The consequences of the Serial Music issue in the Western Music and European Culture

    After II. Viennese School many composers had been influenced by Schoenberg,Webern and Berg. However their music didn't considered much important afterwards because of rising nationalism. Conversly to  abstract music they did, the societies of the period was looking for a much tangible results in music or concrete concepts mostly about bless their nations. In addition, people who still interact with opera of that time were seeing close subjects to their pleasure but music was really far for their ears.
    
    The upstairs which starting from Renaissance came to the 20th century but it attempt to a huge jump. Because changing was not the style, it was the center this time.It had been succesful and influencel for all century but new movements and styles which are take source serialism as their idea, cannot stop ( sometimes support ) the cliff's expansion between Western Classical Music and Western Society. However, artistically, serialism effected most of the composers after II. Viennese School, and open the way to problem that created by tonality by eliminate it. After World War II, many composers arrogate and developed the serial music and every one of them change or add something naturally.

 The Differences the Usage of Serial Music between Schoenberg, Webern and Berg

     As followers and developers of twelve tone technique, Webern and Berg put very much on Schoenberg's idea. However, there are some points that seperates their styles. Schoenberg's turning back to tonality, Webern's total serialism and Berg's lyric style are the main issues that differ all from each other. All three espouse the idea '' Atonal music '' in different perspectives.

Alban Berg ( 1885 - 1935 )

   Berg started to work with Schoenberg in 1904, who is another figure of the period. Differently from Schoenberg's returning to tonality and Webern's total serialism, he composed serial music consistently under influence of Mahler-Romanticism. Also he add some of his tone-row's little tonal referances such as Interlude of Lulu Suite. Berg's earliest 12-note composition had been a setting of the short poem Schliesse mir die Augen beide, a text he had already set before and chose to reset using the row he was to use in the Lyrische Suite, whose first movement became his first extended 12-note composition. Though only the first and last movements of the quartet are entirely 12-note, the work already demonstrates the features that distinguish Berg's handling of the 12-note system from that of Schoenberg or Webern. Also as an opera composer Berg showed the opera composing with the 12 tone tecnique. His Wozzeck, with his topic, musical genius and gripping atmosphere is a pure example of expressionism. As seen in his compose's romantic features, his music is the evidence of lyric music with serial music

Anton Webern ( 1883 - 1945 )

     Austrian composer Anton Webern who was a student of Schoenberg from 1905, became best-known exponents of twelve tone technique. Additionally, his innovations regarding schematic organization of pitch, rhythm and dynamics were formative in the musical technique later known as total serialism. Also, like Schoenberg's third movement of Five Pieces for Orchestra ( Op.16 ), Farben he also add many developments to another Schoenberg idea Klangfarbenmelodie. ( such as his orchestration to Bach's first Ricercar from Musical Offering. Webern, mainly focused on atonal music by using twelve tone technique, even he set and ordered the other patterns of music after 1930's.Webern's works changed significantly with his adoption of 12-note technique after that period, most aspects of composition that had interested him from the time of the early aphoristic pieces continued to occupy him; thus many features of his style remained much the same. Two features of his early music that might be singled out as particularly characteristic also of his later style are his special fondness for the interval of a semitone, together with its inversion and the various octave expansions of both, and his pointillistic scoring, with its resultant kaleidoscopic textures. When writing with a 12-note row, a dominance of semitones could be assured by building them into the row. The most  organized example is the row for the Trio op.20, which consists of six semitones separated by larger intervals: the 48 row forms divide into two groups, in each of which all rows contain the same six semitones.

Arnold Schoenberg ( 1874 - 1951 )

      Schoenberg’s music may be divided into four periods, the second and third of which were opens by crises in compositional technique that had important consequences not only for the composer’s own work but for music in general. The music of the first period is tonal, or at least employs a tonality as a central point of reference.In that period Schoenberg's main source was the Late-Romantic composers beginning with Brahms,Wagner and Mahler. In that period mainly the String Quartet in D minor and Verklarte Nacht are basis of his creativity. In 1908 Schoenberg abandoned tonality. The music of the ensuing second period is often called ‘atonal’. Schoenberg considered this term nonsensical, preferring ‘pantonal’. Since either term properly embraces his serial music as well, the period will be referred to here as ‘expressionist’. From his work of this time he gradually evolved the principle of serialism, which he first used consistently in 1920; the serial music written between that date and 1936 constitutes the third period. The fourth, less known period  may be said to emerge during the 1930s. It is marked by greater stylistic diversity, including returning to tonal composition.

Atonality and Twelve Tone Technique

     Atonality describes mainly music that lacks a tonal center. For the beginning of the 20th century atonal music mainly associated with twelve tone tecnique which is the beginning of the idea serial music with establish of Schoenberg that style of composition. Twelve tone technique aims to ensure that all of the in 12 tone of a chromatical scale any tone cannot be superior than other in the context of tonal degrees, means all 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key.

     Twelve tone technique invented by Arnold Schoenberg in 1921.He described the system as a "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One Another".However, the common English usage is to describe the method as a form of serialism. In twelve tone serialism the basic idea was tone row what refers to a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch classes. Every composer that work on twelve tone serialism used specific tone - rows for their compositions.

- Post tonal music and Impressionist music as a preparatory of Serialism in context of transformation of colour and formation of atonal system

 

       The term ' post tonal music ' actually is consist of seperated periods after second half of 19th century till 1920. Because not all the composers wrote pieces that forcing to break the tonality but some of them did naturally as a last point of their compositional tecnique beginning with Wagner,mainly Lizst and Scriabin.Wagner's mature musical style, with its unprecedented exploration of emotional expression, introduced new ideas in harmony, melodic process (leitmotiv) and operatic structure. Notably from Tristan und Isolde onwards, he explored the limits of the tonal system with pointing the way to atonality.  Liszt experimented with "forbidden" things such as parallel 5ths in the "Csárdás macabre'' and in the ''Bagatelle sans Tonalité'' ("Bagatelle without Tonality"). In the last part of his "2de Valse oubliée" ("2nd Forgotten waltz") Liszt composed that he could not find a lyrical melody.Pieces like the "2nd Mephisto-Waltz" are shocking with nearly endless repetitions of short motives. Scriabin also wrote his last five piano sonatas without key signature, some of them are nearly atonal but generally with have tone centers. With the way that Wagner open, the quest of tonal music was about to end, especially with the idea depends on the breaking of dominant and tonic relationship.

 

         Another important movement that giving way to establish of Serial Music was impressionism that mainly arised in Denmark as a visual art then developed and breaked out in France. Impressionism was a movement that effect Serial music not in thematic, rythmic or harmonic way but the usage of hamony and the idea of '' impress something in music with colours '' influenced the Serial music composers. Usage of insturments to create a chord was one of the main issues that Debussy and Ravel. Instead of idea '' only creating a chord'', they chose to deal with '' how the chord will sound? ''

 

        Those two ideas were the principal reasons that carrying music to the atonality, because the prolonged dominants or impressionist style which is based on modes are not the answer that Schoenberg's wants to hear to his questions