Serial Music

Serial Music: A Classified Bibliography of Writings on Twelve-Tone and Electronic Music by Ann Phillips Basart provides the first systematic and annotated guide to the burgeoning literature on serial composition and its extensions into electronic and experimental forms. Written at a moment when twelve-tone technique had shifted from the private preserve of Schoenberg’s immediate circle to a defining influence on postwar European and American composition, the volume organizes a vast body of philosophical, historical, and analytical writings into a classified framework that makes the field legible for researchers. Basart defines “serial music” broadly, encompassing not only dodecaphony and electronic music but also related currents such as expressionism, pre-dodecaphonic atonality, musique concrète, and indeterminacy. By annotating nearly every entry, she indicates content, scope, and focus, giving scholars and students a navigational tool through a literature otherwise scattered across journals, collections, and national traditions.

The bibliography is divided into four major sections. The first surveys twelve-tone music through philosophy, criticism, history, and theory, down to technical discussions of harmony, rhythm, counterpoint, and notation. The second addresses electronic music, its critical reception, historical emergence, and compositional techniques. The third, devoted to the Viennese School, offers extensive coverage of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern, including writings on philosophy, biography, correspondence, and analyses of individual works. A final section catalogs writings on a wide range of composers influenced by serial procedures—among them Boulez, Cage, Dallapiccola, Nono, Stockhausen, and Stravinsky—arranged alphabetically. Each entry is given in full only once, with cross-references guiding the reader to related topics. With its classified arrangement, chronological ordering, and dual indexes, Basart’s volume transformed access to a rapidly expanding literature, positioning itself as an indispensable reference for musicologists, composers, and cultural historians tracing the diffusion and critical fortunes of serialism in the mid-twentieth century.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1961.