Punctualism is a style of musical composition prevalent in Europe between 1949 and 1955 "whose structures are predominantly effected from tone to tone, without superordinate formal conceptions coming to bear" (Essl 1989, 93). In simpler terms: "music that consists of separately formed particles—however complexly these may be composed—[is called] punctual music, as opposed to linear, or group-formed, or mass-formed music" (Stockhausen 1998, 452). This was accomplished by assigning to each note in a composition values drawn from scales of pitch

Pitch (music)

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

, duration, dynamics

Dynamics (music)

In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...

, and attack characteristics

Articulation (music)

In music, articulation refers to the musical direction performance technique which affects the transition or continuity on a single note or between multiple notes or sounds.- Types of articulations :...

, resulting in a "stronger individualizing of separate tones" (Frisius 1994). Another important factor was maintaining discrete values in all parameters of the music. Punctual dynamics, for example

mean that all dynamic degrees are fixed; one point will be linked directly to another on the chosen scale, without any intervening transition or gesture. Line-dynamics, on the other hand, involve the transitions from one given amplitude to another: crescendo, decrescendo and their combinations. This second category can be defined as a dynamic glissando, comparable to glissandi of pitch and of tempi (accelerando, ritardando). (Boulez 1971, 60)

"The almost analytical focus on individual events, and then the transition between them, brings a stillness to this music far removed from the gestural quality of other pieces" (Grant 2001, 78). From a purely technical point of view, the term "punctual" has the sense of "a point of intersection of parameters" in serial music

Serialism

In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...

 (Eggebrecht 1974).

Retrospectively attributed to the music of Anton Webern

Anton Webern

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

, the term was originally coined in German (punktuelle Musik), by Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

 and Herbert Eimert

Herbert Eimert

Herbert Eimert was a German music theorist, musicologist, journalist, music critic, editor, radio producer, and composer.-Life:...

 (who also used the expression "star music") to describe pieces such as Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

's "Mode de valeurs et d'intensités" (1949) (Stockhausen 1989, 35). However, it is most commonly associated with serial compositions such as Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

's Structures, book 1 (1952), Karel Goeyvaerts

Karel Goeyvaerts

Karel Goeyvaerts was a Belgian composer.-Life:After studies at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp, Goeyvaerts studied composition in Paris with Darius Milhaud and analysis with Olivier Messiaen...

's Sonata for Two Pianos

Sonata for Two Pianos (Goeyvaerts)

Sonata for Two Pianos , also called simply Opus 1 or Nummer 1, is a chamber-music work by Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts, and a seminal work in the early history of European serialism.-History:...

 and Nummer 2

Nummer 2

Nummer 2 for thirteen instruments is a composition written in 1951 by the Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts....

for thirteen instruments (1951), Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...

's Nones

Nones (Berio)

Nones is a composition by Luciano Berio scored for orchestra. The piece is named for the poem, "Nones", by W. H. Auden, and was originally intended to be an oratorio, inspired by the poem, representing not only the Passion of Christ, but also the agony of modern man...

, and Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono

Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...

's Polifonica–Monodia–Ritmica, as well as some early compositions of Stockhausen, such as Kreuzspiel

Kreuzspiel

Kreuzspiel is a composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen written for oboe, bass clarinet, piano and four percussionists in 1951 ....

(Hicks 1989, 258; Stockhausen 1989, 34–35; Toop 2005, 3). Herman Sabbe, however, argues that "Stockhausen never strictly speaking composed punctually" (Sabbe 1981, 68). Eimert foresaw problems "because of the common term of "pointillism

Pointillism

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...

