# What will be the music direction if Schoenberg did not invent 12-tone technique?



## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

I think it is generally agreed upon that the 12-tone technique opened the door in 21st century music and modernism. Hypothetically, if Schoenberg did not devised the 12-tone technique, what would happen in classical music? Would there be any serialism or any descendants of it? Would it be like super Late Romanticism in the 21st century?

What's your opinion?

(It is fun to think things like this. It's only a hypothetical conjecture btw.)



> Twelve-tone technique-also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition-is a method of musical composition devised by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). 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 while preventing the emphasis of any one note[3] through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. The technique was influential on composers in the mid-20th century.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Maybe all the "lovers of fine music"/musical turkeys would be bemoaning the baleful influence of this guy instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Matthias_Hauer

You might also give a thought to neo-classicism


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## peeyaj (Nov 17, 2010)

Is Hauer relevant today? Serious question.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Schoenberg's music was already influential before the 12-tone technique, but it is an interesting question. I'm sure that modernism would have remained just as unpalatable to those who find it distasteful, but a whole host of American academic composers (Sessions, Babbitt, etc.) may have had to find a different niche...



peeyaj said:


> Is Hauer relevant today? Serious question.


Eh, he's an extremely minor figure. _*Serious answer.*_


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Not especially I wouldn't have thought. Happy to advised on this tho.

An interesting conjecture might be what would have happened if Schoenberg hadnt come up with serialism independently, and some other composer (with a different character and motivations) had taken forward Hauer's discovery. But I don't think that's what you're looking for

I reckon serialism of some sort was inevitable - it was a logical approach to take in a creative world looking for new means of expression


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dgee said:


> An interesting conjecture might be what would have happened if Schoenberg hadnt come up with serialism independently, and some other composer (with a different character and motivations) had taken forward Hauer's discovery. But I don't think that's what you're looking for
> 
> I reckon serialism of some sort was inevitable - it was a logical approach to take in a creative world looking for new means of expression


I don't think that Hauer could have had the same influence that Schoenberg did, though. What ended up being influential was the music rather than the technique, whether Schoenberg on Rihm and Sessions, or Webern on Boulez and the Darmstadt serialists (and late Stravinsky), or even Berg on Shostakovich and Britten, it was the aesthetic of the music more than the technique that proved influential in the long run.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Which is why serialism with a different "starting" aesthetic could be an interesting thought experiment. What if Stravinsky had kicked it off by discovering Hauer's dry stuff and cut short his neo-classicism? What if Shostakovich had fled Stalin into Paris's bustling serial scene - all jazzy and urbane? What if serialism was first discovered alongside early computing and electronic music applications and was never anything but programmed?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

peeyaj said:


> I think it is generally agreed upon that the 12-tone technique opened the door in 21st century music and modernism. Hypothetically, if Schoenberg did not devised the 12-tone technique, what would happen in classical music? Would there be any serialism or any descendants of it? Would it be like super Late Romanticism in the 21st century?
> 
> What's your opinion?
> 
> (It is fun to think things like this. It's only a hypothetical conjecture btw.)


More along the styles of Mahler - more normal music for sure.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

It is generally agreed only in half.

The other landmark direction taken by Stravinsky in Petrushka and then Le Sacre du Printemps.

The 'Schoenberg / Webern' Influence did not catch on really until the late 1940's - early 1950's - and in retrospect, its band-wagon vogue (which was indeed great for a while, including the hard core later total serialism of Boulez, Babbitt, et alia) did not last so long.

Besides, these what-ifs / what if nots are so hypothetical I wonder about their having any real value, including vague intellectual discussion as entertainment.

It has been said that the _high chromaticism_ of the late romantic did inevitably bring some in that era to feel a need to somehow re-think the organization of musical procedures which includes near or all twelve chromatic steps.

I'll go out on a limb of stereotypical cultural profiling and say it is a very 'Germanic' trait to think of organizing them on such rigid principles -- Ergo the second Viennese school -- while even Schoenberg did not really come up with 'a system' until the mid-1920's or so, and was the first to 'break' his own rules

Serialism does not automatically include 'atonal,' either, at least not that particular theoretic sort of 'atonal.'

It was the Stravinsky influence which held sway for the majority of the first half of the 20th century, the polytonality of Petruschka alone became a realm in itself for several generations of composers (Milhaud, Honegger, early Hindemith in the first few of his Kammermusik, to name but a few.) His neoclassical style again became another realm the vein of which others would mine throughout the 20th century and to the present day.


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## Guest (Dec 25, 2013)

I don't think much would be different. I consider 12-tone serialism a bit of a gimmick which is not essential to the overall development of 20th and 21st century music.

Without Schoenberg's 12-tone system there would still have been extensive experimentation with modernism in various forms. Modernism was happening across the art world - music, painting, dance, architecture, etc. Schoenberg was just one of many doing similar things for similar reasons. Thus, there's no way I would agree with the initial assertion that "the 12-tone technique opened the door in 21st century music and modernism".

I personally don't care for Schoenberg but that's beside the point. If you asked a similar question about a composer I do like - say Villa Lobos - I would give a similar answer. There was too much going on at once for any one composer to play a pivotal role.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> More along the styles of Mahler - more normal music for sure.


Dude, it is all 'normal.' You've just tipped your mindset more clearly than ever before. You're either very relaxed during the holiday or you are slipping


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

You have to really close yourself in the Germanic music world to think that Schoenberg is THE man who started everything non-romantic in music and if it wasn't him, things wouldn't go any further than Mahler/R.Strauss. Without him, a brach of XXth century classical music would be absent. A branch, no more and no less. Myself, I probably wouldn't feel any difference or miss any XXth century composer that I enjoy listening to.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

No, he said that he invented the technique because composing atonally without it was extremely hard for him.


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## Guest (Dec 25, 2013)

peeyaj said:


> I think it is generally agreed upon that the 12-tone technique opened the door in 21st century music and modernism.


In certain circles, it is generally agreed.

How typical are those circles?

How complete is their knowledge of music and musical development?

Neoclassicism has been mentioned. That's pretty predictable. It's the most congenial -ism for people who are generally uncomfortable with various other modern-isms. (It's a favorite even of some who are comfortable with various other modern-isms.)

