serialism

American  

[seer-ee-uh-liz-uhm] / ˈsɪər i əˌlɪz əm /

noun

1. twelve-tone technique.

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serialism British  

/ ˈsɪərɪəˌlɪzəm /

noun

1. (in 20th-century music) the use of a sequence of notes in a definite order as a thematic basis for a composition and a source from which the musical material is derived See also twelve-tone

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Other Word Forms

• serialist
  noun

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Etymology

Origin of serialism

First recorded in 1960–65; serial + -ism

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

serialism

Later pieces like “Canto” saw ten Holt abandoning serialism, in a move he called “tonality after the death of tonality.”

From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2023

Julian Wachner, Trinity Wall Street’s industrious director of music and the arts, credits a 1990 lecture by the Boston-based composer Marti Epstein with directing his attention toward Anton Webern’s crystalline serialism.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 21, 2018

When Reich was a student, serialism, a genre that deliberately avoided harmony, melody and rhythm, was the only game in town.

From The Guardian ● Oct. 26, 2016

When Herrmann composed his earlier “Sinfonietta for Strings,” he was influenced by the dissonant serialism of Schoenberg.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 18, 2016

The technique, also known as serialism, entails using all 12 notes of the Western chromatic scale in rigidly equal proportion throughout a composition.

From New York Times ● Nov. 14, 2015

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