Sorry, that was poorly worded of me and you’re quite right. Serialism is almost entirely rules (albeit it ones created by the composer by creating their town rows). I meant that the normal rules of harmony don’t apply, in that it’s completely atonal (unless the tone rows are chosen in a particular scale, which is rare.)
Ah, it’s alright. It’s only theory - not like we’re sending rockets to Mars with it : )
I’ve always found it wryly amusing that the serialist / 12-tone method in theory allows for rows that are almost tonal but that those get avoided because of atonal scruples. I get the impression serialism had a pretty high opinion of itself but stuff like that does rather undercut the idea that it’s all “pure” theory.
In a similar vein I tend to recommend:
“Chord Progressions for Songwriters” by Richard Scott, which is basically just a big list of all sorts of chord progressions used in singer/songwriter/rock music plus some ideas about substitutions. It’s about as approachable as theory gets - you don’t need to know about triads, voice-leading, four-part harmony or a massive of bunch of rules. Just chord names/shapes.
OTOH if you want to really get into the nitty-gritty of four-part harmony a lá classical style then “Harmony and Voice Leading” by Aldwell & Schachter is about as good as it gets IMO.
If you like rhythms “The Geometry of Musical Rhythm” by Godfried Toussaint has some interesting ideas on what makes rhythms good, although I tend to use it as more of a reference guide to interesting timeline patterns and/or ways of getting several rhythms out of some basic starting material.
“Materials and Techniques of 20th Century Music” aka “Materials and Techniques of Post-Tonal Music” is a decent survey of 12 tone music onwards. Limited to the 20th century (obvs) so rapidly becoming obsolete (I know the feeling) but it’s clear, concise and gives you enough information you can try the techniques out yourself without being burdened by an over-abundance of information.
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Definitely think serialism’s exponents thought they were clever. Ditto other subvertive sub-genres in other art forms. Serialism marked the point of schism between tonality and atonality, with probably Wager’s “Tristan chord” as the catalyst, that still rages to this day. I’ve seen angry letter exchanges beteen exponents on both sides in the pages of e.g. Private Eye.
Yeah tonal rows in serialism do seem vanishingly rare. Certainly I’m not aware of anything Schoenberg, Berg or Webern did that was tonal (they may have; I do my best to avoid their output.) They’d probably have worried that such pieces had been composed conventionally!
It’s easy to draw a lineage from serialism to various bizarre 20th century sub-genres, particularly the whacky stuff like Fluxus and the early experiments with tape recorders etc. I went to a university that has an international music festival and some of the stuff they invited… well, it certainly threw music theory and harmony out of the window. Yet I’m not sure it had any value at all, unless you consider a soprano coughing for 5 minutes to be music… 
I just found this gem of a video:
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As someone with no formal training in music theory other than what I’ve tried to pick up here and there, this video was super informative!
It taught me terms and the context for thinking about some of the little musical “tricks” I’ve sometimes found by accident, and it sparked new ideas. For example, “harmonic planing” (~12:10) is something that seems really natural to do on grid controllers like the Linnstrument.
Thanks for sharing!
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Dude, “The Geometry of Musical Rhythm” is the most interesting musical theory book I have opened so far. Thank you for sharing this.
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