But mostly, it seems that Schoenberg gets credited with "the" direction. This in a century of more different directions than any other century preceding it. At least in certain circles.

Here's some other things that happened:

Polytonality. Not a huge deal, but it was kinda cool.

Polyrhythm. A bigger deal, I think. Still being worked.

Indeterminacy. Cage often gets credited with inventing aleatoric music. Aleatory was a word coined by Boulez, however, as a diss. And it came to be understood as identifying the largely European practice of putting indeterminate bits into a largely determinate composition. In certain circles. Think Stockhausen or Lutoslawski.

Electronics. Electroacoustic music, which includes musique concrete and electronic music and eai and all the rest, was not so much a style, but inevitably there were certain stylistic characteristics (which the more talented practitioners managed to avoid or transcend).

Well, it's Christmas day, and dinner is served.

So, quickly. Danger music, anti-music, and other concept musics.

Graphic scores.

Improvisation. (This was huge in the baroque era. It dwindled to cadenzas in the classical era, and Beethoven killed it by writing out his "cadenzas," thus making them no longer really cadenzas.)

There's more, but it's really time to eat. I'm seriously.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Well, Hauer's "tropes" were 6-note scales; unordered sets. In this regard, Hauer's tropes are harmonic; a set of intervallic relations emerges, based on relations of every note in the set to all other notes in the set; thus, the trope establishes a set of intervallic occurences which create a "tonality." In other words, if there is a preponderance of fifths, then that interval will occur more frequently, and a "tonal color" will result.
With Schoenberg's rows, remember the basic definition: a series of twelve notes related only to each other. Thus, since the row establishes an order, there can be no "cross relations" or redundancies (repeats) within the row. The interval relations ARE FIXED.
Besides this, Bartok, Stravinsky, Bloch, Schoenberg, Debussy, Ravel, and many others were already thinking about different approaches to Western music: tritone division of the octave, localized tone-centers, parallel chord movement, chromaticism, motives, inversion, non-Western progressions, etc. All of these ideas had already changed music in significant and irreversible ways, long before Schoenberg put forth his idea of a non-harmonic music.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> With Schoenberg's rows, remember the basic definition: a series of twelve notes related only to each other. Thus, since the row establishes an order, there can be no "cross relations" or redundancies (repeats) within the row. The interval relations ARE FIXED.


Only in theory. In practice, pitch classes frequently appear out of sequence, or in chords with vertical voicings that in effect re-order the tones.



ArtMusic said:


> More along the styles of Mahler - more normal music for sure.


Mahler was Schoenberg's biggest supporter before his death, and I'm sure would have continued to be one of them. Mahler's music was also considered the height of abnormality and modernism by the conservative Viennese public.

Also, everyone should remember that 12-tone technique and "atonality" are not the same thing, and the latter was already arrived at long before any kind of organizing principle was applied.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Yes - look at what had already happened when 12 tone technique came along in the early 20s. I'm afraid the horse had bolted by then!


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

If Schoenberg hadn't come up with it, it would have been invented by Adrian Leverkuhn a few years later.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Only in theory. In practice, pitch classes frequently appear out of sequence, or in chords with vertical voicings that in effect re-order the tones.
> 
> Mahler was Schoenberg's biggest supporter before his death, and I'm sure would have continued to be one of them. Mahler's music was also considered the height of abnormality and modernism by the conservative Viennese public.
> 
> Also, everyone should remember that 12-tone technique and "atonality" are not the same thing, and the latter was already arrived at long before any kind of organizing principle was applied.


Yes, in theory, even a horse can be made to fit into a suitcase, but that's not the intended or best use of the suitcase or the horse. Schoenberg's 12-tone system was designed to avoid the tonal hierarchy; that is what the ordering does, in theory. Notes become related only to the note immediately preceding and immediately following. Even if ordering is "bypassed," as with vertical stacks, then one has not "escaped" the consequences of a 12-note ordered row. It is my contention that Schoenberg created the ordered set idea in order to extinguish harmony. Remember, tonality and its harmony is based firstly on *vertical* relations derived from the harmonics of a note ("1" or the key note).This gives us our varying degrees of consonance and dissonance in relation to that one key note, creating an hierarchy of tension/resolution. This vertically-derived hierarchy is then transferred into the *horizontal* axis, creating progressions thru time, known as harmonic function. That's tonality.

By ordering his material (not hierarchic scales, but ordered sets), Schoenberg then brought about a crucial change: by relating notes only to the note immediately preceding and immediately following, the row becomes a set of interval relations which do not refer to a key note. Thus, this is not a harmonically-based system in the same sense as tonality is; whatever "harmonic" or dissonant/consonant sounds thus created are based only on the sum of the interval content of the row-intervals, and any other non-row "verticalities" or sonorities which result in practice are serendipitous, and can't be sustained as convincingly as tonality, if one's desire is to create a defacto tonal effect. That seems like an ignoble use of Schoenberg's system to me, and I prefer Webern over Berg for this reason.

Even in thematic works like the Wind Quintet (1924), Schoenberg's "thematic" procedures are structural and cerebral, with a seeming disregard for consonance/dissonance qualities; this concept seems to have been scrapped, with all intervals being equal. This is a good argument against dodecaphony, since consonance and dissonance seem to have been thrown out, and all relations are equal.

On the other hand, this argument is not really applicable except in regard to harmonic and tonal music; in 12-tone music, we should be listening to harmonic occurences in the moment, as they present themselves, not as tonal areas or goals. We are free-floating now: harmonic function has disappeared.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, in theory, even a horse can be made to fit into a suitcase...


Takes either a very large suitcase or a very good horse compressor. Amazon has these, I think.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> ... that's not the intended or best use of the suitcase or the horse. Schoenberg's 12-tone system was designed to avoid the tonal hierarchy.
> By ordering his material (not hierarchic scales, but ordered sets), Schoenberg then brought about a crucial change: by relating notes only to the note immediately preceding and immediately following, the row becomes a set of interval relations which do not refer to a key note.
> 
> ...in 12-tone music, we should be listening to harmonic occurences in the moment, as they present themselves, not as tonal areas or goals. We are free-floating now: harmonic function has disappeared.


