Leaderboard

This was really nice, but you broke some rules, not that it maters in terms of the quality of the piece. In the second half of the second measure, you start another statement of the prime row, when the first prime is half finished. The only time you can have multiple rows going at once, is if they're Combinatorial, so as to maintain the maximum equal emphasis on all tones, or "atonality"--the entire point of the 12-tone method. It's seem that you freely overlap rows in the piece, creating a few moments where tones are over-emphasized, like the unison B-natural on beat 3 of measure 13, and the first two measure definitely emphasis a tonic of A (the progression could be functionally notated like Aaug Emaj-b5 Aaug, which is a modified I V I). The row in generally has a very whole tone scale sound, and there are little dominant tonic progressions like the first one all over the place. This would be fine, if you weren't trying to make an atonal piece, which is the usual purpose of the 12-tone system. There are of course exception this, like in Berg, who used the technique to create tonal music--but it is working against the design. This is more a problem with your labels which makes it them little confusing: why did you label the notes in reference to C when the prime form doesn't start on C (or end on C for that matter)? The common terminology is "prime form" for the transposed row, and then the amount of semi-tones it was transposed for transposed forms of the row. For the notation: it's common to put courtesy accidentals on every note to make it easy to read. This can be a problem like in measure 6, where you have an Ab at the beginning of the measure and an unmarked A, an octave higher, on beat 3: the player might not be sure whether it's supposed to be A or Ab. It's hard enough playing 12-tone music, when add stuff like this, people get frustrated. Also, for the choice of whether to do sharp or flat, there are several options, one of which you choose--which is to choose one, and only use one type of accidental to make it easier to read, which is fine. This may sound counter-intuitive and contradictory, but I like to spell all the notes as if the piece were tonal. This is because players are used to reading tonal patterns, and the notes are usually related to each other in a voice-leading sense which comes from tonality, so it makes it easier for the person looking at the music to understand the flow of the line and the direction of the voice-leading. But that's just my choice, what you did is fine as well, except for courtesy accidentals. Now, I really like this piece. The whole-tone scale stuff makes it have a sort of, strange, floating sound. And motivic unity makes it all sound very ordered, and it was an exciting moment at 29 when the quarter notes and the double eight figuration happened at the same time. I really hope you continue utilize 12-tone technique, because I think it can create some wonderful music, and is a wonderful tool to achieve certain things. And unfortunately, as evidenced by some of the comments in this thread, it's not at all popular these days, and almost no one is writing in a serial or post-serial style, which I find unfortunate.

And may I add Bach's Two part inventions. They did and do the trick for me.