" [German Pointillismus] in French painting. It would wrongly be assumed that paintings by Seurat

Georges-Pierre Seurat

Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism...

 and his contemporaries were being transformed into music" (Stockhausen 1998, 451). The confusion in French was immediate, as Stockhausen relates:

I still remember how, in Paris, I threw around the expression "punctual music" as a term for my KREUZSPIEL, SPIEL for Orchestra, SCHLAGQUARTETT, and so forth. Pierre Boulez corrected me, "Pointilliste, la musique pointilliste!" and I said, "Non, ponctuelle." He replied: “What’s that, then? That’s not French at all, the word is pointilliste." So I explained: "Non, il faut faire attention, or else people might think we are bringing up musical impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

. . . Seurat painted little dots: dots upon dots, in various colours and sizes, so that a tree would shimmer. . . . In terms of technique there is no connection between musical impressionism and pictorial impressionism. That’s why I am using the term musique ponctuelle." Both musique ponctuelle and musique pointilliste are still seen today. (Stockhausen 1998, 451)

(An alternative translation for punktuelle Musik/musique ponctuelle is "punctile music" (Lippman 1992, 417), but it has not achieved wide currency.)

The concept and its purpose were first articulated in print by Pierre Boulez, in his 1954 article "Recherches maintenant": "Nevertheless, despite an excess of arithmetic, we had achieved a certain ‘punctuality’ of sound—by which I mean, literally, the intersection of various functional possibilities in a given point. What had brought this 'punctual' style about? The justified rejection of thematicism" (Boulez 1991, 16).

Sources

• Boulez, Pierre. 1971. Boulez on Music Today. Translated by Susan Bradshaw and Richard Rodney Bennett. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
• Boulez, Pierre. 1991. Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship. Translated by Stephen Walsh, with an introduction by Robert Piencikowski. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0193112108
• Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich. 1974. "Punktuelle Musik" In Zur Terminologie der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bericht uber das 2. Colloquium der Walcker-Stiftung 9.–10.3.1972 in Freiburg/Breisgau. Veröffentlichungen der Walcker-Stiftung für orgelwissenschaftliche Forschung 5, edited by Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, 162–87. Stuttgart: Musikwissenschaftliche Verlags-Gesellschaft.
• Essl, Karlheinz. 1989. Aspekte des Seriellen bei Stockhausen. In: Wien Modern ’89, edited by Lothar Knessel, 90–97. Vienna: Wien Modern.
• Frisius, Rudolf. 1998. Serielle Musik. In: Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik. Second, newly compiled edition, edited by Ludwig Finscher, part 1 (Sachteil), vol. 8 (Quer–Swi). Kassel & New York: Bärenreiter; Stuttgart: Metzler. ISBN 978-3-7618-1109-2 (Bärenreiter) ISBN 978-3-476-41008-5 (Metzler)
• Grant, M[orag]. J[osephine]. 2001. Serial Music, Serial Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-war Europe. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Hicks, Michael. 1989. “Exorcism and Epiphany: Luciano Berio’s Nones”. Perspectives of New Music 27, no. 2 (Summer): 252–68.
• Lippman, Edward. 1992. A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.
• Moelants, Dirk. “Statistical Analysis of Written and Performed Music: A Study of Compositional Principles and Problems of Coordination and Expression in 'Punctual' Serial Music.” Journal of New Music Research 29, no. 1 (March): 37–60.
• Sabbe, Herman. 1981. "Die Einheit der Stockhausen-Zeit ...: Neue Erkenntnismöglichkeiten der seriellen Entwicklung anhand des frühen Wirkens von Stockhausen und Goeyvaerts. Dargestellt aufgrund der Briefe Stockhausens an Goevaerts". In: Musik-Konzepte 19: Karlheinz Stockhausen: ... wie die Zeit verging ..., edited by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, 5–96. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik.
• Sabbe, Herman. 1994. “Goeyvaerts and the Beginnings of 'Punctual' Serialism and Electronic Music”. Revue Belge de Musicologie / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Muziekwetenschap 48:55-94.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1989. Stockhausen on Music:Lectures and Interviews, compiled by Robin Maconie. London & New York: Marion Boyars. ISBN 0-7145-2887-0 (cloth), ISBN 0-7145-2918-4 (pbk)
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1998. "Es geht aufwärts". In: Stockhausen, Texte zur Musik 1984–1991, vol. 9: 391–512. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
• Toop, Richard. 2005. Six Lectures from the Stockhausen Courses Kürten 2002. Stockhausen-Verlag. ISBN 3-00-016-185-6