I have to congratulate you on the above, so well and clearly said!

While it was Schoenberg who _formalized_ this premise, it was certainly already floating about in the ether.

I think it is right in saying that once his formalized premise became known, that did have a tremendous effect on both the thinking and end result of many a composer, _whether they adhered to Schoenberg's method or not_.

The influence of the idea of liberty from the former developed tonal hierarchy, I agree, is something which should not be underestimated. (Pandiatonicism I feel is somewhat of a 'subset' of similar thinking


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Even in thematic works like the Wind Quintet (1924), Schoenberg's "thematic" procedures are structural and cerebral, with a seeming disregard for consonance/dissonance qualities; this concept seems to have been scrapped, with all intervals being equal. This is a good argument against dodecaphony, since consonance and dissonance seem to have been thrown out, and all relations are equal.


You'd think so, but he favored vertical relations of fifths, fourths, thirds, sixths, and sevenths by a _*huge*_ margin over other types. His 12-tone works more or less obey traditional contrapuntal rules, and that includes resolution of dissonance into consonance. The leading tone, the father of functional tonality, also plays an important role in establishing temporary centers, if not key regions.

So it's not an argument against the method, but against the way the method has been practiced by some in some circumstances.

Also...what's the difference between a cerebral/structural thematic procedure and a non-cerebral/structural one?

I agree with PetrB that methods like pandiatonicism can, if carried sufficiently far, have a similar effect. Many stretches in works by Hindemith or Stravinsky do nothing to indicate tonal root progressions, or contradict the root progressions that would typically be implied by the melody with a false bass note. In many cases, the vertical relations between the various lines mean next to nothing in determining either where the music came from or where it is going, just as you say is the case in serial music.

We also have to remember that Schoenberg had been swapping the vertical and horizontal relations in his music since as far back as the Chamber Symphony, when fourths predominate both in the harmony and melody, so the 12-tone method was really a way for him to keep composing the way he already had been.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, in theory, even a horse can be made to fit into a suitcase, but that's not the intended or best use of the suitcase or the horse. Schoenberg's 12-tone system was designed to avoid the tonal hierarchy; that is what the ordering does, in theory. Notes become related only to the note immediately preceding and immediately following. Even if ordering is "bypassed," as with vertical stacks, then one has not "escaped" the consequences of a 12-note ordered row. It is my contention that Schoenberg created the ordered set idea in order to extinguish harmony. Remember, tonality and its harmony is based firstly on *vertical* relations derived from the harmonics of a note ("1" or the key note).This gives us our varying degrees of consonance and dissonance in relation to that one key note, creating an hierarchy of tension/resolution. This vertically-derived hierarchy is then transferred into the *horizontal* axis, creating progressions thru time, known as harmonic function. That's tonality.
> 
> By ordering his material (not hierarchic scales, but ordered sets), Schoenberg then brought about a crucial change: by relating notes only to the note immediately preceding and immediately following, the row becomes a set of interval relations which do not refer to a key note. Thus, this is not a harmonically-based system in the same sense as tonality is; whatever "harmonic" or dissonant/consonant sounds thus created are based only on the sum of the interval content of the row-intervals, and any other non-row "verticalities" or sonorities which result in practice are serendipitous, and can't be sustained as convincingly as tonality, if one's desire is to create a defacto tonal effect. That seems like an ignoble use of Schoenberg's system to me, and I prefer Webern over Berg for this reason.
> 
> ...


Does anything Schoenberg ever said suggest that his goal was to 'extinguish harmony'? If there was ever a statement that will likely scare people away from his music that would probably be one. At any rate if that was his goal I don't think he succeeded as one can hear harmonic consequences in all of his music.

I'm glad Berg did not see things in the way you do, it would've prevented a lot of great music. Ironically so many view Schoenberg the same way you see Berg. At one point major 3rds seemed ignoble harmonies, did they not? Extreme chromaticism - ignoble etc. But these systems are just a way to help create music, and I think they are there to help serve and advance the music, not the other way around.


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## Guest (Dec 26, 2013)

When I was in graduate school in Riverside, I got into conversations with music majors about twentieth century music.

Those conversations were very much like what one can see online at classical music forums.

I got the impression then that the music majors in the 70s and 80s only knew a few things about the twentieth century. Those few things were not representative, either. But when I started complaining one day about this in a room full of music faculty, I was very quickly informed that the history courses did indeed cover other things besides dodecaphony/serialism.

But that didn't seem to have had any effect on what people wanted to talk about.

For them, the principal characteristic of twentieth century music was increased dissonance and the principal technical innovation of the century was twelve-tone technique. In other words, music was defined principally in terms of pitch. Only pitch relations were at all interesting or important.

Thirty or forty years on, and nothing has changed about that perception.

Well, perhaps one thing is different, more intelligent people taking part in the conversations. Perhaps some of those people have some ideas about why that perception about pitch is still so strong. Why is the conversation always only ever about pitch relations?

OK. I do have one other question, a lot of people here have taken music history courses in university, no? If you still have your books or notes from those, can you find any reference to Fluxus? Just curious how many people have at least heard of that movement.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Did Schoenberg really do that much? Beethoven was already fiddling with chromaticism in the Grosse Fugue. Liszt, Chopin and Schubert jumped on board. Wagner went nuts with the modulations in Tristan und Isolde. Strauss liked the idea and did his own tinkering in Metamorphosen. Mahler's symphonies finished in a different key to when it started.

Schoenberg replaced Wagner's tonality with some structure and _voilà_ - the 12-tone technique.
Was it a great leap forward or just the next step?

To answer the original question. I think we'd still be in the same place today without Schoenberg. I still think Debussy covered more ground with _The afternoon of a faun_ and Pelleas et Melisande - with their unconventional tonal scales/chords than Shoenberg and his pupils did.

...just my 2 cents worth (and still overcharging).


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

More seriously, Schoenberg tried to systematize what was happening to music harmonically in one very public very specific way, but 20th century composers whose work would not be a whole lot different if he hadn't existed include: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, himdemith, Orff, Ravel,, messiean, dutuileux, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Britten, Tippett, Bartok, kodaly, Honneger, Martin, Janacek, martinu, ginastera, villa lobos, de falla, grenados, copland, barber, Bernstein, Thomson, piston, Ives, respighi, Sibelius, nielsen . . . 

