Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective music Of, pertaining to, or employing serialism
  • noun music A practitioner or adherent of serialism, an approach to composing which emphasizes the use of a series of notes, especially scales, to achieve coherence

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From serial +‎ -ist

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Examples

  • (Back in the day I knew some serialist babes ....)

    Design for Living Matthew Guerrieri 2009

  • But this is far too facile an appraisal of a composer whose music is far more human than perhaps even he at times would like to admit and bear in mind that there are cabaret songs in his output as well as serialist string quartets.

    Milton Babbitt RIP Anne Midgette 2011

  • Galenson is writing about the visual arts, but the spread of the serialist and minimalist conceptual frameworks fits the pattern.

    Archive 2009-03-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2009

  • Galenson is writing about the visual arts, but the spread of the serialist and minimalist conceptual frameworks fits the pattern.

    Where'er you walk Matthew Guerrieri 2009

  • I think I have heard about five serialist pieces, total, in the last few years, plus some modernist music, so not really very frequently and certainly not consistently enough to chase people from concert halls.

    My Prerogative Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • The only serious study I know of the anthropology of serialism in post-WWII American academia is by Joseph Straus, who concluded that any claim of serialist hegemony was, at best, rather exaggerated.

    Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • Such music has the most traction when an emotional narrative is layered on top of it, as in opera — minimalism proved well-suited to the genre, and Wozzeck, for example, never seems to fall victim to the alleged serialist box-office curse.

    Archive 2008-03-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • Brookes is, of course, reiterating the simplistic serialist-hegemony-tonal-rebellion narrative which is turning into as hoary a "fact" as Abner Doubleday's invention of baseball.

    Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • The great serialist monstrosities from the 50's and 60's have kind of been sorted through and the ones that will likely endure are still programmed once in a while.

    My Prerogative Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • Spectralism is an interesting case in this scheme: a definite reliance on scientific analysis, but retaining connections of vocabulary and sonic effect with post-serialist atonality — not, in its current form, enough of a break.

    Archive 2008-09-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2008

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