A Method of Expressing Serial Language as theorized by the Spanish Composer Ramón Barce

Abstract

During the 20th century, between the 1940s and the 1950s, Spain witnessed an important musical phenomenon characterised by the widespread tendency to receive and appropriate European avant-garde movements. 1951 was the year when the Spanish musical composition felt the urgent need to shift its direction in line with European models. As a result, Spanish composers experience a break with traditional musical language and dedicate their investigations to the evolution of music. One of the top Spanish avant-garde composers is Ramón Barce, a brilliant representative of the Spanish avantgarde composition, who built his own compositional system known under the name of “armonía/sistema de niveles”1 . His system is designed as a hierarchical organization of various musical structures, with concrete references to the sound spaces created according to specific timbral specters and musical contexts shaped in accordance with the serial technique.