SERIAL MUSIC IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY

- 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