atonal serialism

Serialism is a term which is pretty
well-defined. Atonal, on the other
hand (as Schoenberg pointed out)
is somewhat of an oxymoron, in that
every non-percussive sound that is
involved in music vibrates with some
kind of periodicity, thus music on
sustaining instruments must always
exhibit *some* kind of tonality, by virtue
of the fact that sustained musical sounds
always exhibit some kind of numerical
frequency relationship.

How tonality is defined is, however,
another matter altogether.

It's been pointed out more than once
that Schoenberg and his pupils (especially
Berg) often contrived their rows so
that subtle and shifting allusions to
tonality could be discerned.

One of the most outstanding examples
I've found of microtonal serialism is
Ben Johnston's _6th Quartet_.
Johnston divides each row into two
hexachords, one otonal and one utonal,
and each hexachord is a complete
11-limit "tonality" (in Partch's sense).
Johnston contrived a very complex
scheme of tonal relationships in his
manipulation of the rows (retrograde,
inversion, etc.), and most importantly,
*it sounds good!*

The relevant references are Norton,
_Tonality In Western Culture_, Schoenberg's
_Harmonielehre_ and _Style and Idea_,
and Steven Elster's great analysis of the
Johnston in _Perspectives of New Music_.
There was an old vinyl recording of Johnston's
piece -- don't know if it's out on CD yet
(but check your local library for the vinyl copy).
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