12 note system

Just wondering if anyone has ever experimented with Schoenberg's 12 note system. I personally don't care much for his works but I still haven't heard enough to really judge. I've drummed together a few pieces, mostly with two voices and 20 measures or less, nothing on a large enough scale to really post it here. I was also wondering if anyone could point me to any works they've done using it or any performances they like.

If you're unfamiliar with the 12 note system, this link should give you a quick run down.

I've learnt and analyzed enough to know I'm not a fan. The concept is interesting, and a lot can be done with it; but it feels quite mechanical and sterile to me.

...though, in capable hands it can also be quite organic and interesting.

You can do near-tonal things with a 12-note row as Berg showed us when he was of a mind. He'd derive subsidiary rows in ways different from (straight out) inversion and crab or retrograde (as demonstrated by Messrs Schoenberg and Webern). An analysis of his motifs in Lulu is quite revealing. Only problem is that the score costs a large fortune!

What's curious about both Schoenberg and Webern is that their early works are remarkably beautiful, written with the last vestiges of tonality before they broke away. Well, Berg's early songs are very lovely too.

In Jazz (if you can call big band 'notated/scored' jazz) the one composer who used 12-note techniques and serial motifs was the gifted Robert Graettinger who sadly died young from cancer.

I recommend before diving into the 12-tone system fully, to look at works by Schoenberg such as Six little piano pieces, Five pieces for Orchestra, or the legend Pierrot Lunaire. These were all composed before the 12-tone system ever existed, and furthermore helps one understand Schoenberg from a more expressionist perception, rather than this cold, dark/mathematical composer. Then, look at Schoenberg's work for Wind Quintet, one of the very first pieces that exhibit Schoenberg's 12-tone system... ^_^

I am not a fan of 12 tone. I don't like the sound. I am not mathmatically skilled though. I much prefer tonal avant-Garde composing. I like stuff by Steven Tanoto a lot though. Especially the Bassoon Concerto.

Its an odd system, but I would like to hear some peices that use it.

I do like chromatics when they are sort of an ortament of a tonal key instead of a key themself. Forgive my lack of jargon.

I'm not sure that strict 12-tone is quite as valid a compositional system these days, however, it is VERY interesting to explore works by non-serialist composers who adapted it to their own particular harmonic approaches.

A few examples:

Samuel Barber - Piano Sonata

Leonard Bernstein - Symphony no.3

Aaron Copland - Quartet for piano and strings (previously a "symphony")

I know that many composers have used the idea of 12-tone in their works without strictly composing serial music. For example, elaborating a tone row as melodic material, but harmonizing it quite differently.

An offshoot of serial technique is something called cellular music. It starts from fragments that are used in much the same way as a tone-row. My personal feeling is that cellular music has a bit more flexibility.

I agree. I think that a composer who wants to embrace music should learn the serial method and gain some level of proficiency in it, if only to be able to utilize the concept in their own voice. Pitch sets and rows are wonderful ways to organize melodies and areas of tonality, especially if you don't write using common-practice harmony.

The final note of their row is wrong, it is writen as an F an aught to be an E natura, oddly enough the recording is correct, but they just keep writing F all the way through the first 11 examples.

Serialism is a tad difficult to use (at least from my POV).

However the ideas I have used many times in different results.

what I always enjoy doing is the opposite thing mainly.

(Let's see who will udnerstand it... :shifty:)

I'm aiming to excaust all possible combinations on certain elements and thus create the lack of any repeatition to pieces. One example is "Int. Music I", the quartet, where all the 4 note chords appear once (but of course due to inversions, it happens that some chords do coexist). The other idea involves series that have nothing in common. Not the series of notes, not the intervals, not the movement, etc. So for example if in 1 series you get C and after F, you cannot repeat that. Nor you can have a upward fourth for the rest of the series. Needless to say that computers have helepd me and that this idea comes to a dead end if you're aiming at series (since the last last series will only 1 one sinlge choice to move from C, to the remaining note, and chances are that the following note, will have already appeared in the series).

ah well...

Nice to remmeber those things...

base 12 math will help you in the future.