Abstract

The advancement of the categories of time and rhythm to the forefront brought in profound transformations into the sphere of 20th century musical composition. One of the domains that came to embody the conception of the new times was serial music. The article examines the principles of organization of rhythmic structures in serial music and proposes a system of classiication for them. Among the main types of rhythmic structures, especially prominent are sets of durations and sets of rhythmic cells (igures). By basing the systematization on various criteria (types of rhythmic units or the levels of differentiation), the author classiies the types of durations into regular, irregular, halfregular ones, as well as mono-formant and poly-formant ones. All the types of rhythmic structures are illustrated by examples from compositions by Messiaen, Boulez, Babbitt and Nono. As a result of his research, the author comes to the conclusion that the search of the serialist composers were directed at the issues of the inner construction of time and were conducive towards the realization of the multilayer and multi-dimensional aspects of the musical temporal processes. Keywords: serial technique, rhythmic structures, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Nono

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