Research On The Series Thinking Of Total Serial Music

Since music got into 20th century music, the concept of "numerical control" has dominated the organizational forms of language and structure of the music. The meticulosity of mathematical and abstract thinking promote the logical development of musical composition. As one of the important structural means of musical composition, sequences have been widely used in many modern and contemporary works, especially in the total serial music works in the 20th century. This article will focus on the total serial music works in the 20th century, through the analysis of sequence application in the most representative works in this period, to reveal specific ways of thinking of "Number" hidden beneath the surface of the music. Hoping that this study will provide a new perspective and dimension to a better understanding of total serial music and interdisciplinary study of mathematics and music in the 20th.This article is divided into seven parts to be better discussed and studied. Chapter one is discussion. Chapter two establishes a deep affinity between music and numbers for a long time. From the point of view of "All is number", there are three sections in this chapter. Through combing the historical origin of number, one can have a clear understanding of how number emerges, where does number come from, and how relationship was contributed between number and its ancestor. From a scientific point of view to explain derived relationship between proportion and sequence and know more specifically and truly about "what is the sequence and its properties". Chapter three reveals the proportion generation of number in the music and relationship between sequences, listing the evolution and development of "number" and outstanding the importance and necessity of "numerical control" concept in the music. Chapter four, five and six are core parts of this article. We begin to analysis from two aspects:longitude and latitude. The longitude aspect is taking three most common sequences as examples, on the other hand, latitude aspect is taking works created by more representative composers as examples in order to deeply analysis different roles played by three sequence thinking in total serial music composing techniques. Chapter seven sublimes this article from philosophical context, revealing mysterious property of mathematics and the universe and number and religion, further illustrating aesthetic dialectical thoughts of "symmetry and balance"、"abstract and concrete" and "sense and sensibility" of sequence thinking in total serial music.