Series (music)

The series used by A. Webern in a concert for 9 instruments (op. 24). Play

A series (from the Latin series series) in music of the 20th — 21st centuries is a series of twelve sounds of various heights , the repetitions and transformations of which form the entire fabric of a musical work ^[1] . A series is also called a sequence of fewer (for example, 5, 7, 10) non-repeating different sounds, if the composer works with such a sequence of sounds in the same way as is accepted in the serial technique of dodecaphone composition.

The development of the series is typologically identical to the polyphonic development of the “usual” theme. The series has four main forms: prima (the main “direct” form; abbreviated by the Latin letter P ), inversion / inversion ( I ), shellfish ( R ) and shellfish inversion ( RI ). The sounds of the series can be used by the composer in any octave (that is, with octave transfers of the elements of the series) and can be arranged differently rhythmically, timbrally, etc. The series can be transposed to any height in accordance with 12 altitude positions in a uniformly tempered octave.

Serial technology as a special technique of musical composition was intensively developed by the composers of the Novo -Vienna school - A. Schönberg, A. Webern and A. Berg. Subsequently, it was used (to varying degrees of severity) by dozens of composers, including (alphabetically) E. V. Denisov , E. Kshenek , N. Skalkotas , (late) I. F. Stravinsky , A. G. Schnittke and many others .

To analyze serial music in the USA and some European countries, the teachings of Allen Fort (and other American musicologists) are widely used, using the concept of a set / set of pitch classes (pitch class set, pitch class collection). In Russian musicology, this teaching is also called the "theory of series" (free translation of the English. Set theory ).