Development of material

So, as many of you know, I have been experimenting with serialism and more modern techniques. In this regard, I have realized that the same types of development used in tonal music are oftentimes unable to be utilized in this aesthetic. What developmental procedures are possible? And is this a sign that the options available in serialism aren't as flexible as to be desired? Opinions!

So, as many of you know, I have been experimenting with serialism and more modern techniques. In this regard, I have realized that the same types of development used in tonal music are oftentimes unable to be utilized in this aesthetic. What developmental procedures are possible? And is this a sign that the options available in serialism aren't as flexible as to be desired? Opinions!

Serialism is a bit hard to figure out how to develop sections when first starting out. I personally am in the same boat as you, in that I am currently writing a serial piano trio in sonata form. I first created very recognizable themes using very specific and recurring rhythmic patterns, thus anything else aside from that would come across as transitional or development. The development section also is separated by it's rhythm. Either by an ostinato pattern or just a rhythm that is very contrasting from the other sections.

You can also use the rows them selves to create development, by using octave displacements oe choosing notes going up or down the octaves.

Also the treatment of the notes themselves can indicate a development section. In tonal music, you dont just choose notes, you choose what they do, how fast they do it, ect, ect. You can make the performers sound more agitated, you can create a crescendo or decrescendo, you can change the orchestration all together either suddenly or very slowly, or you can change the technique performers use. There are many things you can do to indicate a development.

Another thing you can do is not have a development. That is a modernist technique that a few composer have done, one being Stravinsky. You can place one block of sound right next to another block of sound with no development in between.

Theses are just a few things you can think about, hopefully this helps.

Yeah, I've noticed. I've been able to do some development within my rows - mainly by diminishing and increasing the value of notes... breaking the rows apart, etc. I just... well... don't know. I think more can be done with it than I currently know how to do.

I view modern development as more of an independent exploration of a larger sound scape.

Suppose you have a 12-tone matrix based on a row. You have a lot more room to collect ideas from this, actually. You can use the row and its inversions. You can even use parts of those rows as motivic material. But I like to avoid actually using the full row and its inversions, retrogrades, and retrograde inversions. I find that I can take blocks of pitches and play with them (like, take the first two rows and first two columns, four notes total, whatever they are) and then play with it. Maybe I'll do this somewhere in the middle of the matrix, too.

In short, I try to avoid the 12-tone linear element for the sake of finding those hidden gems of pitches that form out of taking the logical assortment of those pitches in reference to each other and finding harmonic and melodic material I like from that. Then I can incorporate some or all of the 12-tone rows in some of the sonorities I come up with, or I can create sonorities out of the 12-tone row and match those to a line I create from one or more blocks of material.

In the end, they're all nothing more than pitches in a grid, organized with some referential logic, but still pitches when all is said and done. It makes for a rather intuitive experience of exploration when I work with this kind of idiom, so that I don't find myself relying on strictly one-dimensional thinking in crafting a serial work. Unlike Tonal writing, I'm not concerned with conforming to certain procedural harmonic/melodic implications that come about in writing tonal music, like a chromatic progression relying on leading tones to propel it forward.

And you'll find there are probably a variety of other things you can do in your development using this approach. Just forget about judging the ideas and let them just "be" ideas... then combine these ideas in different ways to see if you can arrive at a larger fragment of a piece. That's what I do, at least. I may later decide to represent it with some pseudo-tonal triadic sonorities to progress the piece from one important idea to another, then leave the sonority of progressive triads to play with a new idea with more patience and attention to the smaller elements of sound, like dynamics and articulations, durations and rhythmic patterns, maybe some instrumental timbres imitating each other while ideas sort of mix and mesh with each other. I dunno, there's just so much you can do when you're at that point in crafting a piece, it's almost too much for me to just tell you what you can do at that point.

Okay, so what I can deduce from your statement:

It's okay to work with subsets of your row and its permutations (first four notes, etc.). I've been doing that - so that makes me happy to hear! Another thing, that i'm curious about here... and I'm sure you know what i'm thinking...