In other words, to lay Twentieth Century music theory at his feet is way too over-stated.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

GGluek said:


> More seriously, Schoenberg tried to systematize what was happening to music harmonically in one very public very specific way, but 20th century composers whose work would not be a whole lot different if he hadn't existed include: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, himdemith, Orff, Ravel,, messiean, dutuileux, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Britten, Tippett, Bartok, kodaly, Honneger, Martin, Janacek, martinu, ginastera, villa lobos, de falla, grenados, copland, barber, Bernstein, Thomson, piston, Ives, respighi, Sibelius, nielsen . . .
> 
> In other words, to lay Twentieth Century music theory at his feet is way too over-stated.


Yes, and it seems that those composers on your list represent the more popular part of the 20C classical spectrum. Not surprisingly.

The composer of Verklarte Nacht, Gurrelieder and Pelleas And Melisande knew that he was at the end of a road, his _personal_ road and his new 'discovery' enabled him to replace functional harmony as an organising principal in his work. A functional harmony which in his hand and others, mainly German, began to lose it's expressive power? How much further could he have gone along the road of those 3 works? 
It was _his_ solution and that of his pupils and disciples. There is a long and illustrious list (GGlueks) of composers who found another path.

I think an interesting question would be what would the direction of _Schoenberg's_ music have been if he hadn't come up with the 12-tone method. Perhaps he would not have been as important an historical figure as he turned out to be. Perhaps he would have been a second rate R.Strauss.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

an afterthought, which should have been a prime:

Radical breakthrough in freedom from prior harmonic function as developed up through the late 1800's, and the real "First,"
CLAUDE DEBUSSY.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Fools! The guy who really opened up the door to modernism was

Anonymous


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

some guy said:


> When I was in graduate school in Riverside, I got into conversations with music majors about twentieth century music.
> 
> Those conversations were very much like what one can see online at classical music forums.
> 
> ...


Well, we have centuries of history of western music where arranging pitch and rhythm is the primary way of creating music, this is continuing up until the present. In your estimation who is the most important composer whose principal method of composition does not rely on pitch relations?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Klavierspieler said:


> Fools! The guy who really opened up the door to modernism was
> 
> Anonymous


wrong, my friend! It was the Musica Ficta crowd


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

tdc said:


> Well, we have centuries of history of western music where arranging pitch and rhythm is the primary way of creating music, this is continuing up until the present. In your estimation who is the most important composer whose principal method of composition does not rely on pitch relations?


Who ever fits the bill as redefining these (formerly?) accepted fundamental elements of music:
Pitch / Duration / intensity


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Petwhac said:


> The composer of Verklarte Nacht, Gurrelieder and Pelleas And Melisande knew that he was at the end of a road, his _personal_ road and his new 'discovery' enabled him to replace functional harmony as an organising principal in his work. A functional harmony which in his hand and others, mainly German, began to lose it's expressive power? How much further could he have gone along the road of those 3 works?


He did go further along that road. It led to his later works. Pelleas und Melisande already contains the most "Schoenbergian" of all chords, the "Viennese Trichord". His love of irregular phrasing is already present in spades in the Gurrelieder, and Verklarte Nacht is, like all of his works, based on a few motivic cells that constantly evolve. To suggest that the later works seem to emanate from a different pen is to not understand either the earlier or the later.



Petwhac said:


> I think an interesting question would be what would the direction of _Schoenberg's_ music have been if he hadn't come up with the 12-tone method. Perhaps he would not have been as important an historical figure as he turned out to be. Perhaps he would have been a second rate R.Strauss.


Strauss already made for a decent second _*and*_ third-rate version of himself, in his occasional works and such. No need for any other composer to do that.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> He did go further along that road. It led to his later works. Pelleas und Melisande already contains the most "Schoenbergian" of all chords, the "Viennese Trichord". His love of irregular phrasing is already present in spades in the Gurrelieder, and Verklarte Nacht is, like all of his works, based on a few motivic cells that constantly evolve. To suggest that the later works seem to emanate from a different pen is to not understand either the earlier or the later.


Not talking about phrasing or individual harmonies but the replacing of the structural function of key.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Petwhac said:


> Not talking about phrasing or individual harmonies but the replacing of the structural function of key.


Oh. Well, I'm not sure how he could have gone down a road developing that...after all, the functions of tonality had remained pretty much the same since Bach. Debussy tossed them out, and pretty much everyone followed him. Schoenberg just took a different route, that's all.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

peeyaj said:


> I think it is generally agreed upon that the 12-tone technique opened the door in 21st century music and modernism. Hypothetically, if Schoenberg did not devised the 12-tone technique, what would happen in classical music? Would there be any serialism or any descendants of it? Would it be like super Late Romanticism in the 21st century?
> 
> What's your opinion?
> 
> (It is fun to think things like this. It's only a hypothetical conjecture btw.)


Maybe pentatonic scale - which Debussy and the French in particular focussed on - might have been more of a big thing? Maybe more of a focus on sonority, even if we look at things like Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra - an amazingly colourful work, the sounds in my mind similar (or not far from) to works that pushed sound itself, like Mahler's Symphony #6 and by Varese (eg. Ameriques). Maybe music would have retained this sort of inquiry, and allowed to be more expressive rather than what happened with certain more rigid interpretations of serialism? But even that was short lived, and many composers bypassed serialism completely, heavily modified it to their own ends, or used it in one or two works.

I would say that even if there was no Schoenberg, or he didn't go that way, you look back to Liszt anticipating aspects of atonality and serialism in his music. From the mid 20th century, musicologists from Humphrey Searle onwards (himself a serialist composer) saw Liszt as predicting in embryonic form aspects of many 20th century techniques, including serialism (big works there is his Faust Symphony and that late piano works, with their pared down and stark textures, also anticipating aspects of Impressionism and even Minimalism).

Ultimately I see Mahler, Debussy and Richard Strauss as doing a lot to prepare the way for the likes of Bartok, Varese, Stravinsky, and so on, there where things to draw upon from their works, its easy to forget how revolutionary these people where. Schoenberg was particularly influenced by Strauss and also Brahms and Wagner. These others have found a wider audience than the likes of Schoenberg, however his innovations and music is no less for that, he was just different to them.

