Shoenberg Tone

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Schoenberg searched for "unity and regularity" in music, which was to be achieved without the procedures of tonality, for Schoenberg felt tonality had run its course. For fifteen years, he followed a path that led to his "discovery" of the "method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another." Schoenberg experimented with the serialization of smaller groups of notes before applying the idea to all twelve. Schoenberg's first compositions in the new, twelve-tone idiom were published in the Suite for Piano. Opus. 25 between 1921 and 1923, in which each of the six pieces is dodecaphonic. (12 note system). From the sound perspective, it abandoned the traditional tonality and harmony and other long- established musical language, so that the sound and tone of music created great disparity, resulting in a special sound color, diverting textures, complex rhythmic counterpoint and delicate timbre changes. This work proclaimed to the world that Schoenberg has created a new system and technology for the composer and put up a new milestone in the history of music. As the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould evaluated “ in the first quarter of this century, I dare say, not a piano solo works can be comparable with it.”
Firstly, we need to have some knowledge of 12 tones. In an octave, the inter-relationship of the twelve chromatic tones is equally important. The traditional major and minor scales are completely abandoned by Schoenberg. Secondly, these twelve notes can be arranged in any order of a sequence, but cannot duplicate the phenomenon. It is however, a thoroughly complex and strict principle. At the same time, the principle of sound is also in accordance with the above arrangement, therefore, the traditional “ triad” ...

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... is paralleled by a barely detectable triple movement in the “Menuett”. Contrarily, while an antecedent- consequent phraseology is clearly audible at the opening of the “ Musette”, the tonal implications of the title, discussed earlier, are addressed and modified.
After all, we might say that the 12-tone system is anti-musical because it supplants centuries-long development of harmony and voice-leading with a new harmonic "language". Due to its special artistic features, exemplifying the “ fusion of old and new”, Schoenberg fuses the traditional and modern elements into one, enabling the twelve- tone works to have vitality and expressiveness.

Arnold Schoenberg said "People accuse me of being a mathematician, but I am not a mathematician, I am a geometer”.
He decided to use his knowledge of the rules to break them,
And break them he did.

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