When is it appropriate to introduce other non-serial ideas into a given work? I've experimented, as you know, with inputting serial elements in my later tonal works. You mentioned before that one has to think of the aesthetic and act appropriately. When is it allowable to buck the aesthetical approach in that manner?

You'll only really come to "understand" this when you listen to and study more modern music on your own. But really, you have to find modern music that appeals to you, that you truly are willing to invest in writing for the sake of expressing yourself. Augusta Reed Thomas once told me something that is really brilliant and very much - absolutely true. Your job is to discover your aesthetic, whatever that is... and to always be looking for that aesthetic in the music that exists today. It doesn't matter whether the piece is more traditional or completely, balls to the walls, out there.

When you do this, it's important not to set yourself on one work but to split off and explore just about anything you genuinely think expresses something in you. Then, you take those things and work with them using your own ideas, your own exploration. The convergence of the music today that interests you with the ideas you create forms an expression of you... and that's really what composing is all about - what you can express and how you express it. Those aren't matters for me to say, "Yeah, you can do this but you can't do that..."

In the example of the piece you wrote a while back, the tonal work with some "contemporary" methods thrown into the mix... sure, that was an attempt at including "new" into your work, but that negated "you" from the picture altogether, because you weren't giving us you in that work... you were giving us you... plus "new," and that isn't very convincing. It's gotta be genuine, and trained ears can tell the difference just in how you take time with your ideas and give them something dimensional and substantive for us to hold onto... to hear in a sound space and recognize as a truly outstanding idea expressed in a truly awesome way.

I hope that answers your question.

It does actually. Though, I think that work we both mentioned of mine, did display a me that I hadn't quite explored a lot. I like to study and do new things all the time in nearly every facet of life. In my music, I stopped doing those things years ago - and until recently, when I started to go back to that exploration side of me musically, I really didn't acknowledge anything outside of my own selfish view of music. After exploring serial technique more and more... it's really helped me realize exactly what she said to you. Music is just an extension of self... nothing more. However, just like the way we speak or act is based on what we are taught and experience... music is also based by what we know and learn. Hence, why I ask about development. Are there ways to develop things that I don't know how to implement?

Write first. Analyze later.

I think calling it development is kind of wrong to begin with. There's material really, but whatever it is you're calling development is probably something more related to using the same things in different ways.

As such, I'd rather call it economy of material. This is a more open concept, where all sorts of uses can come up that relate to using the same material. It applies both to old and to new music. Now, whatever within that that could count as "development" is really sketchy, because in the classical sense "development" involved very specific techniques (sequencing, etc) but also it had tonal implications (modulations, etc.) What happens when you're not working with major/minor tonality is that you can still use sequencing, but the structure doesn't have the same anchors, if it has any at all.

There's also the question of repetitions. A lot of modern music is characterized specifically for the lack of direct perceivable repetitions (superficially that is), but that doesn't mean that there can't be an economy of material. It's simply that repetitions in the traditional sense are avoided in favor of using the same material more abstractly. The internal framework of a modern piece is often impossible to actually hear in the piece, as opposed to in tradition where it had less layers of abstraction.

And also fundamentally it's with the layers of abstraction that you need to work with. If you have C D E as your material, you can quite literally call A B C# a repetition if only transposed. The transposed part is a layer of abstraction, but it can get much more complex. In the end you may be "using" the same material, but the end result may be completely new things as a result of that abstraction.

This is also why a lot of music seems to avoid repetitions when in reality they have them somewhere, but you don't hear them as such since they're deep within the framework of the piece. There's obviously a limit to how further you can push before it sounds nothing like your source material, but there's nothing preventing you from going all the way. This also counts, interestingly, as economy of material, but to the person listening it surely would not.

It's the same idea with development really. It all mostly depends on if you're basing your stuff directly on how the music sounds or on any particular system or abstraction, or all of the above. "Development," "economy," etc are all talking about organization of material, regardless of what that material is, and there's different ways you can go about that organization and many different perspectives you can take.

It's the same idea with development really. It all mostly depends on if you're basing your stuff directly on how the music sounds or on any particular system or abstraction, or all of the above. "Development," "economy," etc are all talking about organization of material, regardless of what that material is, and there's different ways you can go about that organization and many different perspectives you can take.

