Serial music
Composition with serialized parameters.
What it means
Serial music transfers the row principle of twelve-tone technique to further parameters. Not only pitches but also durations, volumes, articulations, and tone colours are ordered by rows that run through the piece. This achieves a high degree of predetermination: the decisions are made in the design of the system, and the course results from it.
Musical use
The movement arose after 1945 in Europe and was, for two decades, a focal point of discussion. It rested on the idea of freeing music from traditional habits and building it anew from an ordered system. Soon a contradiction showed itself: the more strongly every individual value is fixed, the less the ear perceives an order, and the result can come close to the arbitrary. In response, composers developed procedures that work with groups, fields, and probabilities, and some that include the freedom of the performers. Engagement with serialism shaped the music of the second half of the century even where its procedures were rejected.
Performance practice
Reckon with high precision in all parameters: dynamic markings for individual notes, complex rhythms, constantly changing articulation. Count in fine subdivisions instead of relying on your ear. Practise pitches with reference notes and work separately on intonation. Take the rests seriously. Get an overview of the layout of the work from the preface or from literature — even where it is not audible, it helps in grasping the coherence.
Bear in mind that knowledge of the underlying system helps when practising, even where it is not audible: whoever knows the order finds connections and remembers courses more easily. Consult the preface or literature. Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensités of 1949, which assigns pitches, durations, attack, and dynamics to one another, counts as a key work. Practise complicated rhythms first slowly with the metronome at the smallest common subdivision.
Check, with very complex rhythms, whether a simplified counting method can be agreed upon without changing the result.