The Melody Web what each genre heard, and what it passed on

heard passed on Click or tap a node to recenter. Use a connecting line, or Influence, for the story.

Heard

Atonality movement · 1908–1923

Serialism takes atonality’s emancipated dissonance and orders it as a twelve-tone series: the same Viennese workshop, a named method after 1923.

Influence

Serialism

movement · 1923–

Also called serial music, twelve-tone, twelve-note, dodecaphony

Twentieth-century concert method that orders pitch (and later duration, dynamics, or timbre) as a series: Schoenberg’s twelve-tone rows, Webern, then postwar integral serialism (Boulez, Babbitt). It hears Atonality for the emancipated-dissonance job the 1923 row then orders. It gives Third stream the twelve-tone color Schuller writes into mixed jazz-and-orchestra scores. Late-Romantic chromaticism leftover as a pre-atonal hinge. Integral serialism leftover as a 1950s wing on this node. Darmstadt leftover as a postwar campus circuit, not a second node. American academic serialism stays here.

Listen

  1. Suite for Piano, Op. 25 Arnold Schoenberg (1923) YouTube
  2. Symphony, Op. 21 Anton Webern (1928) YouTube
  3. Lyric Suite Alban Berg (1926) YouTube
  4. Structures Ia Pierre Boulez (1952) YouTube
  5. Three Compositions for Piano Milton Babbitt (1947) YouTube

Passed on

Third stream style · 1957–1970

Third stream borrows serial pitch procedure as concert color: rows and aggregates written around jazz improvisation, not as the club default.

Influence

Atonality → Serialism

harmonymelodyform and structurestrength: highscholarly consensus1921–1925notationpedagogy

Mechanism

Serialism takes atonality’s emancipated dissonance and orders it as a twelve-tone series: the same Viennese workshop, a named method after 1923. Strength high. Late-Romantic chromaticism leftover as a pre-atonal hinge. Integral serialism leftover as a 1950s wing on the child.

Evidence

Schoenberg’s Op. 25 suite; Grove on twelve-tone as a recoding of the atonal period; Taruskin on the method as a solution to free atonality.

Debate

Whether serialism simply is atonality. Atonality is the pitch-practice window; serialism is the row method that then travels as a school.

Mediators

artist: Arnold Schoenberg

Serialism → Third stream

harmonymelodyform and structurestrength: mediumscholarly consensus1957–1961notationpedagogyrecording

Mechanism

Third stream borrows serial pitch procedure as concert color: rows and aggregates written around jazz improvisation, not as the club default. Strength medium. baroque third stream is the fugue/concertino hop; this edge is the twelve-tone wing Schuller and Atlantic dates make audible.

Evidence

Transformation (1957); Abstraction with Coleman; Grove on serial technique inside the third-stream brief.

Debate

Whether this is already “modern concert music” rather than serialism named. The dated pieces use 12-tone tools specifically; integral serialism leftover as a Darmstadt wing not required by this hop.

Mediators

artist: Gunther Schuller; artist: Ornette Coleman