The only thing I happen to mildly disagree with is lumping development/economy into an umbrella-category of organization. The temporal occurrence of material falls under form/growth, and doesn't really arrive at a qualification of the material itself... that's something else entirely. Organization depends on one's ability to create material, sure, but how that material is later organized (or perhaps intuitively organized as its being composed) is something else entirely.

This is more likely a matter of what we're using to define organization, where I think in terms of material in larger units of structure (2 or more ideas coming together to form a unit, which then combines with other units) while you might simply be referring to the occurrence of material overall - which is fine. I think "development" or "economy" just goes a little deeper than that. These things have more to do with the degree of variance among different ideas as well as the degree of connectivity between them, which does happen to be tied into form, but only in a superficial, temporal way.

The idea of development in a 12-tone piece is quite an issue. Instead of working with specific keys and tonal areas with limited pitches, you have all 12 notes of the chromatic scale immediately at your disposal. So what do you do with them? In tonal music you usually have key areas as goals and dissonances resolve in very specific ways but in atonal music (assuming you're going to write atonal music) you have to establish the rules/guidelines of the composition from scratch; there are simply more possibilities.

Now one thing you can do is start with a row and look for ways that it can be divided up to create tonal progressions. For example, in the Berg violin concerto, Berg divides his primary row (G Bb D F# A C E G# B C# Eb F - which isn't even introduced until m. 15) into a tonal progression that he likes to return to. There's G minor, D major, A minor, and E major (the progression first starts in m. 11). Throughout the first movement at least there's even a sort of tension between Gm and Bb major as a loose tonal center. Berg also noticed that the last 4 notes of his row create a whole-tone collection and can be linked to the first note of the row as well (giving 5 notes of a whole tone scale). So a lot of the concerto is based on recurring tonal moments and on linked whole tone segments.

Schoenberg, on the other hand, mostly stayed away from tonal implications but liked to relate his music to tonal forms. So he might begin with a prime form (let's say P0) as a sort of theme played by one instrument, harmonized by discrete trichords of the series form, and eventually he moves into a second theme that begins with P7, suggesting a "modulation" up a fifth. He used ideas like this to give a sense of direction to his music. He also often used hexachordal combinatoriality and partitioning to get ideas for how to develop his music.

I'm just calling it organization because so long as you're putting sounds on a timeline, that's organizing them. It's really that simple.

I see what SSC is talking about, as well as everyone else. What really matters is to have your events planned out first then work your material towards them, yes?

It's one way. Not the only way though. You really should abandon the idea that there's a "right" way to go about any of this and just try out different options.

I see what SSC is talking about, as well as everyone else. What really matters is to have your events planned out first then work your material towards them, yes?

I think what SSC might be getting at is that it may not be a procedural kind of solution at all. Music composition doesn't exclusively work as, "first this, then this, then this..." because the layers of thought involved in creating a composition all happen to occur simultaneously, often according to what aspects/characteristics of sound we prioritize at any given point in a work. The prioritization of these different aspects may be determined by curiosity/exploration, attitude/bias, emotion, and many other affection-level processes (getting into some Bloom here - because he's the man!).

What really matters, in my opinion, is understanding how your affection-level processes are influencing your approach to composition.

Can you elaborate on affection-level?

The topic is interesting.

By the way, I have Serial Composition by Reginald Smith Brindle, but am curious as to what other textbooks (in English) are available on the subject, eventually not only on serial composition, but also free atonality. But please, nothing related to the so-called Set theory and Forte. As far as I know, this is popular in America, but I am really not into this approach. I was looking for Composition with Twelve Notes Related Only to One Another by Josef Rufer, but it seems hard (and damn expensive) to find.

What really matters is to have your events planned out first then work your material towards them, yes?

Not necessarily. Some composers work linearly (one event leads to another and the composer doesn't know where the piece is heading or where it's going to end until they reach that spot), and some meticulously plan the structure of a piece before writing a note. There are other options, too. I think the trick is to find what works most efficiently for you, but a lot of composers don't even have a specific method. You just do what you have to in order to create and develop your music.

