Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:50:46.473Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Revisionist History of Twelve-Tone Serialism in American Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2008

JOSEPH N. STRAUS
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The history of twelve-tone serial music in the United States extends from the late 1920s to the present day. Practitioners of a distinctively American brand of twelve-tone music have included many well-known composers in three distinct waves of activity: prewar experimentation by native-born “ultra-modern” composers amid an influx of European émigrés; a postwar boom; and a third wave of twelve-tone activity since 1980. This extensive repertoire shares certain structural features, including twelve-note aggregates and serial ordering, but even these very general compositional commitments are subject to individual modification, and American twelve-tone serial music has taken astonishingly varied forms. To give an accurate account of this music's history, we must first pry away the many myths that have accreted around it. In the process, we will need to abandon historiographical models that focus on one or two “great men” and that describe the history of style as a series of changing fashions. This article proposes that we regard American music since 1925 as a dynamic steady state within which modernist styles, including twelve-tone serialism, persist as vibrant strands within the postmodern musical fabric.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 355 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Assis, Paulo de. Luigi Nonos Wende: zwischen Como una ola fuerza y luz und sofferte onde serene. Hofheim: Wolke, 2006.Google Scholar
Austin, William W. Music in the 20th Century: From Debussy through Stravinsky. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966.Google Scholar
Babbitt, Milton. The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, ed. Steven, Peles, Stephen, Dembski, Andrew, Mead, and Straus, Joseph N.. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babbitt, Milton “Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Composition.” In The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, 38–47. [1955].Google Scholar
Babbitt, Milton “Contribution to ‘The Composer in Academia': Reflections on a Theme of Stravinsky.” In The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, 259–62. [1970].Google Scholar
Babbitt, Milton “The Unlikely Survival of Serious Music.” In Words about Music, ed. Stephen, Dembski and Straus, Joseph N., 163–86. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Benitez, Vincent. “Understanding Messiaen's Connection to Serialism: Theological Time and Its Musical Expression through Number in His Later Works.” Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Berger, Arthur. Reflections of an American Composer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Bolcom, William. “The End of the Mannerist Century.” In The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, ed. Arved, Ashby, 46–53. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, [1966] 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boros, James. “A Conversation with Donald Martino.” Perspectives of New Music 29/2 (Summer 1991): 212–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandt, Anthony Kroyt. “The Absence of Nouns: Mel Powell's Harmonic Language.” Aperiodical 2/1 (Spring 1988): 42–44.Google Scholar
Brindle, Reginald Smith. The New Music: The Avant-garde since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Brinkmann, Reinhold. “Schoenberg the Contemporary: A View from Behind.” In Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the Transformations of Twentieth-Century Culture, ed. Juliane, Brand and Christopher, Hailey, 196–219. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinkmann, Reinhold, and Christoph, Wolff, eds. Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi German to the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, William. “The Americas, 1945–70.” In Modern Times: From World War I to the Present, ed. Morgan, Robert P., 309–48. London: Macmillan, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broyles, Michael. Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boulez, Pierre. “Schoenberg Is Dead.” In Notes of an Apprenticeship, trans. Herbert, Weinstock, 268–76. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.Google Scholar
Carter, Elliott. “The Agony of Modern Music in America.” In Elliott Carter: Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937–1995, ed. Jonathan, Bernard, 53–57. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, [1955] 1997.Google Scholar
Boulez, Pierre. Harmony Book, ed. Nicholas, Hopkins and Link, John F.. New York: Carl Fischer, 2002.Google Scholar
Chase, Gilbert. America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955.Google Scholar
Clarkson, Austin. “‘The Fantasy Can Be Critically Examined’: Composition and Theory in the Thought of Stefan Wolpe.” In Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. Christopher, Hatch and Bernstein, David W., 505–24. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Copland, Aaron, and Vivian, Perlis. Copland Since 1943. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Cowell, Henry. New Musical Resources. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1930] 2006.Google Scholar
Davis, Peter G. “The Prizewinning Opera Time Forgot.” New York Times, 4 November 2007.Google Scholar
