Rise of serialism

Serialism is a method of composing in which a fixed series of elements, most often the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, is used to organise a piece. Its best-known form, the twelve-tone technique, was developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 1920s as a way of writing music that avoids a tonal centre. Schoenberg's pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern adopted and personalised the method, creating what is called the Second Viennese School. After the Second World War, composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Milton Babbitt extended serial ideas to rhythm, dynamics and other features, in what became known as total serialism. The approach dominated much of avant-garde music in the 1950s, and later composers moved in other directions.

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