Kamen, there's a fairly new book out by Joseph Straus called Twelve-Tone Music in America which looks excellent, but it's expensive, I haven't read it, and since it's Straus there's probably some set theory.

I am fairly new to twelve-tone music, but how exactly does it differ from development of earlier period. The way I see it it is both a way of exploring and exploiting the properties that are in the motive/theme/tone-row. The time in the piece in which you explore/exploit them makes the difference between exposition and development.

Make sense?

Can you elaborate on affection-level?

Bloom highlights three domains of human thinking and awareness: Cognition, Psychomotor, and Affectionate. Cognition deals with your understandings, your rationality and reasoning skills. Psychomotor deals with your motor skills and how your brain connects thought or subconscious reactions with physical action. Affectionate deals with your emotional, sometimes irrational reasoning, which is where attitudes, values, beliefs, and morality tend to become prioritized within other areas of your thinking and awareness.

Now one thing you can do is start with a row and look for ways that it can be divided up to create tonal progressions. For example, in the Berg violin concerto, Berg divides his primary row (G Bb D F# A C E G# B C# Eb F - which isn't even introduced until m. 15) into a tonal progression that he likes to return to. There's G minor, D major, A minor, and E major (the progression first starts in m. 11). Throughout the first movement at least there's even a sort of tension between Gm and Bb major as a loose tonal center. Berg also noticed that the last 4 notes of his row create a whole-tone collection and can be linked to the first note of the row as well (giving 5 notes of a whole tone scale). So a lot of the concerto is based on recurring tonal moments and on linked whole tone segments.

This is a bit of nit-picking as you're technically right in that the row doesn't show up in clear form for the first time until measure 15 but... your statement seems to imply that everything occurs beforehand in the concerto is entirely unrelated to the row. Which is... wrong. The very opening isn't a strict iteration of the row but you can easily see where how it's derived from the row. And the 'cadence' heard right before the violin plays the row for the first time in strict P0 comes directly from the row. That's the thing about Berg's concerto. It uses a tone row pretty much throughout but it's a scallop and a half to actually analyze in terms of tone rows thanks to cyclic shift, welding two forms of the row together to form a single line, and sometimes plain just not playing the notes in sequence (which I wasn't even aware you could do in serialism until not too long ago).

This is a bit of nit-picking as you're technically right in that the row doesn't show up in clear form for the first time until measure 15 but... your statement seems to imply that everything occurs beforehand in the concerto is entirely unrelated to the row.

Nitpicking, indeed! I didn't mean to make it sound that way, I was just giving some examples. Of course everything prior to m. 15 is related to the row or matrix, it's just trickier to analyze. For instance, in m. 1 Berg pulls the harp riff from the first 4 alternating notes of P10 (using a sort of fixed do system where P0 starts on C). In m. 2 the violin plays the open strings, which happen to be the first 4 alternating notes from P7. In m. 3 Berg fills in the next 4 alternating notes from P10, and in m. 4 he does the same thing but from P7. So, yeah, there's no reason that a composer of 12-tone music has to stick strictly to complete iterations of series forms throughout, and you don't have to play the notes in sequence. The idea of a row or matrix is just to get you thinking about a piece of music in new ways. It's a point of departure, not a rigid collection of notes that are bound together, required to appear in a particular order.

Yep. And I didn't even mean to so much as imply that you personally didn't understand this. But I didn't want anyone reading this who wasn't very familiar with serialism (which is probably most of the forum actually) to read this and come away with the mistaken impression of serialism.

EDIT: A few thoughts on the actual topic at hand that I'll expand on when I wake up more:

1) Personally, I see the whole idea of writing with a tone row as an extension and culmination of the classical technique of a theme and variations; simply on more abstract terms (just pitches being designated as opposed to designated pitches/rhythm/harmony). Therefore, I think every iteration of a tone row in any form that isn't a literal repetition to be a consistent development/evolution. I'm not alone in this thinking either as Webern himself compared the serial technique to what Bach did in his fugues.

