Serial Music and Serialism: A Research and Information Guide (review)

Serial Music and Serialism: A Research and Information Guide. By John D. Vander Weg. New York: Routledge, 2001. [viii, 138 p. ISBN 0-8153-3528-8. $75.]

Twelve-tone and serial music were dominant forms of composition following World War II and remained so at least through the mid-1970s. In 1961, Ann Phillips Basart published the pioneering bibliographic work in the field, Serial Music: A Classified Bibliography of Writings on Twelve-Tone and Electronic Music (Berkeley: University of California Press). Twenty years later, John D. Vander Weg provided an update to this bibliography with an article upon which the present book is based ("An Annotated Bibliography of Articles on Serialism, 1955- 1980," In Theory Only 5 [April 1979]: 1-36). While Basart attempted comprehensive coverage, Vander Weg, wisely recognizing that the amount of research and writing on serial music over the last forty years is enormous, has chosen to provide a selective bibliography. There is no question of the need for an updated bibliography in this field. Regrettably, this book has far too many shortcomings to satisfy that need.

The introduction sketches the history of twelve-tone and serial music, but the terms "serial music" and "serialism" are never defined. Discussing the history of musicological research, Vander Weg states that through the mid-1930s, most studies in the field were published as books, but later, and especially after World War II, research was increasingly distributed through journal articles. With these assumptions, he surveyed English-language periodicals from 1955 to 1995 to determine which ones published the most literature on serial music. He identified thirty-five, from which he selected the citations for the bibliography. The only books he included are those that have "received at least one critical review in the surveyed journals" and anthologies "containing reprints of articles cited elsewhere in the index" (pp. 6, 8). Quoting Milton Babbitt, Vander Weg states that he chose the articles "we most profitably might read" (p. 6, from Babbitt, A Life of Learning, ACLS Occasional Paper, 17 [New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1992], 14). The book comprises 468 citations altogether, with annotations provided for the articles, but not the books.

Compiling a selective bibliography is fraught with perils. There are always those who will question the inclusion or exclusion of their favorite works, and it is unfair to quibble over one or two such examples. Nevertheless, the method chosen here excludes not just a few important writings, but far too many, and includes too many articles that are simply marginal. For example, the annotation for Elliott Carter, "Shop Talk by an American Composer" (Musical Quarterly 46 [1960]: 189-201), states: "Although there is no real discussion of serialism or serial techniques, this article presents interesting insights into a composer's view of the craft of composition" (p. 29). If the article is not about serialism, why is it cited in the book? And there are similar examples to be found.

Such inclusions lead one to the supposition that Vander Weg cites every article about serialism in the thirty-five selected journals. Yet a simple examination of the first two volumes of Perspectives of New Music reveals that this is not the case. Consider Benjamin Boretz's review of Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern by George Perle (Perspectives of New Music 1 [spring 1963]: 125-36), or Karl Kohn's review of the performance of Richard Swift's Concerto for Piano with Chamber Ensemble, op. 26 (Perspectives of New Music 2 [fall/winter 1963]: 90-102), neither of which is included.

There are so many important books and articles on twelve-tone and serial music that are not included that it is difficult to know where to begin. Josef Rufer's Composition with Twelve Tones Related Only to One Another (trans. Humphrey Searle [London: Rockliff, 1954; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), Perle's Serial Composition and Atonality (6th ed. [Berkeley...