Serialism

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

A compositional method developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s that organizes musical elements — most famously the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale — into a fixed ordered series (row), which is then manipulated through transposition, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion to generate the musical material.

Examples

• Webern took serialism to its logical extreme, applying the row technique to rhythm and dynamics as well as pitch.
• Serialism was controversial for its abandonment of tonal centers.

Synonyms: twelve-tone technique, dodecaphony, serial composition