But beyond that, further development can be applied to a row. As has already been mentioned, there is the use of a 'motivic cell' within the row. There's using a specific transposition of the row at specific times to create something akin to a modulation. There's applying the row against another form of itself in contrapuntal lines. There's Barraque's technique of a 'proliferating series' which is to gradually evolve and change the notes of a tone row over time until an entirely different series is formed.

Then, of course, there is Stockhausen's formula composition which came about as sort of an evolution of serialism. But then, with formula composition, you run into the problem of 'evolution of material' vs. simply reapplying the same idea in different ways which leads to my second point.

2) SSC does bring a valid point of 'development' vs. 'economy of material.' However, I think it's mainly a fight over terminology. SSC uses the term 'development' in a strictly classical sense but I see this as somewhat archaic nowadays since every other element/building block of music's definition has well been expanded when the 20th century hit. For me, I use 'development' in a broader sense. I like to think of as a sort of varied repetition on an idea or part of an idea; whether this is simply applying the same idea in a different manner or bringing about fundamental change in the application of the idea while still maintaining a degree of recognition. The development itself referring to the relationships between musical material. This relationship doesn't even have to be audible by necessity.

I'll try to type more later.

1) Personally, I see the whole idea of writing with a tone row as an extension and culmination of the classical technique of a theme and variations; simply on more abstract terms (just pitches being designated as opposed to designated pitches/rhythm/harmony). Therefore, I think every iteration of a tone row in any form that isn't a literal repetition to be a consistent development/evolution. I'm not alone in this thinking either as Webern himself compared the serial technique to what Bach did in his fugues.

Er, I really fail to see what theme and variation cycles have to do with serial rows. Webern was referring to fugue subjects, which are a specific thing and are in no way even related to theme and variation (which, again, unless we're talking about Beethoven's Diabelli is ironically not much of variations on the theme itself but on the accompaniment.) The point was simply that a 12 tone row can be used like a fugue subject (and indeed polyphonic linear-thinking plays an enormous role in 12 tone music, where before it was neglected throughout all of the 19th and 18th century, hell and one can go even further back to the beginning of the baroque with the figured bass as the point where linearity was becoming less and less important.) Again, I have no idea what any of this has to do with theme and variation cycles.

But beyond that, further development can be applied to a row. As has already been mentioned, there is the use of a 'motivic cell' within the row. There's using a specific transposition of the row at specific times to create something akin to a modulation. There's applying the row against another form of itself in contrapuntal lines. There's Barraque's technique of a 'proliferating series' which is to gradually evolve and change the notes of a tone row over time until an entirely different series is formed.

Techniques derived directly from the use of modes. Again, the influence of medieval polyphony (Ockeghem, Des Prez, etc) is clear here.

SSC uses the term 'development' in a strictly classical sense but I see this as somewhat archaic nowadays since every other element/building block of music's definition has well been expanded when the 20th century hit.

The problem is mostly that I don't like to apply the same terminology to multiple things that have almost nothing to do with eachother. What Beethoven does to motives in his sonatas' developments have nothing to do with what happens in, say, Boulez. Even IF you use the same internal structure as Beethoven, the music itself will sound entirely different (assuming you're doing 12 tone/total serialism, whatever.) So really why use the same terminology?

If you call pizzas and airplanes "apples," as well as apples, when talking about just "apples," you'll need every time to establish a context. It's bad enough as it is with some terms, why do this? Plus some things simply don't HAVE a specific terminology attached to it for the simple reason that there's no "standard" and too many options. What you consider "development" in serialism may not be what someone else considers "development," which is why I'd rather just get rid of the term altogether since it's not helping any if it has to be explained every time. Labeling of historical things is one thing, borrowing the terms to mean whatever you want them to mean is something else entirely.

Yes I make this argument EVERY TIME and it's probably the 190000th time I've said the exact same thing, but I stand by it as always since it causes confusion and I want to AVOID semantic bullshit, that's why I attack this point first and foremost. If something doesn't have terminology attached to it (permutations of serialism for example don't have specific names,) let's not try to be pioneers and just describe things since it's what you'll be doing anyway since just calling it a term that nobody understands helps nobody.