RIP Ursula Mamlok

Source: The New York Times.

Though Ms. Mamlok often employed the techniques of serial music, her style defied ready categorization. (Devised by Arnold Schoenberg, serial, or 12-tone, music entails using all 12 notes of the Western chromatic scale in equal proportion throughout a work.)

Her music could be atonal, but it was often less so — and, as a result, less forbidding-sounding — than that of other avant-gardists. Critics praised its deliberate, economical spareness; its light, almost pointillist aspect; its sense of wit and play; and its almost palpable emotional clarity.