Twelve-Tone Method, 1923

Schoenberg replaced the tonal centre with a twelve-note row and completed the first full twelve-tone work.

Related

ModernChromaticismCounterpoint

In 1923 Schoenberg completed the Suite for Piano, Op. 25. Twelve semitones were ordered into a row, and it grew from that row and its transformations; tonality was replaced.

Time and place

Vienna, 1923. Schoenberg wrote Op. 25 between 1921 and 1923, publishing and premiering it in 1924. Earlier works had approached the method; Op. 25 was the first composed entirely with twelve-tone technique.

What happened

Schoenberg fixed the twelve pitch classes in a prime row. A composer could use the prime, retrograde, inversion and retrograde inversion at twelve levels, giving forty-eight forms. The question was no longer the tonic but how the row was segmented, combined and divided between the hands. Rows broke into three- or four-note motives, and harmony arose from overlapping forms.

What changed

The organising unit moved from tonal relations to row relations, and dissonance no longer needed resolution. Twelve-tone technique gave atonal writing structure and seeded integral serialism. Listeners lost tonal signposts and followed motives and timbre. Postwar serialism followed.

Listen for the turn

Begin with the Suite, Op. 25, and notice how gavotte, musette and gigue are rewritten by the row. Then the Five Pieces, Op. 23, the threshold before the method. Finally Webern's Variations, Op. 27, where twelve-tone discipline extends into rhythm and timbre.

Related

This turn belongs to Modern and connects Chromaticism and Counterpoint.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Schoenberg" — dates and works checked, not quoted
• Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey (Oxford University Press, 1990) — row technique checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.