[Lucky Seven]

Berg > Webern > Schoenberg

I hate most stuff written with the 12 tone row. That opera that Webern did about the murder was pretty badass though. That said, I've actually written two or three pieces using matrices for my theory class.

You guys should check out Alexander Scriabin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Abhorred]

Originally Posted by ghoti

Berg is pretty awesome. But some of his well-known stuff is atonal rather than serial.

This is true. But, of course, the same thing can be said of the entire Second Viennese School (Schoenberg, Webern and Berg), as serialism was merely a means of systematizing the atonal materials with which they had been previously working.

Even Berg's serial works were the least rigid (and most overtly tonal) of the three composers, and he fairly routinely left the mapped structure. Years later, though, many of his "tangents" have been accounted for through various symbolic and numerological interpretations, but the point still stands.

Originally Posted by ghoti

I tried to "get" the concept of the 12-tone row and serialism by writing a whole-tone piece (6-tone "row"). It's one way to do stuff, but can seem stifling in some ways I think.

Using the whole tone scale as your series is a really tough way to write serially, since everything is sort of equilateral - you can only transpose it a semitone before it becomes a copy of itself, and inverting & retrograding are no better. Naturally, the potential for interesting harmonic cells decreases substantially when there are so few places it can go before it "laps" itself.

I suggest you try a row with some more varied intervallic content, just to see what it's like.

And, yes, it most certainly can be stifling, but the same can be said for any organizational system used to the exclusion of all others. Modern composers are lucky in that they can use elements from many compositional systems without being considered "traitors" (by most people, at least) to any particular cause. Personally, I gravitate to atonal or serial styles in my own writing, but I'm not going to fear using a major triad - in the past, not everyone was so lucky.

Originally Posted by Lucky Seven

I hate most stuff written with the 12 tone row. That opera that Webern did about the murder was pretty badass though. That said, I've actually written two or three pieces using matrices for my theory class.

That would be Wozzeck

Originally Posted by Lucky Seven

You guys should check out Alexander Scriabin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Indeed, one of the most important figures in the dissolution of tonality. He was (borderline) nuts, too, which only helps matters... but his "mystic chord" is really a thing of beauty.

[Lucky Seven]

Although I'm not TOO fond of this style of writing, it's really cool that people on this board ARE into it. This thread is proof that ss.org just plain owns everything else.

[abyssalservant]

* abyssalservant <3 serialism

Berg wrote Wozzeck, not Webern.

DEATH TO TONALITY! FREE DISSONANCE!

Originally Posted by Lucky Seven

Although I'm not TOO fond of this style of writing, it's really cool that people on this board ARE into it. This thread is proof that ss.org just plain owns everything else.

Your not a real guitarist before you try and play Verklärte Nacht on a 7-string

[ElRay]

Originally Posted by Abhorred

If anybody else gets the set theory/serialism ones, please let me know so I don't feel so alone.

Those were about the only one I got.

The cursed thing is that after #68, in the back of my head, I'm trying to come up with [0,1,4,6] and [0,1,3,7] jokes.

Ray

[7 Dying Trees]

You know what, that to me was the same as an art student looking at the math for a DSP transform...

[Holy Katana]

I got about half of those. They're pretty funny.

[Lucky Seven]

Originally Posted by abyssalservant

* abyssalservant <3 serialism

Berg wrote Wozzeck, not Webern.

DEATH TO TONALITY! FREE DISSONANCE!

You're right, but I could have sworn it was Webern...It's scary how many of those I got though.