Twelve-Tone Technique

Yeah, that's a pretty tough question and depends on what you mean by "traditional" tonality. But since truly "atonal" music doesn't occur naturally anywhere that I know of in the world except among composers deliberately trying to write that way, I'd guess that the human ear must naturally gravitate toward something vaguely resembling what we call tonality.

As to why he "needed" it, I guess you should read a biography. I'm not as personally interested in why he felt the need, though it's worth noting that *lots* of artists circa WWI seemed to have felt the same need to divorce themselves from traditional notions of form and representation. I'm sure much of it had to do w/the increasingly sophisticated industrializion of life, and also the increasing realization that "our way of living", the way that our fathers and grandfathers had known, was not necessarily the only way -- see America and the New World, the telegraph linking information across the globe in seconds, electricity, relativity and nuclear physics. Actually, it seems like the turn of the last century would have been a very exciting time to be alive.

well there you go.

OH SHIT MY CAT JUST WENT INTO OUR RAT TRAP.

THAT WAS FUCKING ATONAL.

Though Schoenberg had managed to write interesting and significant works in the tonal tradition, he realized that further development of tonality was impossible. Wagner had explored tonality nearly to the limit in Tristan and Isolde, and there was little else for Schoenberg to do as a tonalist than to imitate Wagner or else to retreat into an anti-Romantic style such as impressionism.

That's the best explanation, methinks.

THAT WAS FUCKING ATONAL.

"JOHN CAGE CAN GO FUCK HIMSELF, FUCKING FAGGOT"

However, I can also admit that "tonality" as being the rules of harmony put forth by stodgy music conservatory x in Austria is obv limiting, and this is the "tonality" I associate with what Schoenberg worked against. (tho when you consider the rigidity of his formula, it's easy to see why people called him neo-classical)

hm. sort of like beckett retreating to French to escape joyce etc.

I've never not heard Schoenberg referred to as a prime mover for neo-classicism in music, if only for imposing structure on music that for about 80 years prior, had been given to fits of fancy as a matter of principle. And when I say the minimalist composers brought back tonality, I'm not saying they invented new ways of being "tonal" (can you?), but that they used tonal harmony in a way that their tonal predecessors hadn't (arguably, if only because they would have thought it base)

and maybe minimalism wasn't all connected to dada, it looks likes theres some hippies invovleds, just read wikipedia some more

oh god

Nothing necessarily HARMONICALLY new about what they were doing though. They were approaching tonality in old ways but approaching other aspects of the music in new ways. (what hijch said, I guess).

No such thing as close in 12-tone, but I don't actually know that song, so could be.

http://static.flickr.com/49/167458271_81d7e69749.jpg

now I have to go, but I wish I didn't!

Yeah there is a quote along the lines of "one uses the tone row, and otherwise composes as before".

In a post on this thread, it has been written "perhaps much in the same way as Duchamp was, in that one needn't represent, one could merely present." Forgive me the digression, but I feel this is a mischaracterization of the primary thrust of Duchamp's career. In fact, most of Duchamp's major works concern themselves not with pure abstraction, and not with figurative realism, but with the representation of ideas, comparable to the religious art of the Middle Ages. I direct you to Octavio Paz's analysis of Duchamp's Large Glass and Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas, which is probably the only book-length treatment of Duchamp I have read, so I probably don't know what the fuck I am talking about.

Regards,
R_S

conventional wisdom says it comes from non-western musics, i.e. the influence of Pandit Pran Nath' singing or african drumming.

OH GOD

I direct you to Octavio Paz's analysis of Duchamp's Large Glass and Given: 1 The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas, which is probably the only book-length treatment of Duchamp I have read, so I probably don't know what the fuck I am talking about

no, I'm sure you know a lot more about Duchamp than I do. I'm really (and unfairly for Duchamp) just talking about something like the Bicycle Wheel, specifically regarding the way he'd fucked with how people thought art was supposed to be made, what it was supposed to "stand for". IMO, this is also what Schoenberg did with 12-tone

i'm curious how 12-tone technique is taught...is there an atonal pedagogy comparable to classical traditions, or do you just have to be an incredibly self-motivated genius virtuoso to be any good at this?

I don't know if "rebellion against Western tonality" is really the right way to understand what they wanted to do. Maybe more like "progressing to the next step in Western music" or something like that.

-- hijch (bigjump...), October 21st, 2006 7:33 PM. (hijch)

FUCK OFF

Whether he is far too much in the 'new music' camp to give a truly fair account or not is another issue.

There is quite a lot of serial music where I've liked it straight away, I usually find that the best works have these lines that will hook you onto it. After a while I started putting it on casually and it's odd what you can perceive. Then I'll re-listen later.

I think I disagree if I'm understanding you right. Something like In C seems to me to be very different harmonically from common practice music in that there are no chord changes. (And that's not even getting into the use of just intonation by Young and Riley, amongst others.)

Hurting, by "tonality", do you just mean centricity or the idea of having a pitch centre (different from the system of Western harmonic tonality, which "tonality" usually implies to me)? I think the idea of music "occurring naturally" is problematic but I think I understand what you mean.

maybe i'm just untrained, but i don't casually listen to a piece and pick out the tonerows and inversions and get satisfaction from that.

Is anyone able to do this? I didn't think that serialist composers meant for listeners to be able to hear the rows etc. Maybe I'm wrong though.

There's no such meaning of "tonality."

i find serialism so fascinating but i have to admit i dont appreciate it in an intuitive way - maybe i'm just untrained, but i don't casually listen to a piece and pick out the tonerows and inversions and get satisfaction from that. i find i have to look at the score and figure it out more like a math puzzle

I think that's true for nearly everyone.