Tone Row
The basis of twelve-tone technique is the tone row, an ordered arrangement of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale (the twelve equal tempered pitch classes). There are four postulates or preconditions to the technique which apply to the set on which a work or section is based:
- The set is a specific ordering of all twelve notes of the semitonal scale.
- No note is repeated within the set
- The set may be stated in any of its "linear aspects": prime, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion.
- The set in any of its four transformations may be started upon any degree of the semitonal scale.
When twelve-tone technique is strictly applied, a piece consists of statements of certain permitted transformations of the prime series. These statements may appear consecutively, simultaneously, or may overlap, giving rise to harmony.
In Hauer's system postulate 3 does not apply.
Read more about this topic: Twelve-tone Technique
Famous quotes containing the words tone and/or row:
“It hurts me to hear the tone in which the poor are condemned as “shiftless,” or “having a pauper spirit,” just as it would if a crowd mocked at a child for its weakness, or laughed at a lame man because he could not run, or a blind man because he stumbled.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)
“You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)