We had a general view on atonal music in a previous post. This week, let’s get to the heart of the matter by focusing on the twelve-tone technique. Unavoidable revolution of the twentieth century, the technique known as twelve-tone was imaginated by Schoenberg. Yes, him again, and it makes sense as we learnt he tried to get as far away as possible from tonality. And what is the most basic characteristic of a key? The hierarchy of sounds, I mean that certain notes of the scale are more important than others, they have what is called a “function”, and these fonction are polarizing our ears.

Back to the twelve-tone technique. One can easily understand the word dodecaphonic, invented by Rene Leibowitz in France (later, I will speak longer of him as very close to Pierre Boulez). Dodeca, twelve and phonic, sound: Twelve sounds. Why twelve? Twelve is the number of pitches that consitute the chromatic scale. Roughly, the twelve-tone technique is a compositional technique that uses a row of the twelve distinct sounds of the chromatic scale which can’t be repeated until they have all been played. I will not dwell on the technique itself, we will have later the opportunity to speak about prime, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion.

The twelve-tone system gives equal weight to each note of the semitonal scale, avoiding any hierarchy of sounds, then avoiding a priori any form of tonality.

The number twelve is fascinating : besides the fact that its mathematical properties are interesting to group notes equally, and thus enable games of symmetries, imitations, etc. within the same tone row. The division by twelve is one of the most common in our mind: 12 months, 2 × 12 hours, the alexandrine comprising 12 syllables, twelve zodiacal signs, dodecastyle temples … My idea is not to show a mystical of the number twelve, but to show that its properties have certainly had a strong influence on the elaboration of the tempered system, and thus the twelve-tone technique, using this temperament as it is.

The set of all twelve pitch classes form what is called the total chromatic. Surprising because it is only a total according to the conventions of the temperament, so conventions of the tonal system … The ear is capable of perceiving more than twelve pitches in an octave. Huge paradox for composers to use a material inherited by a system that they wished by every means to avoid. This may explain Schoenberg’s development towards a twelve-tone music rehabilitating tonal functions, and the race to complexity initiated by certain composers.