Uploaded June 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
I am sure that many composers here today would agree with me that a separate session on serial music is somewhat dangerous. It suggests that it is some other form of composition and that its problems are something apart. In 1960 few would deny the validity and power of music which is not tonal. If one fails to accept the great new forces of our time, one is not actually living in our time. If one seeks to ignore or ridicule such great forces as the struggle for racial equality or communism, or if one fails to acknowledge to oneself that we life in an Atomic age and that much of our thought and life is bound to be conditioned by it, if we by-pass these real issues and developments, then we lose the stimulation of our age. Whether we are in agreement with what has resulted from these forces or how they have been managed is another matter and of less importance than the fact that we should recongise them for what they are. Acceptance of, but not necessarily capitulation to, such great forces implies courage and an open mind. From such an acceptance could follow the possibility that the best results might be encouraged. But in saying that, I presuppose a great many things amongst which open-mindedness and a true enthusiasm for hew ideas are not the least important. This panel session deals with just such a great force in the creative musical thought of our century and in this paper I shall deal with what seems to be the crux of the problem of creative musical thought today. I shall deal with no great technicalities or obscurities but try to show you how I personally feel that the great forces set in motion by Schoenberg, and developed by Webern, have done more than anything to face squarely the great dilemma which exists in music today.
The problem facing the artist in any age is basically how he shall be able to resolve his imaginative power with form, a form which must be reborn and redeveloped unceasingly. No one saw this problem more clearly at any time than did Schoenberg, during those crucial years which opened this century. The old regime at that time was toppling on all sides after having run a long and magnificent course. His complete understanding of all that went before him in the stream of western music is evident not only in his early tonal works but no less in his theoretical writings, which stand alone in their mastery. On the basis of this knowledge he took a resolute stand against the anarchy and exploitation of the debased creative musical standards which followed the First World War. His stature both as an imaginative artist and logical thinker in music are now no longer denied, much as they may still be misunderstood. It is natural that composers such as Bartok, Stravinsky and Hindemith should have been more readily accepted and assimilated at first, since they are at once more obviously related to the past, as far as aural experience is concerned, through their adherence to tonality. They sum up periods, however, and open up very little of consequence that is really vital and similar. We have only to notice the effect that they have had on their copious followers to be fully aware of that. Their overall use of bitonal harmonic structures, Hindemith's forced theory of harmony, Bartok's nationalism, chromaticism and canonic imitation, Stravinsky's remarkable use of ostinato and . . . .
SERIAL COMPOSITION TODAY by Iain Hamilton 1960
Iain Hamilton was born in Glasgow, Scotland on June 6th, 1922, and died July 21st, 2000, in London. An important figure in music on both sides of the Atlantic, he was a composer of both stage and concert works, whose music has been praised for the "brilliance of its orchestral textures...uninhibited lyricism" (Anna Karenina—Opera) and "a vast terrain of color, movement, expression and invention" (Voyage—Horn and Chamber Orchestra). These quotes are typical of the critical commentaries on Mr. Hamilton's music, which constantly refer to the color, texture, variety, lyricism and craftsmanship.
Following his schooling in London, he became an apprentice engineer, and remained in that profession for the next seven years. In his free time he undertook the study of music. After winning a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, he decided to devote himself wholly to a musical career. He went on to win a Koussevitsky Foundation award, the Royal Philharmonic Society's prize, and the Academy's highest honor, the Dove Prize. He earned the Bachelor of Music degree from London University and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Glasgow University.
I am sure that many composers here today would agree with me that a separate session on serial music is somewhat dangerous. It suggests that it is some other form of composition and that its problems are something apart. In 1960 few would deny the validity and power of music which is not tonal. If one fails to accept the great new forces of our time, one is not actually living in our time. If one seeks to ignore or ridicule such great forces as the struggle for racial equality or communism, or if one fails to acknowledge to oneself that we life in an Atomic age and that much of our thought and life is bound to be conditioned by it, if we by-pass these real issues and developments, then we lose the stimulation of our age. Whether we are in agreement with what has resulted from these forces or how they have been managed is another matter and of less importance than the fact that we should recongise them for what they are. Acceptance of, but not necessarily capitulation to, such great forces implies courage and an open mind. From such an acceptance could follow the possibility that the best results might be encouraged. But in saying that, I presuppose a great many things amongst which open-mindedness and a true enthusiasm for hew ideas are not the least important. This panel session deals with just such a great force in the creative musical thought of our century and in this paper I shall deal with what seems to be the crux of the problem of creative musical thought today. I shall deal with no great technicalities or obscurities but try to show you how I personally feel that the great forces set in motion by Schoenberg, and developed by Webern, have done more than anything to face squarely the great dilemma which exists in music today.