Maybe this is also a bit like asking what the 19th century would have been like without Beethoven? Well, in that case again there would have been Haydn and Mozart to go back to, composers could get things out of their anticipations of Beethoven's music and develop them in various directions. Of course this is all conjecture.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Sid James said:


> Maybe this is also a bit like asking what the 19th century would have been like without Beethoven? Well, in that case again there would have been Haydn and Mozart to go back to, composers could get things out of their anticipations of Beethoven's music and develop them in various directions. Of course this is all conjecture.


Funny, I was thinking along similar lines a little bit ago. The list of composers above is nice and all, but we honestly don't know how they would have responded to a musical environment that didn't have Schoenberg in it. Stravinsky was exposed to Pierrot lunaire early on (while he was finishing up the orchestration on The Rite of Spring), and thought very highly of the work for the rest of his life.

Perhaps we can wonder if Chopin's style would have turned out more or less the same without the example of Beethoven.

Edit: Also, Britten being mentioned is a bit odd in this context. There's no way that Peter Grimes and Turn of the Screw would be as they are without Wozzeck.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> Funny, I was thinking along similar lines a little bit ago. The list of composers above is nice and all, but we honestly don't know how they would have responded to a musical environment that didn't have Schoenberg in it. Stravinsky was exposed to Pierrot lunaire early on (while he was finishing up the orchestration on The Rite of Spring), and thought very highly of the work for the rest of his life.
> 
> Perhaps we can wonder if Chopin's style would have turned out more or less the same without the example of Beethoven.


Yes, Pierrot Lunaire's influence was huge. Of course its not a serial piece, however it (and other significant earlier works like the Five Pieces for Orchestra and Erwartung) demonstrates that Schoenberg doesn't necessarily equate to serialism, which came along in the 1920's and really got going in the '30's.

I think that maybe Ives is an example of an innovator who does things not many know about or care for, then 20, 30 or 40 years later his music starts to be performed and disseminated. Meanwhile, other composers did that same or similar things to him but after he composed those works, a lot way after. So, he was in effect not part of music history with those works he wrote from around the 1890's to 1910's, which is I think when most of his music dates from.

So what about Schoenberg or any other big innovator like this? If he isn't there, or discovered later, what happens in the meantime? Do people tend to do those things anyway? The "inevitability" argument? Are we looking at innovation as revolution, an earthquake. Or is it a process of accretion, of evolution, of things coming about because they just do, its just a matter of waiting? I suppose I think revolutions occur but once they are absorbed you've got the evolutionary process happening, things kind of even out and become mainstream. Even serialism was used by Lenny in the Cool Fugue from West Side Story. Its an example often cited as to how by the 1950's, serialism was absorbed into the wider musical culture. But Schoenberg's reaction to that must have been interesting, had he lived to see it!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> ... If he isn't there, or discovered later, what happens in the meantime? Do people tend to do those things anyway? The "inevitability" argument? Are we looking at innovation as revolution, an earthquake. Or is it a process of accretion, of evolution, of things coming about because they just do, its just a matter of waiting?


Ahh, This is one of the biggest, greatest and most delicious of speculation games -- premise, disturb anything in the past and then imagine what differences it makes to later history.

But, general history of invention and ideas does seem to tell more than a few tales of ideas simultaneously floating about in the ether of 'a general consciousness.' -- it may be some invented idea first not picked up, only to be brought about by another one or two hundred years later or within the same month, but some things do come forward. Whether it is an evolution or a development, at least in the arts, I will defer to 'development,' and that without the implication of an ultimate, better product.

Ingenious as it is, I don't find it difficult to imagine Schoenberg's arrived-at serial method would have been near replicated by another, later.

_What is only a one off is Schoenberg:_ his composite sensibility and genuine sentiment for the past Germanic cultural musical traditions, classical, folk and popular (cabaret). What he came up with, the way to work within the tenets he set, are I would think unique to him. Without that, no Berg or Webern as it now is, or the rest of what is is already written.

I tend to think something exact or damned near like would have come up in music, and it would have been looked at and investigated by many many musicians.... BUT that truly could have been radically different, not setting out to work without a Tonic center, not so assiduously admonishing to avoid any reference to a 'relationship' of V / IV / I, whether in a line or a vertical harmony.

*Is it an 'inevitable evolution' that the harmonic language of music has literally climbed up the ladder of the sequence of harmonics? If that is assured, music of the future will be microtonal, without a doubt *

_ I like to think _some developments are not a question of _If?_, but _When?_, and when it did arriave it would have to be -- de facto -- 'different.' (That 'different' is to me the most fun specific speculation.)

If anyone is willing to keep a log for one or two hundred years, we could play the same game looking from this moment to a much later future


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2013)

tdc said:


> Well, we have centuries of history of western music where arranging pitch and rhythm is the primary way of creating music, this is continuing up until the present. In your estimation who is the most important composer whose principal method of composition does not rely on pitch relations?


tdc, you may have noticed that I avoid playing the "the most important" game.

I don't like narrowing everything down all the time to "the best" or "the greatest" or whatever. I want to broaden, not narrow.

Anyway, to the point, this is a thread about musical direction in the twentieth century, not in the centuries previous. And one thing that happened in the twentieth century was that the hegemony of pitch was seriously questioned. At the very least. And also a century in which many different (and unrelated) things happened simultaneously. Two very prominent characteristics of that century. So to have a thread in which everything that happened in the twentieth century is ignored except for serialism, which is a way of organizing pitches, seems rather peculiar.

But it does not seem at all peculiar to most of the participants. That's what I was asking about, anyway. I wasn't trying to get into a "who was the greatest non-pitch composer" game. I was curious about the phenomenon of looking at a century in which q, r, s, t, u, v happened and talking only about s. And not only about s, but about s as if s were the only thing that happened.

Dear million and Mahlerian and so forth, I was asking, why are pitch relations so utterly fascinating, to the exclusion of every other component of music generally and to the exclusion of all the various other things that happened in the century in question?


