New Directions
New Directions
The Serial Wars
American composers were profoundly affected by World War II and the events leading to it. In the 1930s, many European musicians came to the United States because of events in Europe, the most well known of whom were Arnold Schoenberg and Béla Bartók. After the war, the Western musical world became one as composers crisscrossed, doing, learning, interacting. Around 1950, serious composers suddenly diverged in two entirely different but radical paths. Some of them extended the ideas of Schoenberg and Anton Webern, relying on mathematical calculations to totally determine every nuance of a piece. Others sought to eliminate the will and emotion of the composer. Musical developments took three very different directions after the war: serialism, aleatoric experimentalism, and minimalism. The serialists, led by Pierre Boulez, adopted and extended Schoenberg's concept of the tone row to every musical parameter. However, total serialism was discovered even earlier by Milton Babbitt.
Keywords: composers, World War II, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, serialism, aleatoric experimentalism, minimalism, Pierre Boulez, tone row, Milton Babbitt
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
