Serialism

In 1923, Arnold Schoenberg developed a new technique of composing music. He called this the "twelve tone system". He used all twelve notes in the octave. At that time, music was played in the same key until this new system of course. In twelve tone music, all 12 notes are equal and there is no key note. It's called "atonal". All music at the time was tonal, and composers seemed to think that every new way of writing and composing had already been done. Notes were organized so that similar notes were heard together, in the same key, making beautiful sounds that were great to listen to. In twelve tone music however, no note was repeated until the eleven others were heard..

To me, serialism is not very pleasing to listen to. It sounds like someone is picking up an instrument for the first time and trying to play it. But it is also brilliant to me because of the way it is written. It can be written in codes. Like taking a series of numbers and assigning each number a random note. This is why it's called serialism; like serial numbers on a manufactured item.

Schoenberg taught two pupils that later became a little famous for their work. (Alban Berg and Anton Webern) Soon, others who could understand and appreciate twelve tone music began to write it in a slightly different way. Benjamin Britten added tonal music AND atonal music together. I think this sounded a lot better than plain atonal music.

Serialism

Romantic Music!

The Romantic era produced many more composers whose names and music are still familiar and popular today: Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Schubert, Chopin, and Wagner are perhaps the most well-known, but there are plenty of others who may also be familiar, including Strauss, Verdi, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Puccini, and Mahler. Ludwig van Beethoven, possibly the most famous composer of all, is harder to place. His early works are from the Classical period and are clearly Classical in style. But his later music, including the majority of his most famous music, is just as clearly Romantic. (Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, ten violon sonatas, and a few piano trios).

Sometimes a new style of music happens when composers forcefully reject the old style. Early Classical composers, for example, were determined to get away from what they considered the excesses of the Baroque style. Modern composers also were consciously trying to invent something new and very different.

The romantic era lasted from 1850 to about 1910.

The main difference between Classical and Romantic music came from attitudes towards these "rules". In the eighteenth century, composers were primarily interested in forms, melodies, and harmonies that provided an easily-audible structure for the music. In the first movement of a sonata, for example, each prescribed section would likely be where it belonged, the appropriate length, and in the proper key. In the nineteenth century, the "rules" that provided this structure were more likely to be seen as boundaries and limits that needed to be explored, tested, and even defied. For example, the first movement of a Romantic sonata may contain all the expected sections as the music develops, but the composer might feel free to expand or contract some sections or to add unexpected interruptions between them. The harmonies in the movement might lead away from and back to the tonic just as expected, but they might wander much further afield than a Classical sonata would, before they make their final return.

It was also acceptable for music to clearly be from a particular place. People of many eras enjoyed an opera set in a distant country, complete with the composer's version of exotic-sounding music. But many nineteenth-century composers (including Weber, Wagner, Verdi, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Grieg, Dvorak, Sibelius,and Albeniz) used folk tunes and other aspects of the musical traditions of their own countries to appeal to their public. Much of this nationalistic music was produced in the post-Romantic period, in the late nineteenth century; in fact, the composers best known for folk-inspired classical music in England (Holst and Vaughan Williams) and the U. S. (Ives, Copland, and Gershwin) were twentieth-century composers who composed in Romantic, post-Romantic, or Neoclassical styles instead of embracing the more severe Modernist styles.

Some of the characteristics of romanic music were this:

• A freedom in form and design; a more intense personal expression of emotion in which fantasy, imagination and a quest for adventure play an important part.
• Emphasis on lyrical, songlike melodies; adventurous modulation; richer harmonies, often chromatic, with striking use of discords.
• Greater sense of ambiguity: especially in tonality or harmonic function, but also in rhythm or meter.
• Denser, weightier textures with bold dramatic contrasts, exploring a wider range of pitch, dynamics and tone-colours.
• Expansion of the orchestra, sometimes to gigantic proportions; the invention of the valve system leads to development of the brass section whose weight and power often dominate the texture.
• Rich variety of types of piece, ranging from songs and fairly short piano pieces to huge musical canvasses with lengthy time-span structures with spectacular, dramatic, and dynamic climaxes.
• Closer links with other arts lead to a keener interest in programme music (programme symphony, symphonic poem, concert overture).
• Greater technical virtuosity – especially from pianists, violinists and flautists.

Here's a link to more information. http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/history/history-rom.htm