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Maybe everyone read a subtext. Point: "If that nasty Schoenberg hadn't invented away beauty we'd all be swimming in great amounts of music I'd like". Counterpoint (and I'm a bit guilty here): "Doofus, you don't know about what happened with dodecaphonism and we do". 

Anyway the OP was just about 12-tone so we are all talking about pitchez, bitchez!!


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2013)

some guy said:


> If you still have your books or notes from those, can you find any reference to Fluxus? Just curious how many people have at least heard of that movement.


Heard of it, via Yoko Ono, of course. Can't say I know much about it, but wiki obliges as always.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2013)

dgee said:


> ...we are all talking about pitchez, bitchez!!


Made me grin.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

some guy said:


> Dear million and Mahlerian and so forth, I was asking, why are pitch relations so utterly fascinating, to the exclusion of every other component of music generally and to the exclusion of all the various other things that happened in the century in question?


This is a phenomenal question.

I often suspect it is a matter of intellectual simplicity, actually. After all, we can break harmonies down into simple ratios. Then we can do all kinds of fancy things, showing off.

But what can you do with timbre?


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2013)

science said:


> This is a phenomenal question.
> 
> I often suspect it is a matter of intellectual simplicity, actually. After all, we can break harmonies down into simple ratios. Then we can do all kinds of fancy things, showing off.
> 
> But what can you do with timbre?


This is what I have long thought about it myself.

It's easy to talk about tone rows, but what can you say about stacking blocks on the piano harp? (One of the five pieces of George Brecht's _Incidental Music._)


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

some guy said:


> tdc, you may have noticed that I avoid playing the "the most important" game.
> 
> I don't like narrowing everything down all the time to "the best" or "the greatest" or whatever. I want to broaden, not narrow.
> 
> ...


Well I didn't say "best", or "greatest", I said "most important". The question could be rephrased to "an important" composer in this style, if you prefer. But I think you see what I am getting at, if there are no composers in this style that a significant number of people listen to on these forums or in general, or that has really broken through to the public's consciousness then that might be a legitimate answer as to why people aren't as interested in discussing the music or techniques. Another point is not organizing music by pitch relations is not necessarily a 20th century innovation, this arguably goes back to very early forms of music that are percussion based, therefore the idea could be looked at as a step back as opposed to being seen as an innovation.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2013)

Hey tdc, if you look at my earlier post, you'll see a list of several different "styles." 

So there's no "this" style.

Otherwise, now what you're asking is quite different from anything you were asking before. "...a significant number of people listen to...," and I can guess who gets to decide what "significant" is.

And "...has really broken though to the public's consciousness" really made me grin. You think even Gorecki or Part have done that? Sure a lot of classical listeners have heard of them, but classical listeners only account for 2 or 3 percent of all people who listen to music.

In any case, I'm not talking about "people" or "public" but about TC posters who are au courant with contemporary music, who have been to university, who have heard of more twentieth century trends than serialism but who are still only able or willing to talk about that and nothing else.

And last, "not organizing music by pitch relations" means quite a lot more than "percussion based." The context here at TC is western classical music, anyway. And pieces for percussion alone do not appear until the 1930s. So however much music there is in other cultures and other times, that's not our context for this discussion. In western classical music there were no pieces for percussion alone until the 1930s. Whether that was innovative or not in the larger sense, it was then that that thing happened.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

some guy said:


> Dear million and Mahlerian and so forth, I was asking, why are pitch relations so utterly fascinating, to the exclusion of every other component of music generally and to the exclusion of all the various other things that happened in the century in question?


I agree that organizing music by other methods can be fascinating, in Varese, in some of the Darmstadt works and so forth (and yes, even in Schoenberg in places). If this became the focal point of a discussion I would not hesitate to affirm it as a valid way of composition.

But discussions generally don't go that way. Most of the discussions I've gotten into regarding 20th century music revolve around either "Schoenberg destroyed music/led music astray with Pierrot lunaire/the Chamber Symphony/atonality/dissonance/noise/12-tone technique" or "Stravinsky destroyed music/led music astray with The Rite of Spring/bitonality/atonality/dissonance". It would be great if discussions even resulted in "I see that the methods used in the 20th century are valid ones, though I still don't enjoy listening to it", but much of the time people want their dislike validated. They want it to be true that there is something objectively wrong with this music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

science said:


> This is a phenomenal question.
> 
> ...But what can you do with timbre?


... Lol. Ask the spectralist crowd


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

PetrB said:


> ... Lol. Ask the spectralist crowd


Math. Math is what you can do with timbre.

I'm probably talking a lot of nonsense, but I wonder if the details of Schoenberg's methods aren't as important as the demonstration to other composers that you can totally invent a new method of composing music more or less out of whole cloth and write great music with it.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

science said:


> But what can you do with timbre?


You can use this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform, to compose this: 




Which is far more fancy, and ideal for showing off.

(I'm not showing off! )


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ahammel said:


> Math. Math is what you can do with timbre.
> 
> I'm probably talking a lot of nonsense, but I wonder if the details of Schoenberg's methods aren't as important as the demonstration to other composers that you can totally invent a new method of composing music more or less out of whole cloth and write great music with it.


While at the same time I think you've got to consider that claiming a new scale (12 pitches vs. 7) and then making the principles about how one arrives at horizontal and vertical material therefrom is not exactly a completely novel idea


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

PetrB said:


> While at the same time I think you've got to consider that claiming a new scale (12 pitches vs. 7) and then making the principles about how one arrives at horizontal and vertical material therefrom is not exactly a completely novel idea


Possibly not, but it seems to me that the 20th century was quite full of composers saying "I've made up a new set of rules for how to put notes together to make music, here they are, and here's the result". Messiaen did that, and Hindemith, and Cage, and Boulez (although he left out the bit about saying what the rules are, no doubt to keep music scholars employed), and Pärt, and probably some others that I'm forgetting about. I think it's possible Schoenberg had a hand in kicking off the craze for new, non-CPT musical systems.

As I say, it's quite possible I'm just waffling.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ahammel said:


> I think it's possible Schoenberg had a hand in kicking off the craze for new, non-CPT musical systems.


