ABSTRACT
Polemic litters the history of new music – the 'new music' of any age, whether its innovators proclaimed their creations 'le nuove musiche', 'the music of the future', the 'avant-garde'. The piano finally enters during the seventh phrase, structured like the viola, but with the demisemiquaver as the basic counting unit. The interval structure of the pitch row generates the lush, romantic aura projected by the cello solo. The serialized rhythmic structure of the cello solo complements the overall effect of a slowly unfolding melody. The serial structure of pitch and rhythm is central to creating the effect of the passage. In sum, Ave Maris Stella emerges from this analysis as a highly structured, one might even say highly mechanically structured, piece, yet, it is clear that all its precompositional features did not arise from some speculative musings about what might arise sonically if this or that precompositional element were explored.
