The “Serial Generation”: Compositional Process, Theoretical Discourse, and Programming the Listening Experience

Often praised or rejected for its technicity, serialism should not be situated only within the 􀁿eld of compositional techniques or through its ideological background, but rather considered as an attitude toward composition that involved a great number of composers born in the 1920s. A comparative reading of philological studies and of the sources related to the compositional process sheds light on the operational horizon of the “serial generation” that goes beyond the stylistic peculiarities of each one of its members. In order to substantiate this hypothesis, this chapter shows that these composers elevated music analysis and theoretical thinking to permanent components of their creativity, which can be observed in both the editorial and analytical stakes of their working method. Finally, the chapter demonstrates that the new listening experience was an essential part of their aesthetic project.