Ya think? "Today I have discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years." (The Arnold, 1921)

In fact, it didn't work. Looks like the Russkies have that one pretty well in the bag.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Ya think? "Today I have discovered something which will *assure the supremacy of German music* for the next 100 years." (The [[EDIT ADD: _*First*_]] Arnold, 1921)


I cannot imagine a purpose much more abstract -- and supercilious -- to compose anything.

Cultural parochialism via the arts -- it sucks


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

KenOC said:


> In fact, it didn't work. Looks like the Russkies have that one pretty well in the bag.


Thanks to Stravinsky, yes, Russia may claim the best composer of the 20th century label.

You have the quote (which is somewhat spurious in any event) wrong, by the way. It's "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the _NEXT_ 100 years." He was saying that as Beethoven had led the way in the previous century, so German music would continue to blaze the trails everyone else followed. To some extent, he wasn't wrong. I mean, his methods are still influential to this day...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Thanks to Stravinsky, yes, Russia may claim the best composer of the 20th century label.
> 
> You have the quote (which is somewhat spurious in any event) wrong, by the way. It's "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the _NEXT_ 100 years." He was saying that as Beethoven had led the way in the previous century, so German music would continue to blaze the trails everyone else followed. To some extent, he wasn't wrong. I mean, his methods are still influential to this day...


Shostakovich and Prokofiev, plus Stravinsky and others, thoroughly bested the Austro-Germans post-1920. My Schoenberg quote was copied exactly from the online Encyclopedia Britannica. Perhaps, absent Schoenberg and his "methods," the Germans might have done better?

From an extensive series of voting games on another forum, 20th century composers:
1 - Shostakovich
2 - Bartok
3 - Mahler
4 - Stravinsky
5 - Sibelius
6 - Prokofiev
7 - Messiaen
8 - Lutoslawski
9 - Ravel
10 - Poulenc
Based on works written from 1900 through 1979, top-ten results by decade. Both the number of works and their rankings within decade were taken into account.

I note one Austro-German on the list, who died a decade before Schoenberg's "discovery."


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Shostakovich and Prokofiev, plus Stravinsky and others, thoroughly bested the Austro-Germans post-1920. My Schoenberg quote was copied exactly from the online Encyclopedia Britannica. Perhaps, absent Schoenberg and his "methods," the Germans might have done better?
> 
> From an extensive series of voting games on another forum, 20th century composers:
> 1 - Shostakovich
> ...


A populist made list. Vox Populi, and the people have spoken... highly informed musical experts who deliberated most carefully and as impartially as they possibly could -- down to the last man, woman and child, no doubt. (I am personally delighted, though, to see Poulenc on that list


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2013)

Ah.

The great twentieth century composer-mania SMACKDOWN!!, eh? Germany vs. Russia in a century-long contest for hegemony.

Any room in here for just listening to music and thinking about what we've just heard? Or is it only the contest, only winning, that counts?

"Thoroughly bested."

Wow.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I'd take William Schuman over Sibelius any day. Sibelius was a trip back to romanticism. Schuman, on the other hand was an innovator and wrote profoundly in the new musical vocabulary-the greatest American symphonist of the 20th century, IMO.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> Ah.
> 
> The great twentieth century composer-mania SMACKDOWN!!, eh? Germany vs. Russia in a century-long contest for hegemony.
> 
> ...


It may be most entertaining for those re-running WWII in their minds


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> I'd take William Schuman over Sibelius any day. Sibelius was a trip back to romanticism. Schuman, on the other hand was an innovator and wrote profoundly in the new musical vocabulary-the greatest American symphonist of the 20th century, IMO.


LOL. Nothing quite like the zeal of the most recently converted


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Ya think? "Today I have discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years." (The Arnold, 1921)
> 
> In fact, it didn't work. Looks like the Russkies have that one pretty well in the bag.


With "German music", I think Schoenberg meant music that is entirely self-reliant in the sense that it provides its own governing principles. Very much in the tradition of Bach, Mozart, Brahms.

The "discovery", I think, was that structure was possible without the relationality of pitches. As opposed to Bach, Mozart, Brahms. Free atonality, in that sense, was merely Wagner with different means.

As I understand it, music, for Schoenberg, was something that was warm and passionate but at the same time based on a cold (but mostly opaque) logical system. A metaphor, also, of the human being and its mind-and-body nature.

In this sense, Shostakovich and Pärt are composers in this tradition as well, not counter-examples to Schoenberg just because they don't sound like twelve-tone Schoenberg.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

tdc said:


> Does anything Schoenberg ever said suggest that his goal was to 'extinguish harmony'? If there was ever a statement that will likely scare people away from his music that would probably be one. At any rate if that was his goal I don't think he succeeded as one can hear harmonic consequences in all of his music.


I can't cite Schoenberg as saying "that his goal was to "extinguish harmony", but the method speaks for itself: the tonal hierarchy (all notes in relation to one keynote) is replaced with an ordered set (each note related only to the note succeeding & preceding it). Also, with no "keynote," the serial row becomes a set of "spaces between notes", or interval-relations. Thus, the O,R, I, and RI orderings of the row.

Additionally, an ordered row also introduces a "horizontal" dimension, not inherent in the tonal system's vertical hierarchy derived from "stacked" harmonics of a single note. Whereas in tonality, the horizontal aspect results in "chord function through time," with serialism the horizontal ordering provides an hierarchy of relation, which, if not specified as order, would result in an unordered chromatic scale, an "index" of notes with no specific order, like all scales, and like Hauer's "tropes": this would result in chromaticism, not atonality.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

As to the "harmonic consequences" of Schoenberg's 12-tone music, this is true because the ear hears harmonically. But the method is NOT based on a harmonic hierarchy.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> As to the "harmonic consequences" of Schoenberg's 12-tone music, this is true because the ear hears harmonically. *But the method is NOT based on a harmonic hierarchy.*


No one is saying that it is. Almost _*no*_ 20th century music is based on a harmonic hierarchy. Schoenberg's, Debussy's, and Messiaen's methods are just more consistent than those who wanted to "shove a suitcase into a horse" by utilizing the skeleton of tonality without tonally directed content.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> No one is saying that it is. Almost _*no*_ 20th century music is based on a harmonic hierarchy. Schoenberg's, Debussy's, and Messiaen's methods are just more consistent than those who wanted to "shove a suitcase into a horse" by utilizing the skeleton of tonality without tonally directed content.


