Tibor Serly was born in Losonc, Hungary on Nov. 25, 1901. His first musical studies were with his father, Lajos Serly, a pupil of Liszt. Spending most of his childhood in New York City, Tibor Serly played in various pit orchestras led by his father until 1922, when he returned to Hungary to attend the Budapest Royal Academy. There he studied composition with Zoltán Kodály, violin with Jenö Hubay, and orchestration with Leó Weiner, graduating in 1925 with highest honors.
Serly then returned to the USA and held several positions as violist in various orchestras. In 1929 he began a friendship with Ezra Pound, frequently visiting his home in Rapallo, Italy and arranging concerts there. In 1934, while a violinist and assistant conductor with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, Serly went to Europe to study conducting with Herman Scherchen. After the 1937-38 season as violist with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, Serly devoted his life to composing and teaching.
In 1940 Bela Bartók and his wife arrived in New York as refugees. From their arrival unto his death Serly devoted most of his efforts for their support. He made arrangements of Mikrokosmos, and after Bartók's death, completed his viola concerto. Married once and divorced, Serly's second marriage was to the pianist Miriam Molin.
Beginning in the 1930s Serly was engaged in studying the "modus lascivus." After Bartók's death he resumed his studies of this scale which "permanently divides the chromatic scale into two separate segments, thus creating a multimodal chromatic scale system." Serly also explored performance techniques on various instruments, such as for the voice as in Consovowels and for strings in his Rondo fantasy in stringometrics. Towards the end of his life he relocated from New York City to Longview, Washington, where he continued to teach and compose. His last major theoretical work was the culmination of his studies with modus lascivus, codified in Modus Lascivus: The Road to Enharmonicism (1976).
Tibor Serly died in London on Oct. 8, 1978.