although a Berkeley dissertation by a student of Taruskin is underway on
this topic. The totality of music written by composers using some kind
of serial technique is nearly as diverse in its emotional range as the
body of tonal music. Stravinsky's serial music could not be more remote
in affect from Schoenberg's or Berg's or even Webern's
The composers who are in various ways descendants of S/W/B are a diverse
bunch. In America there are academic serialists such as Babbitt and
Wuorinen, the "independent" "radical traditionalist" Elliott Carter (who
never even briefly flirted with serialism, but whose music is "atonal"),
the less radical traditionalist and symphonist Roger Sessions, and other
composers too numerous to mention. In Europe, there is the
Petrassi/Krenek/Dallapiccola generation, then Boulez, Berio, and
Stockhausen and many other composers of their generation who took
aspects of S/W/B as points of departure. The emotional or expressive
climate of the music of Berio, Boulez, and Stockhausen could not be more
remote from Schoenberg's. Temperamentally, Boulez and Berio in
particular are light years from Schoenberg. Their music is not
hysterical, does not express angst or fear, etc.
-david gable
Tripletz
>id Mozart have
>"followers"? Do you mean students of Schoenberg? No other composition
>teacher in history had TWO students of the stature of Webern or Berg.
>There were a lot of other students, too, already largely forgotten,
>although
Hell yes, Mozart had followers. They didn't slavishly say
"I want to sound just like Wolfie" but they were strongly influenced by him and
based their style upon his and Haydn's
and lesser, forgotten figures of the era. You may have heard of a
couple of them named Beethoven and Schubert.
In the same way, had schoenberg not invented dodecaphony,
I think it is reasonable to conclude that the music of all the composers that
you mention would have sounded very different,
if they had bothered to compose at all. So Frankel, for
example, may not strictly be a "follower" of Schoenberg or
berg or Webern by your lights; by my lights he is.
I take issue with your contention that Stravinsky's serialist works
belong to a different emotional climate than those of the 2nd viennese School.
Those pieces may sound recognizably like Stravinsky (barely), but they sound
monochromatic to me in terms of the moods and emotions projected, especially
when compared with virtually any other work by him. Ditto for Copland.
Connotations, or the Piano Quartet, the two Serialist works of his that I know,
sound very straitjacketed compared to his other pieces.
Let me make the challange simpler. Suggest one Serialist Piece
that conveys Joy; another, Romantic Longing: another, emotional Fulfillment.
If I don't know them already, I will give them a try.
David
Of course, you won't find expressions of romantic longing in La mer,
either. The cliche affects you demand don't begin to exhaust the
affects that artists have created and human beings have experienced.
While the emotional or expressive content of La mer is very real, it
would also be very difficult to describe. The same is true of the
sultry and ironic eroticism of Berg's Altenberg lieder, the
contemplative otherworldliness of Schoenberg's Op. 22 songs, etc. (Of
course the vulgar Straussian or Puccinian grand guignol of Lulu is much
easier to characterize!)
Yet more difficult to describe would be the affect of Carter's music on
the one hand or Boulez's and Stockhausen's on the other. (While Boulez
& Stockhausen are quite distinct from one another they are in the same
transcendent ball park.) The music of all three composers is light
years removed from the almost hysterical expressivity of so much of
Schoenberg's music. Nevertheless, romantic love is depicted in Carter's
song cycle, A Mirror on Which To Dwell (settings of poems by Elizabeth
Bishop), various erotic and amorous states in Boulez's Visage nuptiale,
the ecstasy experienced in verging on transcendence in Stockhausen's
Punkte.
The fact that you consider the examples you cite to be monochrome proves
that you haven't really listened long and hard enough. The problem is
the same as with the initial reception of Impressionist painting, with
its subtle allover webs of refined mezzotints. If the Classicist was
interested in line, the Romantic in color, the Impressionist was
interested in "tone": that is, various subtle gradations of, say, grey
or pink, and these subtle gradations unfolded without a strong central
hierarchy to organize their perception. And the subjects that emerged
through this subtle tonality emerged relatively indistinctly.
Similarly, Boulez's music often produces a subtle poetry of suggestion;
like Mallarme's, Boulez's is an art of suggestion, and it demands and
deserves a form of rapt attention.
Boulez's music is often programmatic in the same way as Debussy's, his
truest progenitor: without a narrative, and in a way that provokes a
subtle emotional response. The opening movement of Pli selon pli
depicts the gradual apparition of the city of Bruges as the early
morning fog is gradually peeled off of it by the rising sun, layer by
layer (Pli selon pli). Impressionist painting was virtually the first
painting to privilege atmospheric effects, and Boulez's fog belongs to a
similar French tradition. The third Mallarme Improvisation depicts a
shipwreck and the siren's song, etc. The mode most proper to Boulez's
programmatic reveries is a particularly French species of contemplation.
While the Romantics seized on one grand emotion after another, in
reality our feelings are more complex and varied than that, and there is
usually more than one thing going on in our experience at a time.
Carter's music is mimetic of this kind of multivalent experience.
Exhiliration is one of his characteristic emotions. But, then, there is
more to expressivity than "Vissi d'arte" or "Un bel di": more even, than
the hysterical expressivity of Schoenberg's Erwartung.
-david gable
Tripletz
Well, David, you are right to characterize most of Schoenberg's
music as bordering on hysterical. I will admit that I have not sampled Boulez,
unsure as to where to begin. I bought some
Frankel yesterday at Tower. So thank you for the suggestions.