Twelve-Tone and Serial Music

A method that replaces tonal centre with a fixed row, later extended to rhythm and timbre.

Related

ModernIntervalCounterpointPiano

Twelve-tone and serial music organise pitch as a row, replacing a tonal centre with a fixed order that later extends to rhythm, dynamics and timbre.

Origins and dating

Schoenberg shaped the method between 1921 and 1923, first in piano pieces; the Suite for Piano Op.25 of 1923 is the first complete work. Berg and Webern carried it into opera, string quartet and orchestra. After 1945 Boulez and Stockhausen extended serial control to duration, dynamics and colour, producing integral serialism.

Listening features

Listen to the line. Semitones and leaps dominate, phrases are short, and no tonic anchors the ear. A row may appear in original, inversion, retrograde or retrograde inversion, so the shape seems to turn in different directions. Textures are often pointillist, with instruments taking turns and timbre more prominent than tune. Webern's sections are extremely short, and rests and colour changes do the structural work.

Figures

Schoenberg established the method. Berg wrote Wozzeck and the Violin Concerto, Webern wrote the Variations for Piano Op.27, and Boulez and Stockhausen pushed integral serialism further.

Lineage

It grows from free atonality and expressionism and leads to integral serialism, aleatoric music and spectral explorations of timbre.

Misconceptions

Twelve-tone music is not random, since the order of the row is strictly controlled. Nor is it necessarily harsh, because Berg's concerto remains intensely lyrical.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Twelve-note music — method and chronology checked, not quoted
• Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010) — serial repertoire checked, not quoted

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