History and Usage
Tone rows are the basis of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and most types of serial music. Tone rows were widely used in 20th-century contemporary music, though one has been identified in a 1742 composition of Johann Sebastian Bach, and by the late eighteenth century was a well-established technique, found in works such as Mozart's C Major String Quartet, K. 156 (1772), String Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 428, String Quintet in G minor, K. 516 (1790), and the Symphony in G minor, K. 550 (1788). Beethoven also used the technique, for example in the finale of his Ninth Symphony but, on the whole, "Mozart seems to have employed serial technique far more often than Beethoven". It is clear from Schoenberg's own writings that he must have been aware of this practice.
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