Dubiel, Joseph. “What's the Use of the Twelve-Tone System?” Perspectives of New Music 35/2 (Summer 1997): 33–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feisst, Sabine. “Henry Cowell und Arnold Schönberg—eine unbekannte Freundschaft.” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 55/1 (1998): 57–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feisst, Sabine. “Serving Two Masters: Leonard Rosenman's Music for Films and for the Concert Hall.” 21st Century Music 7/5 (May 2000): 19–25.Google Scholar
Finley, Patrick. A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Shapey. Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Folio, Cynthia. “The Synthesis of Traditional and Contemporary Elements in Joseph Schwantner's Sparrows.” Perspectives of New Music 24/1 (Autumn–Winter 1985), 184–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gann, Kyle. American Music in the Twentieth Century. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997.Google Scholar
Gann, Kyle. Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, W. B. “Adolph Weiss.” Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1971.Google Scholar
Gioia, Dana. “Let's Review.” New York Times Book Review, 24 January 1999.Google Scholar
Goldman, Jonathan. “Exploding/Fixed: Form as Opposition in the Writings and Later Works of Pierre Boulez.” Ph.D. diss., University of Montreal, 2006.Google Scholar
Haimo, Ethan. “The Late Twelve-tone Compositions.” In The Arnold Schoenberg Companion, ed. Bailey, Walter B., 157–76. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Hamm, Charles. Music in the New World. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983.Google Scholar
Hansen, Peter S. An Introduction to Twentieth Century Music. 3rd edn. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1971.Google Scholar
Heile, Björn. “Darmstadt as Other: British and American Responses to Musical Modernism.” twentieth-century music 1/2 (September 2004): 161–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heyman, Barbara. Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Hicks, Michael. “John Cage's Studies with Schoenberg.” American Music 8/2 (Summer 1990): 125–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitchens, Susan Hayes. Ross Lee Finney: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Hodeir, André. Since Debussy: A View of Contemporary Music, trans. Noel, Burch. New York: Grove Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Horsley, Paul. “For an Early Post-Modernist, A Day of Overdue Vindication.” New York Times, 12 July 1998.Google Scholar
Imbrie, Andrew. “Roger Sessions: In Honor of His Sixty-fifth Birthday.” Perspectives of New Music 1/1 (Autumn 1962): 117–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karchin, Louis. “Pitch Centricity as an Organizing Principle in Speculum Speculi of Charles Wuorinen.” Theory and Practice 14/15 (1989–90): 59–82.Google Scholar
Kivy, Peter. New Essays on Musical Understanding. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krenek, Ernst. Studies in Counterpoint Based on the Twelve-Tone Technique. New York: G. Schirmer, 1940.Google Scholar
Krenek, Ernst. “Is the Twelve-Tone Technique on the Decline?” The Musical Quarterly 39/4 (October 1953): 513–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krenek, Ernst. “New Developments of the Twelve-Tone Technique,” Music Review 4 (1943): 81–97.Google Scholar
Kresky, Jeffrey. “The Recent Music of Charles Wuorinen.” Perspectives of New Music 25/1–2 (1987): 410–17.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, René. Schoenberg and His School. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.Google Scholar
Lessem, Alan P. “Teaching Americans Music: Some Émigré Composer Viewpoints, ca. 1930–1955.” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 11/1 (June 1988): 4–22.Google Scholar
Lewin, David. “A Study of Hexachord Levels in Schoenberg's Violin Fantasy.” Perspectives of New Music 6/1 (Fall/Winter 1967): 18–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Link, John. “The Composition of Elliott Carter's Night Fantasies.” Sonus 14/2 (Spring 1994): 67–89.Google Scholar
Losada, Catherine. “Isography and Structure in the Music of Boulez.” Journal of Mathematics and Music. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Martino, Donald. “The Source Set and Its Aggregate Formations.” Journal of Music Theory 5/2 (Winter 1961): 224–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxile, Horace. “Hale Smith's ‘Evocation’: The Interaction of Cultural Symbols and Serial Composition.” Perspectives of New Music. 42/2 (Summer 2004): 122–43.Google Scholar
Mead, Andrew. The Music of Milton Babbitt. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Mead, Andrew. “Twelve-Tone Composition and the Music of Elliott Carter.” In Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz Since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies, ed. Elizabeth, West Marvin and Richard, Hermann, 67–102. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Mead, Rita H. Henry Cowell's New Music, 1925–1936: The Society, the Music Editions, and the Recordings. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Editions, 1981.Google Scholar
Moore, Allan. “Serialism and Its Contradictions.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 26/1 (June 1995): 77–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Robert. Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.Google Scholar
Morris, Robert. Composition with Pitch-Classes: A Theory of Compositional Design. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neidhöfer, Christoph. “Bruno Maderna's Serial Arrays.” Music Theory Online 13/1 (March 2007).Google Scholar
Olmstead, Andrea. Conversations with Roger Sessions. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Oteri, Frank J. “Charles Wuorinen in Conversation with Frank J. Oteri.” New Music- Box, 5 June 2007, http://www.newmusicbox.org.Google Scholar
