Twelve Tone Music, a Brief Explanation: A Composer’s Journal October 12, 2005
Laurie Conrad is a classical pianist and composer living in Ithaca, NY. Some of her honors include: Who's Who in American Music, The International Who's Who in Music (Cambridge), Who's Who's in American Pianists, The International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, The Dictionary of International Biography and Marquis' Who's Who in America.
Going through the statistics today on Authorsden.com, I see that many people read the Journal entry called “12 tone technique”. In fact, there are high numbers for all the entries with “12 tone” in the title. So now I am wondering if people are truly interested in knowing more about the twelve tone system of composing.
A bit of History: Tonality vs atonality and 12 tone:
The Viennese composer Arnold Schonberg (1874-1951) created, and then developed the 12 tone system during the 1920's. His idea was to free music from a tonal center: i.e. the tonal system which is built on a key or scale, and based on accepted and preferred chord progressions established by tradition. In the tonal system, phrases and sections and pieces end with a cadence, i.e. a set progression of two or more chords that either gives a sense of finality or introduces expectation for what is to follow.
The scale chosen by the composer, strengthened by cadences, establishes the key. So when we say that a composition is in the key of C Major - we mean that the composer has built his piece on the C Major scale.
The C Major scale:
C D E F G A B C
I ii iii IV V vi vii I
I=Tonic ii=Supertonic iii=Mediant IV=Subdominant V=Dominant vi=Submediant vii=Leading Tone
In the tonal system, there are four basic cadences: Authentic (I-IV-V-I), Surprise (V-VI), Plagel (IV- I) and Half cadences (I -V). Cadences, especially at the end of a piece, are almost exclusively V-I, or dominant/ tonic. Most theorists agree that the dominant and tonic degrees of the scale establish the key center.
When we compose within the tonal system - which includes all popular music, including rock and rap, & the classical composers J.S. Bach through Rachmaninov - we are taught that certain chords follow other chords instinctively: these are called chord progressions. Certain progressions are more or less outlawed, others frowned upon - but, on the whole, all tonal music is based on chords that move to other chords. All these chords are based on only four different scales: Major scales and three kinds of minor scales: archaic, harmonic and melodic minor. Interestingly enough, there are also very few chords possible, throughout Western history: major, minor, diminished and augmented chords. In sum, tonality is based on four different scale arrangements of tones, four basic sorts of cadences, and four types of triads, i.e.chords built of three notes. We can add more thirds onto these three note chords, or triads - causing the more elusive 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th chords - so common in Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. With Ravel and Igor Stravinsky, music wandered into bi-tonality and polytonality -i.e. two or more tonalities (or keys) played simultaneously. Stravinsky and others then brought music to atonality - which has no key center, no tonal center.
The Twelve Tone System:
Twelve tone is atonal - it has no key center - but has its own inalterable and stringent system which is not found in other atonal systems.
The tone row is chosen by the composer, and consists of all twelve different tones of the chromatic scale. (The chromatic scale is every white and black note held within an octave.) This ‘row’ of twelve pitches must use all twelve different notes of the chromatic scale, and repeat none of them. Once this row, this order of twelve tones is chosen, it cannot be altered; i.e. the order of those twelve notes, once chosen by the composer, cannot change. Those twelve tones, in their chosen order, then repeat throughout the movement or piece. Octave doublings are not allowed. This twelve tone row can be played forward (the row) or backward (the retrograde). It can be turned upside down (the inversion) or be used upside down and backwards (the retrograde of the inversion). There are only these four possibilities.
These four possible variations of the original row can then be transposed to all keys. The row can also be altered rhythmically and dynamically. The rules are simple: Octave doublings are not allowed, and pitches cannot be repeated until the entire twelve tones of the row have been used; nor can the order of the pitches be changed. This is the most pure use of the twelve tone system. Some composers, such as Pierre Boulez, went so far as to use “total serialization” as a compositional technique i.e. to serialize the rhythm, dynamics and timbre as well as the pitches.
Twelve tone, as all atonal music - in spite of the simplicity of its rules - is not an easy system to use. If the composer does not use or set up the row or rows correctly, the result can be dissonant chaos. The twelve tone system is the most constricting system ever devised in terms of freedom of pitch and harmony - even more so than the fugue forms of the Baroque and other complicated compositional systems of the Renaissance and earlier modal systems. The rules of twelve tone, or serial music, in its purest form - are possibly more strict than any musical system in the history of Western music, including those of Gregorian chant. However, in my opinion, the use of the twelve tone system has barely been explored by composers - and the possibilities are endless.
Twelve tone composers choose their initial row of tones, and then draw up a grid or matrix which contains all the transpositions of the row, all the inversions, retrogrades and retrograde inversions. It looks basically like a box filled with smaller boxes arranged 12 pitches across and 12 pitches down. A crystal of sorts, made of written pitch names instead of atoms. A Pythagorean square. This square is the twelve tone composer’s life, structure, church and home.
A Sample Twelve Tone Row:
C D C# F G# G A D# F# B A# E
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
All twelve tones of the chromatic scale are used, and none are repeated.
My view and use of Twelve Tone Music, or Serial Music:
When I first began using the twelve tone system, I would sit down, light a candle and say a short prayer before choosing the order of tones for my original row - because once the row is chosen, the entire piece unfolds from that original sequence of intervals and pitches. Unlike most 12 tone composers, I very rarely use more than one row in the same movement of a piece. Often I use the same row for years. My thinking is: tonal composers have used the same major and minor scales for centuries; the row is, in a sense a scale. To truly understand that sequence of tones, and all its possibilities, one should stay with it, like family or friends. Not discard them at will.
In my first attempt at 12 tone - a short song - I found the sound I had been looking for, as a composer, during my student years with Karel Husa. It was a breath of clear, transparent air. The clear air of other, higher realms. In my early songs, I follow the rules of twelve tone very strictly. Later I stretched the rules, and eventually abandoned them entirely. But I will undoubtedly return to that rarified air one day, and most probably in songs or string quartets.
Philosophically, I was drawn to 12 tone before I even had heard Schonberg or Webern’s music. Drawn to the idea that each tone would be, in a way, sacred - a planet unto itself, freed from the tonal expectations and geometries of sound found in the tonal system. I have always felt that tonality, which is based on the overtone series found in Nature, was more earth bound. And that 12 tone was more spiritual. The first eight partials, or overtones of the overtone series, outline a dominant 7th chord built on the fundamental, or initial tone. The first chromatic outside the key set by the fundamental tone is not found until the 17th partial. In other words, one has to wait quite some time for the overtone series to unfold before those twelve tone half tones are found, and the majority of them are beyond the range of hearing. They exist in other realms, in a way. The unseen and unheard realms where the angels live and dance and sing.
Words to one of my early songs:
Tonight
the moon
cut
like a prism
Small rainbow
hung
on the night.
Twelve Tone Music, a Brief Explanation: A Composer’s Journal
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