Twelve-tone technique
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony and, especially in British usage, twelve-note composition) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. The technique was tremendously influential on composers in the mid-20th century.
Schoenberg himself described the system as a "Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One Another" (Schoenberg 1975, 218). However, the common usage at the present time is to describe this method as a form of serialism.
Josef Matthias Hauer also developed a similar system using unordered hexachords, or tropes, at the exact same time and country but with no connection to Schoenberg. Other composers have created systematic use of the chromatic scale, but Schoenberg's method is historically most significant.
See also
- List of dodecaphonic and serial compositions
- All-interval twelve-tone row
- All-interval tetrachord
- All-trichord hexachord
- Pitch interval
- List of tone rows and series