The problem facing the artist in any age is basically how he shall be able to resolve his imaginative power with form, a form which must be reborn and redeveloped unceasingly. No one saw this problem more clearly at any time than did Schoenberg, during those crucial years which opened this century. The old regime at that time was toppling on all sides after having run a long and magnificent course. His complete understanding of all that went before him in the stream of western music is evident not only in his early tonal works but no less in his theoretical writings, which stand alone in their mastery. On the basis of this knowledge he took a resolute stand against the anarchy and exploitation of the debased creative musical standards which followed the First World War. His stature both as an imaginative artist and logical thinker in music are now no longer denied, much as they may still be misunderstood. It is natural that composers such as Bartok, Stravinsky and Hindemith should have been more readily accepted and assimilated at first, since they are at once more obviously related to the past, as far as aural experience is concerned, through their adherence to tonality. They sum up periods, however, and open up very little of consequence that is really vital and similar. We have only to notice the effect that they have had on their copious followers to be fully aware of that. Their overall use of bitonal harmonic structures, Hindemith's forced theory of harmony, Bartok's nationalism, chromaticism and canonic imitation, Stravinsky's remarkable use of ostinato and . . . .
SERIAL COMPOSITION TODAY by Iain Hamilton 1960
Iain Hamilton was born in Glasgow, Scotland on June 6th, 1922, and died July 21st, 2000, in London. An important figure in music on both sides of the Atlantic, he was a composer of both stage and concert works, whose music has been praised for the "brilliance of its orchestral textures...uninhibited lyricism" (Anna Karenina—Opera) and "a vast terrain of color, movement, expression and invention" (Voyage—Horn and Chamber Orchestra). These quotes are typical of the critical commentaries on Mr. Hamilton's music, which constantly refer to the color, texture, variety, lyricism and craftsmanship.
Following his schooling in London, he became an apprentice engineer, and remained in that profession for the next seven years. In his free time he undertook the study of music. After winning a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, he decided to devote himself wholly to a musical career. He went on to win a Koussevitsky Foundation award, the Royal Philharmonic Society's prize, and the Academy's highest honor, the Dove Prize. He earned the Bachelor of Music degree from London University and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from Glasgow University.
![Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56), First Movement [1 of 2 total]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U9InVL2Nz1E/mqdefault.jpg "Billy Jim Layton, String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56), First Movement [1 of 2 total]
Billy Jim Layton, an innovative American composer of the 1950s and 60s who was well known in his prime but abruptly stopped composing and concentrated on academic pursuits, died on Saturday in Cambridge, Mass. He was 79.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Daphne Layton.
Mr. Layton, who became the first chairman of the music department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, was widely recognized in his time as a fresh musical voice. He wrote well-crafted pieces in a style he termed new liberalism, which he described, according to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, as a new, rich, meaningful, varied, understandable and vital music which maintains contact with the great cultural tradition of humanism in the West.
Reviewing a performance of Mr. Laytons work in The New York Times in 1960, Eric Salzman wrote, Billy Jim Laytons String Quartet is as vital, as startling, and as overwhelming as if nobody had ever written a quartet before.
Born in Corsicana, Tex., on Nov. 14, 1924, Mr. Layton started out in music as a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist before joining the Air Force and serving in a B-29 bomber in World War II. After the war, he studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, going on to Yale for his masters degree and Harvard for his Ph.D.; his teachers included the composer Walter Piston.
It was at the New England Conservatory that he met his wife, Evro Zeniou, a native of Cyprus, whom he married in 1949.
From 1946 to 1964, Mr. Layton wrote a number of well-received pieces, including Three Dylan Thomas Poems and Three Studies for piano; and won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Rome Prize Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 1966, Mr. Layton was appointed chairman of the new music department at Stony Brook, which he helped to establish as a dynamic presence on the music scene, bringing in important composers and performers, in a tradition that remains alive today. In 2002, Brian Wise acknowledged the Stony Brook music department as small but vital in The New York Times.
In 1992, Mr. Layton retired and moved with his wife to Cambridge to be near his two children, Alexis and Daphne, and two grandchildren, all of whom survive him.
This recording of the String Quartet in Two Movements (1955-56) is by the Claremont String Quartet.
We apologize humbly, profusely, and on our bended knees for the execrable sound quality of this 1950s thirty-three-and-one-third revolutions-per-minute long-playing microgroove recording.")