Ozgen, Zafer. “Form, Genre, and Musical Language in Hans Werner Henze's Operas from 1955 to 1965.” Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2008.Google Scholar
Perle, George. Serial Composition and Atonality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Perle, George. Twelve-Tone Tonality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Pollack, Howard. Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man. New York: Henry Holt, 1999.Google Scholar
Priore, Irna. “Vestiges of 12-Tone Practice in Berio's Sequenza for Solo Flute.” In Berio's Sequenzas: Essays on Composition, Performance, Analysis and Aesthetics, ed. Janet, Halfyard, 189–206. Birmingham, UK: Ashgate Academic Publishers, 2007.Google Scholar
Prendergast, Roy M. Film Music, A Neglected Art: A Critical Study of Music in Films. 2nd edn. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.Google Scholar
Raffman, Diana. “Is Twelve-Tone Music Artistically Defective?” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 27/1 (2003): 69–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramey, Phillip. Irving Fine: An American Composer in His Time. Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Robins, Reid. “An Interview with Mel Powell.” The Musical Quarterly 72/4 (1986): 476–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rochberg, George. “The New Image of Music.” In The Aesthetics of Survival: A Composer's View of Twentieth-Century Music, ed. William, Bolcom, 16–28. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, [1963] 1984.Google Scholar
Rockwell, John. “Signs of Vitality in New Music.” New York Times, 10 February 1980.Google Scholar
Ross, Alex. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.Google Scholar
Rufer, Josef. Composition with Twelve Notes, trans. Humphrey, Searle. London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1954.Google Scholar
Sandow, Greg. “A Fine Analysis.” In The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, ed. Arved, Ashby, 54–67. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaefer, John. New Sounds: A Listener's Guide to New Music. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.Google Scholar
Schafer, Murray. British Composers in Interview. London: Faber and Faber, 1963.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard, Stein, trans. Leo, Black. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. “Twelve-Tone Composition.” In Style and Idea, 207–8. [1923].Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. “Schoenberg's Tone Rows.” In Style and Idea, 213–14. [1936].Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. “Composition with Twelve Tones (1).” In Style and Idea, 214–44. [1941].Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. “My Evolution.” In Style and Idea, 79–91. [1949].Google Scholar
Schonberg, Harold. “Future of the Symphony.” New York Times, 24 October 1965.Google Scholar
Schonberg, Harold. “Where Are They? U.S. Has Much Compositional Activity, but Young Generation Lacks Power.” New York Times, 17 January 1962.Google Scholar
Schuller, Gunther. Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Schuller, Gunther. “Third Stream.” In Musings, 114–18. [1961].Google Scholar
Schuller, Gunther. “Liner Notes for Transformation.” In Musings, 131–32. [1957].Google Scholar
Schwarz, Robert K. “In Contemporary Music, A House Still Divided.” New York Times, 3 August 1977.Google Scholar
Seeger, Charles. “Manual of Dissonant Counterpoint.” In Studies in Musicology II, ed. Ann, Pescatello, 163–228. Berkeley: University of California Press, [1931] 1994.Google Scholar
Sessions, Roger. Reflections on the Music Life in the United States. New York: Merlin Press, 1956.Google Scholar
Shapey, Ralph. “Some Basic Concepts about my Work.” Shapey Collection, University of Chicago, Regenstein Library, 29 November 1960.Google Scholar
Shoaf, R. Wayne. “The Schoenberg-Malkin Correspondence.” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 13/2 (November 1990): 164–257.Google Scholar
Shreffler, Anne. “The Myth of Empirical Historiography: A Response to Joseph N. Straus.” The Musical Quarterly 84/1 (Winter 2000): 30–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, John. Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straus, Joseph N. “Ruth Crawford's Precompositional Strategies.” In Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds: Innovation and Tradition in Twentieth-Century American Music,” ed. Ray, Allen and Hisama, Ellie M., 33–56. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straus, Joseph N.. “The Myth of Serial ‘Tyranny’ in the 1950s and 1960s.” The Musical Quarterly 83/3 (Autumn 1999): 301–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert, Craft. Themes and Episodes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966.Google Scholar
Taruskin, Richard. Letter to the editor. New York Times, 27 July 1997.Google Scholar
Taubman, Howard. “Exit the Fifties: A Synthesis of Ideas Marked the Decade.” New York Times, 13 December 1959.Google Scholar
Thomson, Virgil. American Music Since 1910. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970.Google Scholar
Thomson, William. Schoenberg's Error. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Tommasini, Anthony. “When Bernstein Saw the Future.” New York Times, 22 July 1998.Google Scholar
Townsend, Thomas Carl. “A Conversation with Roque Cordero.” LAMúsiCa (Latin American Music Center Newsletter) 2/4 (May 1999): 4–9.Google Scholar
Weber, Ben. How I Took 63 Years to Commit Suicide. Unpublished manuscript, n.d.Google Scholar
Weiss, Adolph. “The Lyceum of Schoenberg,” Modern Music 9 (1932): 99–107.Google Scholar
Wolpe, Stefan. “Stefan Wolpe in Conversation with Eric Salzman,” The Musical Quarterly 83/3 (Autumn 1999): 406–7.Google Scholar
Wuorinen, Charles. Simple Composition. New York: C. F. Peters, 1979.Google Scholar