Uploaded June 2010 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
Throughout the piece, Riegger maintains a concrete conception of the series as an actual melody with a specific contour. When the series is transposed or transformed (via inversion and or retrograde), its rhythms may change, but its registral shape generally remains the same. For Riegger, a series was primarily a line of pitches (not pitch classes), an actual melody with a determinate contour.
In the passage in Example 1.5, there is a second, non-serial stream. It consists of pairs of four- or six-note chords. These chords, sometimes preceded by ascending scales in parallel major sevenths, punctuate the passage, dividing the serial duet into discrete phrases. The chords are also extended into the driving rhythmic ostinato that runs through most of the passage. The resulting musical texture is about as far removed from Schoenberg's (and Weiss) neo-Baroque dances as possible, showing a much greater aesthetic kinship with works like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Bartók's Allegro Barbaro. Apparently Riegger understood right from the beginning that the serial approach is not wedded to any specific style or texture; rather, it is a way of thinking about and organizing tones related only to one another (not to a tonic), permitting many different kinds of musical realizations.
The chords are identified with numbers in the score in Example 1.5. The first chord is a segment of the chromatic scale (which Riegger would have understood and described as a cluster chord) arranged as two whole tones a minor ninth apart. The first chord is then transposed up a semitone to produce the second chord. Taking the first two chords together, we have a five-note segment of the chromatic scale: C♯DD♯EF. The third and fourth chords transpose the first and second up by a perfect fourth (but not in register), producing another, non-overlapping segment of the chromatic scale: F♯GG♯AB♭. The fifth chord repeats the notes of the third chord, adjoining to them the lower whole tone of the first chord. The sixth chord transposes the fifth chord up by a semitone, and thus consists of the content of the fourth chord to which the lower whole tone of the second chord has been adjoined. The fifth and sixth chords together thus project almost the entire chromatic aggregate (only B, C, and F are missing). The chordal stream in this passage thus involves the dissonant major seventh (or minor ninth) as a harmonic interval and a preference for verticalized segments of the chromatic scale.
Riegger's way of writing a serial piece has two central features that remain consistent throughout the rest of his career, and typify serial music by other ultramodern composers, including Ruggles and Crawford. First, the series is understood as and presented as a melodic line. There are no fancy partitioning schemes, no dispersion of the series among different registers and instrumental lines, no verticalization of the series to form chords. Rather, a series is a self-contained tune, one that shares the qualities of non-serial melodic lines written by the same composers, namely rugged, jagged, dissonant profile, avoiding both triadic outlines and rhythmic periodicity. Second, the series does not shape the entire musical fabric. Rather, the serial melodic lines are heard in opposition to non-serial music. In Dichotomy, the non-serial material consists primarily of cluster chords and other manifestations of the unordered chromatic scale. The fundamental dichotomy in this music appears to involve a contrast between serially ordered melodic lines and unordered chromatic collections.
{Joseph Straus)
Throughout the piece, Riegger maintains a concrete conception of the series as an actual melody with a specific contour. When the series is transposed or transformed (via inversion and or retrograde), its rhythms may change, but its registral shape generally remains the same. For Riegger, a series was primarily a line of pitches (not pitch classes), an actual melody with a determinate contour.
In the passage in Example 1.5, there is a second, non-serial stream. It consists of pairs of four- or six-note chords. These chords, sometimes preceded by ascending scales in parallel major sevenths, punctuate the passage, dividing the serial duet into discrete phrases. The chords are also extended into the driving rhythmic ostinato that runs through most of the passage. The resulting musical texture is about as far removed from Schoenberg's (and Weiss) neo-Baroque dances as possible, showing a much greater aesthetic kinship with works like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Bartók's Allegro Barbaro. Apparently Riegger understood right from the beginning that the serial approach is not wedded to any specific style or texture; rather, it is a way of thinking about and organizing tones related only to one another (not to a tonic), permitting many different kinds of musical realizations.
The chords are identified with numbers in the score in Example 1.5. The first chord is a segment of the chromatic scale (which Riegger would have understood and described as a cluster chord) arranged as two whole tones a minor ninth apart. The first chord is then transposed up a semitone to produce the second chord. Taking the first two chords together, we have a five-note segment of the chromatic scale: C♯DD♯EF. The third and fourth chords transpose the first and second up by a perfect fourth (but not in register), producing another, non-overlapping segment of the chromatic scale: F♯GG♯AB♭. The fifth chord repeats the notes of the third chord, adjoining to them the lower whole tone of the first chord. The sixth chord transposes the fifth chord up by a semitone, and thus consists of the content of the fourth chord to which the lower whole tone of the second chord has been adjoined. The fifth and sixth chords together thus project almost the entire chromatic aggregate (only B, C, and F are missing). The chordal stream in this passage thus involves the dissonant major seventh (or minor ninth) as a harmonic interval and a preference for verticalized segments of the chromatic scale.
Riegger's way of writing a serial piece has two central features that remain consistent throughout the rest of his career, and typify serial music by other ultramodern composers, including Ruggles and Crawford. First, the series is understood as and presented as a melodic line. There are no fancy partitioning schemes, no dispersion of the series among different registers and instrumental lines, no verticalization of the series to form chords. Rather, a series is a self-contained tune, one that shares the qualities of non-serial melodic lines written by the same composers, namely rugged, jagged, dissonant profile, avoiding both triadic outlines and rhythmic periodicity. Second, the series does not shape the entire musical fabric. Rather, the serial melodic lines are heard in opposition to non-serial music. In Dichotomy, the non-serial material consists primarily of cluster chords and other manifestations of the unordered chromatic scale. The fundamental dichotomy in this music appears to involve a contrast between serially ordered melodic lines and unordered chromatic collections.
{Joseph Straus)
