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Abstract
This article proposes that the demise of serialism as a compositional language is due to contradictions inherent within it, relating to such matters as: the status of the serial 'order'; the role of the 'aggregate'; identity and ordinal permutation; serial durations; and 'meaning'. It addresses these contradictions principally through the writings of Milton Babbitt and Roberto Gerhard, with further reference to Boulez, Stockhausen, Krenek and others. Moreover, it suggests that the crisis of communication in serial music relates strongly to serialism's role as the apogee of modernist composition.
![Key Features Of Serialism Music Key Features Of Serialism Music](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125882841/362514636.png)
![Serialism Serialism](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125882841/964604990.gif)
Serialism, in music, technique that has been used in some musical compositions roughly since World War I. Strictly speaking, a serial pattern in music is merely one that repeats over and over for a significant stretch of a composition. In this sense, some medieval composers wrote serial music.