Serialism

Serialism is a rigorous system of writing music in which various elements of the piece are ordered according to a pre-determined sequence, and variations on it. The elements thus controlled may be the pitch of the notes, their length, their dynamics, their accents, or virtually any other musical parameter.

Serialism is an extension of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique (sometimes called dodecaphony), which involves the use of tone rows: the basis of the system is that all the pitches of a composition are drawn from ordering of one (and only one) instance of each of the twelve notes in the chromatic scale and permutations of that row. The terms serial and twelve tone are often used as synonyms. To clarify the terms total serialism or integral serialism are often used to distinguish twelve tone serialism from the more expansive kind.

Musical set theory is often used to analyze and compose serial music, but may also be used to study tonal music.

Pierre Boulez is a prominent figure in serialism, other composers to use serialism include Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Milton Babbitt, Roger Reynolds, and Charles Wuorinen.