Concept of Serial Music in Western and Russian Musicology: Issues of Terminology

The article traces the formation and the development of the concept of serial music in various national traditions of musicology; the author reveals discrepancy that must be taken into account when using concepts in different languages. The concept of composition sérielle arose in French in the late 1940s as a translation of the German word Reihenkomposition; however, P. Boulez in his papers attempted to separate the serial phenomenon from A. Schoenberg’s work. In German, the concept of serielle Musik appeared in the early 1950s as a translation of the French musique sérielle. In 1955, thanks to K. Stockhausen and H. Eimert, the term was rethought and associated only with compositions that develop the principle of multidimensional seriality. Eventually, the concept of serielle Musik included electronic music and postserial methods (group composition, statistical composition). In English, the term serial music combines Schoenberg’s technique and post-war avantgarde composers’ one, and is sometimes interpreted as an aesthetic category. Russian musicologists Yu. N. Kholopov and S. A. Kurbatskaya consider the term серийная музыка in the narrow sense (as a technique using series of pitches) and in a broad meaning (as a technique, in which the entire texture is derived from a series of any parameter); сериализм means multidimensional seriality (use of series in several parameters simultaneously).