Definition of serialism Serialism

se•ri•al•ism

We found 4 definitions of serialism from 4 different sources.

What does serialism mean?

WordNet

Noun Plural: serialisms
serialism - 20th century music that uses a definite order of notes as a thematic basis for a musical composition
		serial music
		music musical activity (singing or whistling etc.); "his music was his central interest"

= synonym
= antonym
= related word

Wiktionary

serialism (Noun)
Music, especially from the 20th century, in which themes are based on a definite order of notes of an equal-tempered scale.

Wikipedia

Serialism is a way of composing music using a series of notes in a particular order and using this to build up a whole piece of music. These series and patterns can also be applied to other parts of music (like how loud or soft it is).

A simple example.

To show how serialism works we can take a very simple example. Let us use just five notes from the white notes of a keyboard. We can use the notes A, B, C, D and E. We are going to make a “tune” using all these five notes, but not repeating any until all five have been used (although we are allowed to repeat the note we have just had).

For example: we might have D, C, A, A, A, A, B, E. This is what we call our “row” or “series”, although usually one would expect a row of twelve different notes. It is the one we start off with, so we can call it our "prime row".

We can change the prime row by playing it backwards. This is called "retrograde". So we now get E, B, A, A, A, A, C, D.

We can also change it by playing it upside down. This means that instead of going up one step we go down one step, or instead of going up two steps we go down two steps etc. If we start on the same note D we now get: D, E, G, G, G, G, F, C. This is called "inversion" (“upside down”).

We can make it go backwards AND upside down. So we get: C, F, G, G, G, G, E, D. This is called "retrograde inversion".

We now have four ways of playing our row: prime, retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion.

Now we can also change each of these by transposing them. "T