Dufourt, Hugues

The Principles of Serial Music - 2001.


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The serial approach consists in monitoring the principles of musicwriting and, more generally speaking, a complete rationalisation of the schemes to which it is expected to conform. This attempt implies a number of techniques and concepts borrowed from contemporary mathematics which the present article will underline. The fundamental idea of serial doctrine emerges as soon as a transforming action and a constructive synthesis are based on some kind of an order and a repetition liable to be formalised. Here is the basic principle for a generality of formalised structure which (although it means reviewing the connection between concept and musical phenomenon) cannot erase the specific constraints of musical configurations which limit the ambitions of calculation.