Darmstadt School
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This article is specifically about a style of composition created by composers who attended Darmstadt New Music Summer School late 1950s/early 1960s called Darmstadt School.
Coined by Luigi Nono in 1957, 'Darmstadt School' describes the uncompromisingly serial music written by composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1956 to 1961, by which time the 'Darmstadt School' had effectively dissolved due to musical differences. Key influences on the 'Darmstadt School' were works such as Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra op.31 and Webern's Variations op.30. Examples of the school's works of total serialism are Boulez's Structures I, Stockhausen's Zeitmasze and Nono's Incontri.
Many musicians, such as the composer Hans Werner Henze reacted against the 'Darmstadt School' ideaologies, particularly the way in which young composers were forced to either write in total dodecaphony or be ridiculed or ignored. In his autobiography, Henze recalls student composers rewriting their works on the train to Darmstadt in order to comply with Boulez's expectations. Franco Evangelisti was also outspoken in his criticism, labelling the 'Darmstadt School' as 'Dodecaphonic police'. Recently the phrase 'Darmstadt School' has come to be a belittling term used to describe any music written in an uncompromising style.
However, there are two sides to this argument. Composers such as Boulez, Stockhausen and Nono were writing this music in the aftermath of World War II, during which many composers, such as Richard Strauss, had their music politicised by the Third Reich. In order to avoid this happening again, and to keep art for art's sake, the 'Darmstadt School' attempted to create a new, anational style of music to which no false meaning could possibly be attached. Recent biographers of Boulez and Stockhausen in particular have interestingly tried to distance their composers from 'Darmstadt School' music, despite the tenable nature of the composers' original ideologies.
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