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ATTENTION: Huge post coming. Close your eyes if you can't take it! I find it interesting that serialism still seems such a hot topic for those "new to it", even though contemporary serialist music is n rare thing. Much of that may have to do with the common misconception Nikolas just cleared up, that "atonal" (or at least not traditionally tonal) music is serial by nature. No doubt though, serialism is an important thing to be aware of even today, for the influence it had on the ("academic") music of the 20th century - and also because many serialist composers were also rather clever minds who wrote things about music that hadn't really been voiced until then and which, IMHO, are still important for a composer to be aware of. First of all, the term serialism: We need to establish what exactly we mean by it, since there are mainly two confliction definitions thereof. In english usage (I'm not sure whether it's generally english or just American) it often refers to all dodecaphonic composition, i.e. music composed with Schönberg's twelve-tone technique or derivations thereof. I'm also not sure if in the english usage of the term it also encompasses other original approaches to 12-tone composition, such as Hauer's method. I believe in french it's used similarly than in english, although I'm not entirely sure. In the german usage of the term (and some other languages which I'm not sure about), "Serialismus" is used strictly to describe methods of composition where "all" parameters of a composition are organised in tone rows, while Schönberg's technique is simply called 12-tone composition or dodecaphony. (By putting "all" in quotation marks I mean that in truth there is no such thing as a fixed "parameter list" in music - you can call whatever you want a "musical parameter", so there's no such thing as "all musical parameters" in an objective sense. But certain things like pitch, rhythm, dynamics etc. are at least very broadly seen as "musical parameters", so that's what I'm talking about here.) This method was mostly developed by certain pupils of Messiaen (who himself had with one work laid out the foundation of this kind of composition), notably Boulez, Stockhausen, to some degree Nono and others. This was in the early 1950s and lasted only rather shortly, in this strict form. (I.e. those same composers already had distanced themselves from this quite a lot by the end of the 1950s, while keeping certain elements of it.) Why am I placing such an importance of the distinction between those usages? Because I've often seen english-speaking people using the term in the english way (i.e. thinking of Schönberg's method), but associating the "control-fetishism", the number-games and the "academic dominance" of the german definition with it, which would be quite a mistake. "Serialism" in the sense of 12-tone composition is a method, which describes certain techniques of controlling certain specific aspects of your piece in a limited way. It is not a fixed aesthetic however and neither describes how the music is going to sound, nor does it postulate a specific musical mindset as a whole. "Serialism" as in the 1950s serialism on the other hand is not a fixed method at all. There is no manifesto that describes a certain technique (well, there's Messiaen's introduction to his "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités", but that's more a "proto-manifesto" that was taking as a common starting point for other composers). In fact, every serialist composer of this form of serialism pretty much invented a new technique with every new piece he or she wrote. It is however much more a general musical mindset: The desire to control all aspects of a composition systematically, and the desire of treating all aspects of the composition by the same principles (i.e. using the same processes for the rhythms as for the pitches etc.), seeing Schönberg's method as faulty in its sole focus on one musical parameter. It is this fundamental idea of a structurally unified music that this form of serialism establishes. In any discussion about serialism, it should be made quite clear about what exactly we're talking about here. Now, as to the questions themselves. The question of purpose is of course, because of the reasons Plutokat mentioned, very hard to answer. But of course there are reasons why Schönberg invented his technique and there are reasons Messiaen's pupils went for their own "doctrine". The latter, I already answered to some degree: The desire to bring all musical parameters together under one single governing idea. Historically speaking, this might be seen as a logical continuation of the Beethoven-Brahms line of motivic treatment, where the composers tried to derive all musical material in a piece from the same motivic core in order to create more unity. 1950s serialism simply takes this to a more abstract level, not using a concrete motivic core as the center of the piece, but a structural idea, from which everything is derived. The idea itself may never be actually audible, but everything -is- related by its childhood to this idea, which should, in theory, lead to an audible sense of unity and structure. (Of course Boulez would kill me if I called this a direct continuation of the Beethoven-Brahms line, hehe.) Another aspect is the distrust in the "composer's intuition". It was a time shortly after WWII and people wanted to make a new start, socially, politically and culturally. Indirectly, it may also have had to do with how the Nazis instrumentalised tonal-traditional music of their time, while banning those who diverged from it. In any case, those 50s composers realized that there was no way of breaking with the past as long as the composers allowed themselves to simply "write intuitively" - as all our intuition is based on what we know, what we've heard, and thus musical tradition. So they thought to get away with that by stepping back to a more abstract level as a composer, a level where the composer would only devise general rules and let them then enfold themselves unhindered according to a certain algorithm. This allows a composer somewhat more to "leave his prejudices behind" and delve into directions where he might never have ended up if he had composed every note "as he saw fit at the moment", allowing them to experience things they would never have experienced otherwise. (Of course it's clear that even this approach was far