MUS631: History of Western Music II

Week 6: Extremes of Composers

Serialism and Indeterminism
Dr R.L. Tavis Ashton Bell

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Outcomes of the Lesson

● Analyse Babbitt’s “Three

Compositions” as an approach to
expressing control through music

● Analyse Cage’s 4’33” as a

reflection of Indeterminism

● Contrast concepts of control and

freedom

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Week 6 Timeline – Synchronous
Session

9:00 a.m. – 9:10 a.m. Attendance period

9:10 a.m. – 9:20 a.m. Revision of Concepts
9:20 a.m. – 9:25 a.m. Milton Babbitt
9:25 a.m. – 9:40 a.m. John Cage
9:40 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. Control vs. Chance
9:50 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Asynchronous Task

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Revision of Concepts
• Emotional Palettes: Impressionism and Expressionism
• Societal Discourse: Individual Perspectives and Social Commentary
• Cultural Dialogue: Nationalism and Globalism
• Utopianism: Egalitarianism (Equality via removal of hierarchy)

What is the opposite of utopianism?

How is egalitarianism similar to idealism?

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Active Listening

Have a listen to Three Compositions by Dr Milton Babbitt (Link on

Moodle page)

● What do you know of this piece historically?

● Have you ever heard of Milton Babbitt?

● List the musical features you hear in this piece.

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Milton Babbitt (1916 – 2011)

American composer, music theorist, teacher, researcher, and
mathematician.
● Princeton University Music Department (from 1938)
● Princeton University Mathematics Department (1943-45)
● Taught at Juilliard School (1973)

Wrote research articles that developed twelve-tone music mathematically

● First description of combinatoriality and “time-point” techniques
● His PhD thesis, "The Function of Set Structure in the Twelve-Tone
System.“ (1992).

Using mathematical techniques to

manipulate tone rows in different ways

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Serialism

● With Serialism it is possible to convert mathematical ideas into music

○ It may or may not sound aesthetic, yet it is still a map of the interactions

● We have catalogued all possible harmonic interactions and

permutations
○ All tone rows (and all their permutations) are mapped in tonal matrices

● There are more dimensions to music than tone rows

○ Dynamics, rhythms, articulations, etc.

● Integral Serialism is when the serialist method is applied to all

dimensions
○ This leads to pre-framing the composition of Serialist pieces

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Control

● With such approaches, the composer has control over how music is
created
○ With the removal of the tonal hierarchy, there are no emotional contrasts
○ The music has become a cognitive exercise
○ The music can also be a representation of an emotionless mathematical equation

● Without these emotional contrasts, performers cannot use emotions as

a reference for creating an artistic interpretation, yielding to
compositional intent
○ They will have to draw from cognitive / mathematical findings
○ Therefore, compositional intent dominates

● What does this comparison tell us about the nature of our cognition?
● What does this comparison tell usand
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Active Listening

Have a listen to 4’33” by John Cage (Link on Moodle page)

● What do you know of this piece historically?

● What do you know about John Cage?

● List the musical features you hear in this piece.

● What is the artistic message of this piece of music?

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John Cage (1912-1992)

● American composer (California)

● Son of an inventor, Cage’s out-of-the-box ideas

heavily influenced 20th Century approaches to music

● Early compositions were written in 12-tone method

● By 1939 he has begun experimenting with interesting timbres

○ “Prepared Piano”
○ Tape recorders, CD players and radios

● His work was recognized as significant in the development of

traditions ranging from minimalist and electronic music
to performance art

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John Cage (1912-1992)

● His early serialist works received critical acclaim (Sonatas and Interludes)

● In 1951, Cage was gifted a copy of the Chinese classic divination text, the I Ching

○ Used to find order from change events

○ Involves obtaining a hexagram by random
generation (such as tossing coins), then
reading the chapter associated with that hexagram

Yet for Cage, this became a composition tool

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Chance Music
Cage's method of using the I Ching was far from simple randomization. The procedures
varied from composition to composition, and were usually complex.

For example, in his piece, Cheap Imitation, the exact questions asked to the I Ching were
these:

● Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning on white

notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using?

● Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using?

● For this phrase for which this transposition of this mode will apply, which note am I
using of the seven to imitate the note that Satie wrote?

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Chance Music
Some other examples of Cage’s use of chance would demonstrate how
elements of music can be composed that feature outside the composer’s
will.

For example: Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2)

● Written for twelve radios

● 2 performers are stationed at each radio
○ One dialing radio stations
○ One controlling amplitude and timbre

How does a composer even predict what sounds will emerge?

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Chance and Aleatoric Music

● Cage’s use of chance was highly controversial
○ Some composers felt such approaches were attempts at bypassing learning
technique

● Yet, despite some chance elements were later adopted by them

○ Aleatoric Music: A piece that only features a section or contains elements of
chance
○ Indeterminate Music: The entire piece is conceived and created by chance
parameters

● In such pieces, composers have absolutely no way of predicting the

final outcome of either part-or-whole of the work – every
performance is different.

● Where do compositional intent and performer interpretation fit into

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Control and Chance

● We have established a strong connection between serialist approaches
and the nature of our cognition and problem solving.
○ Here, cognitive ‘control’ means I have learned

● If chance opposes control, then what opposes cognition?

○ Is emotion up to chance?

● What lies beyond here? What part of our existence is reflected by

chance?

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Asynchronous Task

● Find one musical example of Serialism and another example of

Indeterminism (different from any found in the synchronous session).
● List five features that are heard within the piece that reflect these
perspectives.
● Write a short reflection outlining how Control and Chance are similar
and how they differ.

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Thank you!

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