Serial Composition Today

Extract

I can assure Mr. Iain Hamilton that the problem of the composer in facing up to serial technique is not nearly such a difficult one as the psychological problem posed by the coercive idealism of our time whether in music or any other sphere.

Like all idealists Mr. Hamilton overstates his case, when he writes, ‘Whereas one realises that a composer may pass through a period of the composition of some such works at a certain stage of his development, it seems strange that a composer can be content to remain in what is surely a dead world.’ ‘I also find it strange that one composer should be content to use another composer's hard-won style, and feel no responsibility that he must contribute something of his own if he is to meet the challenge offered to him.’