from being absolutely set apart from musical tradition: Most of this music still uses traditional instruments and instrumental groups, still uses the same forms of notation, and of course the structural rules themselves are still dependent on the composer's "intuition" and thus coloured by tradition.) Schönberg's form of serialism on the other hand came out of necessity after having written freely atonal music for some time. He had realized that without any fixed tonality it was very hard to compose longer pieces without getting lost in musical details, since there was no unifying architecture to cling to. That's why he had in the meantime composed either short pieces, or pieces with texts (songs), where the text helped him to create larger forms. That's why he wanted to systematise his form of composition and ended up with his 12-tone-technique. Now, what exact properties did he want this technique to have? It is true that to some degree the rules of this technique served the purpose of avoiding certain tonal implications. It's not that he didn't like tonality (anyone who has ever listened to -any- Schönberg piece will see that this is clearly not the case), but much more that he was aware of the immense power that tonal implications have for a listener used to classical music, which automatically make the music heard in a very specific context, while making it almost impossible to hear the music outside of this context, making it impossible to hear the sounds merely as sounds, all with their own "colour", equal to each other in importance. That's why his rules lead to an approximately even distribution of pitches etc. - simply to avoid an implied functional context and let the individual sounds of the notes and note-constellations truly come out. In the end, these rules are similar than many classical rules, such as the avoidance of parallel fifths: Those were especially avoided because of their very specific power that makes them stand out in a way that rivals the aspects of music that were supposed to be the actual focus, i.e. in this case polyphony (next to the property of parallel fifths/octaves reducing the audibility of the individual voices, of course). Maybe most musical rules ever devised and broadly used had the purpose of reducing the influence of certain powerful effects that might otherwise "steal the show" so to speak, and distract from the actual musical intentions. As to your second question: The question whether I or others enjoy "listening to serial music" is similar to asking whether people enjoy "looking at photographs": It's simply much too broad to be answered generally. In short: It depends on the person and it depends on the specific piece in question. I do, in any case, enjoy listening to a lot of serial pieces, encompassing both classical 12-tone pieces as well as pieces composed in the 50s vein of serialism. Do I personally write serial music? No, and I've never done so and I quite possibly never will. But I have been heavily influenced by it and learned a lot from it. I do, for instance, sympatise with the idea of the 1950s serialism of basing an entire composition on one core idea (although for me those ideas can be much more "philosophical" and less technical than they used to be in the 50s serialism), and I also sympatise with creating structures that allow me to "leave myself behind" to some degree, i.e. working out processes that lead me to venture into things that are foreign to me, that let me experience things I wouldn't come up with by simply writing note after note without any plan, just following my intuition. I do also sympatise with a generally very planned approach, where I think a lot of what I want with a composition before writing the first note. But I clearly diverge from this form of serialism in a lot of other ways: I have no intention of leaving any traditions behind - actually, consciously playing with such traditions can be a major part of my compositions. I also have no intention of treating every musical parameter according to the same technical processes and frankly, I believe it to be a mistake to believe this is even possible. Dynamics simply are a fundamentally different thing than pitches, and treating them the same does neither of them justice. I also disagree with clearly splitting up the music into a clear set of parameters in the first place. Harmony can turn into timbre, rhythm into pitch, and so on - there are no clear borders there. (Of course I'm not saying the serialist composers weren't aware of that. Stockhausen even wrote a major text about the relationships of pitch and duration. But the core of 1950s serialism still relies on such clear separations.) Last but not least: I do not tend to follow through one single technical algorithm for a whole piece without concessions. I may have some rather firm "rules" and planned structures, but I consciously leave myself the possibility of certain spontaneous decisions, of intuition, etc. (This too was of course done by many of said serialist composers in the late 50s and later, but is a clear contrast to the "original 50s serialism".) "Are the melodies supposed to be so rigid"? It depends on the composer whether there is even supposed to be a melody of some sort. It also depends on the composer whether the music is intended to be "beautiful"/sensual or has an entirely different aim. Schönberg definitely intended his music to be "enjoyed" in a similar way as people tend to listen to Schubert or Debussy. And I have no problem listening to it in the very same manner. For other composers (especially of the later brand of serialism), this is vastly different again - Boulez's "Structures" is certainly supposed to be "rigid" in a way - there aren't supposed to be "nice melodies" in there at all. Pleasure is not the main goal here, although "enjoyment" in a different sense may still very well be. Those different froms of "pleasure", "enjoyment" etc. are very hard to pin down though, since so many things can be meant by them. I'd rather not venture into that as well.

In order for me to give you my support as a reviewer, I would need to see two things: 1. Better grammar skills. 2. More in depth reviews. -MF

Did you check the manual? Try pressing F1 and finding the "Pickup Measures" section. This is from 2009, but I suspect the process is the same... if not, try your own manual!! :)

but someone hate changing , but i want to change somethings , like Obama said (change is coming )