Word: rowes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...basis of this system is the row--the twelve tones of the tempered scale set in a particular order by the composer. Once he picks a row, he can manipulate it in countless ways and at the same time avoid any suggestion of tonality, since each note is equal, i.e. none of them is emphasized as tonality emphasizes its main tone, its resting point. A substantial part of the system's appeal to composers lies in its highly organized nature: the destruction of the complex system of tonal relations seems to demand another complicated set of rules. Schoenberg, the twelvetone...
...Row Idea...
Wolff's solution involves a number of techniques, the most important of which deals with an extension of the row idea. In Schoenberg and Webern only pitch is set in order. Now the concept of "total organization" puts other musical materials into a row: dynamics, time, tonecolor all have their own rows, frequently connected with one another...
...idea of the row, or series, has so taken hold that post-Webern composers might better be called serialists. Wolff's rows for these piano pieces involve, among things, serial ordering of units of time in seconds, so that the performers require stopwatches...
Again, a preoccupation with subtle combinations of tone color informed the short piano pieces by Bertram Baldwin and David Behrman (a violin also entered Mr. Behrman's piece for a while). There were row structures, not so elaborate as Wolff's, but complicated enough to be hardly perceptible. The avant-garde leader Boulez would tell us that structure has gone underground. But does this subterreanean structure really give shape to a piece, or does it happen accidentally, or not at all? In a short composition like Baldwin's it is easier to give a sense of cohesiveness; this piece, rather...