Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics

Serial music was one of the most important aesthetic movements to emerge in post-war Europe, but its uncompromising music and modernist aesthetic has often been misunderstood. This book focuses on the controversial journal die Reihe, whose major contributors included Stockhausen, Eimert, Pousseur, Dieter Schnebel and G. M. Koenig, and discusses it in connection with many lesser-known sources in German musicology. It traces serialism’s debt to the theories of Klee and Mondrian, and its relationship to developments in concrete art, modern poetry and the information aesthetics and semiotics of Max Bense and Umberto Eco. M. J. Grant sketches an aesthetic theory of serialism as experimental music, arguing that serial theory’s embrace of both rigorous intellectualism and aleatoric processes is not, as many have suggested, a paradox, but the key to serial thought and to its relevance for contemporary theory.

• Discussion of topics central to contemporary musicology: the rhetoric of music theory; the relationship of music to language; musical semiotics • Covers key figures whose work has been rarely discussed, including Herbert Eimert, Henri Pousseur and Dieter Schnebel • Extensive reference to the nonmusical arts and aesthetics

Acknowledgements; Note on the text; Introduction; Part I: 1. European culture in the post-war years; 2. The isolated tone: electronic and serial music, 1945–1954; Part II: 3. Electronic music - ‘chaos or order’?; 4. Webern and Debussy; Part III: 5. Serial music as an aleatoric process; 6. ‘Das Serielle’; Part IV: 7. Music and language; 8. Serial theory, serial practice - wherefore, and why?; Part V: Conclusion: Dorthin?; Bibliography; Index.

‘A welcome and important publication.’ Musical Times

‘A rich and fascinating book.’ Music Teacher

‘… Grant constantly seeks to clarify and demystify, and she writes with considerable elegance and conviction.‘ Music Teacher