as a composer of music using serial techniques..., I often have predetermined the *space and harmonic context in which to fit a group of notes ... Okay--I think I understand. Musick, tell me if I've gotten it wrong, please. Here goes: let's say, Sweet musick, that you have a block of notes that for convenience's sake I will say is ABCDE (though I think we should imagine a set many times that length, and with many more variations than I will show).
So--perhaps you open your piece with ABCDE; or perhaps you have an introductory section first; it doesn't matter. I think that what you are aiming for is to insert ABCDE in all its variations repeatedly into your piece, and that you must somehow ensure that you have enough "spaces" between the filler sections to allow for whatever variation you want in a particular place, all the while needing to ensure that there is at least some reasonable continuity between the sections--a rationale, as it were (I almost said not discordant, but realized it could
sound literally discordant, but still be a logical next step, musically/mathematically.) So if you want a variation of say, AaBbCcDdEe, you'd need that much space between the two relevant sections. Golly--I bet sometimes, you might have to play notes stacked up on each other, to fit them all in!
