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:
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“all afternoon
Their witless offspring flock like piped rats to its siren
Crescendo, and agape on the crumbling ridge
Stand in a row and learn.”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)