SSC

Good work.

That's a good question. A problem with serialism has always been that, when you have rows and things defined by numbers, you're actually taking the composer's intuition away from the composition process beyond the definition of the rows at the beginning. There are a lot of mixing and matching, specially by Schoenberg. However, Schoenberg shouldn't be considered that much of a serialist as he belongs to the atonality movement instead (despite his technique being seminal to the development of serialism later on).

Stockhausen and Luigi Nono are examples of serialist composers, for example Nono's "Il Canto Sospeso" or "La fabrica Iluminata" are examples of serialist compositions. Stockhausen's electronic pieces are pretty famous for trying to even take out other musicians from the whole equation, as serialism demands absolute tone per tone-precision, which real musicians aren't so good at when things get as complicated as it can get with these techniques.

Today, it's not very usual to shoot for the same goals that Nono or Stockhausen did in the 50s and 60s. Think of serialist techniques such as the one we used as ways to come to rhythms, harmonies or otherwise textures that can be used as musical material regardless of what technique we use to use them in.

For example, you can come up with a rhythm like we did serially, but use classical harmonic principles. If the note pitches are serialized, you don't necessarily have to always play them in the same way. 12 tone technique is pretty much a series of inversions/retrograding of the same row, but all that work is dependent on the composer.

Development, that is, is still dependent on the composer's intuition if we're talking about 12 tone music strictly. The difference is that serialism is the serialization of absolutely every single parameter, even things such as form, etc etc so that the piece technically "writes itself" once you have your formulas figured out. 12 tone technique is simply serializing a 12 tone row, where rhythm, form, and other such things are still left to the composer's intuition to control.

Another thing that is interesting about these techniques is that by eliminating the composer's intuition or "say" except for the definition of the rows, the piece can sound in a direction that the composer would have not reached simply "by ear", or otherwise intellectually. It can give rise to material that can later be reused, or developed in different techniques altogether.

In our case, the idea was that you experimented a little with it, and like you said, it sounded sort of "random." However, the aesthetic principle of things like this can only be appreciated if you give it some time to actually let it get in your ears. Specially rhythms that aren't metric and non-standard harmony. It's not important if you later decide to write atonal, serialist, or otherwise use any of these techniques at all, but it's a good idea to have had first-hand experience with them.

So, on to your next exercise!

Take the first measure of the previous exercise, keep the notes and rhythm. Then, only using this material, make variations of it. They can be only measure wide, and don't need to be done in any serial technique. For example, you can double some notes, alter the rhythm, invert the intervals, and so on. Do some 15 to 20 small variations.

Remember that the musical material has to be taken from the original measure, such as the pitches and rhythm. Try progressively variating things, start with small changes and move on to bigger variations. For example, you can get rid of all rhythm and just have all the pitches play at once, creating a sort-of cluster chord. There are a lot of possibilities, so give it a shot.

PS: I recommend that if you can, you listen to some of Stockhausen's electronic pieces. Like, for example, Gesang der Jünglinge which is the more famous one. As general knowledge, it's good to know this sort of thing and have it in ear. Also, if you aren't already, I recommend you follow the lesson thread with SimenN about counterpoint, baroque style, etc since what I'm going to deal with there is also relevant to our composition work here though in a different way.