User:Hyacinth/Schoenberg's twelve-tone music

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Schoenberg's significant compositions in the repertory of modern art music extend over a period of more than 50 years. Traditionally they are divided into three periods though this division "obscures as much as it reveals" as the music in each of these periods is considerably varied. The idea that his twelve-tone period "represents a stylistically unified body of works is simply not supported by the musical evidence" [1].

Ten features of Arnold Schoenberg's mature twelve-tone practice are characteristic, interdependent, and interactive[2]:

  1. Hexachordal inversional combinatoriality
  2. Aggregates
  3. Linear set presentation
  4. Partitioning
  5. Isomorphic partitioning
  6. Invariants
  7. Hexachordal levels
  8. Harmony, "consistent with and derived from the properties of the referential set"
  9. Metre, established through "pitch-relational characteristics"
  10. Multidimensional set presentations

[edit] Influence

Schoenberg stated that his technique would "assure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years" but it may be considered to have slipped from public attention having been "for a brief period after the Second World War...adopted by a number of composers" primarily interested in the work of Webern [3] and followed only by a few today.[4]

Haimo argues that the understanding of Schoenberg's work necessary for its appreciation is difficult to achieve because of the truly revolutionary nature of his system, his secretive nature, and the lack of availability of sketches and manuscripts for study. Recommended as sources are Milton Babbitt's series of articles[5], Jan Maegaard's chronology[6], and Martha Hyde's articles and book[7]. Schoenberg's own most technical discussion of the twelve-tone technique appears in his "Composition with Twelve Tones (I)", in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (New York, 1975), 214-45. [8]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Haimo (1990), p.4.
  2. ^ Haimo (1990), p.41.
  3. ^ see Pierre Boulez, "Schoenberg is Dead", Score, 6 (1952), 18-22.
  4. ^ Haimo (1990), p.1
  5. ^ Babbitt, "Three Essays on Schoenberg", in Benjamin Boretz and Edward Cone (edd.), Perspectives on Schenberg and Stravinsky (rev. edn., New York, 1972), 53. "Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Composition", Score, 12 (1955), 53-61. "Set Structure as a Compositional Determinant", Journal of Music Theory, 5 (1961), 72-94.
  6. ^ Maegaard, "A Study in the Chronology of op.23-26 by Arnold Schoenberg", Dansk aarbog for musikforskning, 2 (1962), 93-115. Further chronology in Maegaard's Studien, i.
  7. ^ Hyde, Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Harmony, (Ann Arbor, 1982) and "The Telltale Sketches: Harmonic Structure in Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Method", Musical Quarterly, 66 (1980), 560-80 and "The Format and Function of Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Sketches", Journal of the American Musicological Society, 36 (1983), 453-80.
  8. ^ Haimo (1990), p.2-3

[edit] Sources

  • Haimo, Ethan. 1990. Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey: The Evolution of his Twelve-Tone Method, 1914-1928. Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-3152-60-6.