Who, out of interest, were the composers shoving a suitcase into a horse?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> You'd think so, but he favored vertical relations of fifths, fourths, thirds, sixths, and sevenths by a _*huge*_ margin over other types. His 12-tone works more or less obey traditional contrapuntal rules, and that includes resolution of dissonance into consonance. The leading tone, the father of functional tonality, also plays an important role in establishing temporary centers, if not key regions.
> 
> So it's not an argument against the method, but against the way the method has been practiced by some in some circumstances.


That makes it sound like the more "tonal" serialism sounds, the better, as if it is "redeemed".



> Also...what's the difference between a cerebral/structural thematic procedure and a non-cerebral/structural one?


I want you to see that Schoenberg's Wind Quintet (1924) uses "themes" derived from the row, and they are repetitive and audible; but they are based solely on structural considerations, not harmonic ones, because they are not harmonically derived. You could justify this by saying "this was his expressionist aesthetic, to create ugliness," but the fact remains that, as "themes," they make no sense in a traditional or harmonic way. This music has departed from the normal concept of theme.



> ...the 12-tone method was really a way for him to keep composing the way he already had been.


I disagree.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Almost _*no*_ 20th century music is based on a harmonic* hierarchy*. Schoenberg's, Debussy's, and Messiaen's methods are just more consistent.


Not an hierarchy; but Debussy & Messiaen *DID *write harmonic music, and that_ implies _a partial harmonic hierarchy, if only localized into temporary tone centers. Debussy also used "harmonic mechanisms" like chords, although he removed the horizontal function.

Schoenberg's ordered row made sure that all tonal hierarchy was totally removed. His rows insured this. The assertions made make it sound as if Schoenberg regretted this fact, and was constantly trying to backtrack.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

some guy said:


> I want to broaden, not narrow.
> 
> Anyway, to the point, this is a thread about musical direction in the twentieth century, not in the centuries previous. And one thing that happened in the twentieth century was that the hegemony of pitch was seriously questioned. At the very least. And also a century in which many different (and unrelated) things happened simultaneously. Two very prominent characteristics of that century. So to have a thread in which everything that happened in the twentieth century is ignored except for serialism, which is a way of organizing pitches, seems rather peculiar.


But what is ironic about this is the music techniques you advocate are exactly about narrowing (the choices of the composer) and not broadening. You seem to want to reduce music largely into two narrow categories - innovative or not innovative within the context of the Western tradition. I think all past approaches are valid and any given composer might gravitate to this or that style. Therefore the importance of managing pitches in the 21st century is as valid and relevant to music as it has ever been. That to me is a broad and open perspective - seeing the value and relevance of all styles, and tuning into the distinct compositional voice that it is possible for a composer to use within the context of any musical style. Not narrowing things down to what is novel or not novel within the more trivial externalizations (ie - the form or structure, or compositional technique) of a piece.


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## Guest (Jan 5, 2014)

Not sure you've quite got the full measure of my remarks. I'm not advocating anything except maybe for listening to more different things.

And all those different things taken together are broadening, so narrowing could hardly be the point, even if it were true (and it's not) that any one of those music techniques (techniques?) I mentioned were narrowing itself.

And while it's true that generally speaking I do not favor mimicking the forms of the past, that says nothing about valuing or seeing the relevance of all styles. There we get into the difference between listeners and creators. Listeners can and should listen to everything and anything. Creators should create, not regurgitate the past. Creators are also listeners, it's true. And it may interest you to know that some of my favorite electroacoustic composers name Bach as their favorite composer.

Their music sounds nothing like the music of Bach, however.

Another of my electroacoustic friends listens to top forty when he's not composing. None of his music has ever sounded like that, though.

So I would disagree that the managing of pitches is just as important in the 21st century as it has ever been. For many composers it is not important at all. For music generally, it is relevant in pop genres and in certain areas in what's still referred to as classical--the new complexity, for instance. 

For many listeners, maybe even for a majority of 27, it is still important. But "as it ever has been"? No. I don't think so.

And, finally, how are the two extremely broad categories you impute to me--innovative or not innovative--describable as "narrow"? You can't just say "the Mississippi is narrow" and voila, it's narrow! Innovative or not innovative are about as broad as it is possible for a category to be I'd say.


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## guy (Jan 4, 2014)

Scriabin was already working his way to 12-tone atonalism, but it was not 12-tone rows by any means. I found a website, which showed how he progressed from a 7-tone scale (major/minor) to 6-tone, to 8-tone, 9-tone, and finally 10-tone. Here it is: http://www.pjb.com.au/mus/scriabin/

I believe that if he would have lived longer (stupid dull razors!), he would've went on to 12-tone chromaticism, and the rest would've followed.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

I'm glad that I bumped into this thread. It's very enlightening and many thanks for the education (and the clarity). My question is how does Benjamin Frankel fits in all of this? I've been listening to his music for years and I do know that he too employ the 12-note technique during his later years, but not abandoning tonality. His music is less lush and rather more abstract than, say, Walton, Vaughn-Williams, George Lloyd.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

hpowders said:


> I'd take William Schuman over Sibelius any day. Sibelius was a trip back to romanticism. Schuman, on the other hand was an innovator and wrote profoundly in the new musical vocabulary-the greatest American symphonist of the 20th century, IMO.


Sibelius is awesome. Have you heard all his Symphonies? One of the great Symphonic cycles.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

neoshredder said:


> Sibelius is awesome. Have you heard all his Symphonies? One of the great Symphonic cycles.


I agree with the awesomeness of both Sibelius and Schuman.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

violadude said:


> I agree with the awesomeness of both Sibelius and Schuman.


I agree with your agreement.


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## Guest (Jan 15, 2014)

Vesuvius said:


> I agree with your agreement.


I agree with your agreeing with the agreement.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

neoshredder said:


> Sibelius is awesome. Have you heard all his Symphonies? One of the great Symphonic cycles.


Yes. I have the Colin Davis set with the BSO before he became "Sir" Colin. I am well familiar with all the Sibelius symphonies. My favorites are the third, the sixth and the seventh.


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