Atonality and twelve-tone music

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Genre

Atonality and twelve-tone music · In Vienna around 1908 Arnold Schoenberg let go of key altogether: there is no longer a tonic that the music returns to. In Pierrot lunaire (1912) a woman's voice speaks and sings at once poems about a moonstruck clown. Around 1921 Schoenberg devised the twelve-tone method, in which all twelve notes are used in a fixed series before any one returns. His pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern continued to work with it, Berg even in a moving violin concerto in 1935.

Listening

• 
  Pierrot lunaire: Mondestrunken (Christine Schäfer, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez) · Arnold Schönberg, 1912
• 
  Fünf Orchesterstücke op. 16: Farben (BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez) · Arnold Schönberg, 1909
• 
  Vioolconcert 'Dem Andenken eines Engels': Andante, Allegretto (Anne-Sophie Mutter) · Alban Berg, 1935

See also

• Arnold Schönberg
• Late Romanticism
• Electronic studio and musique concrète
• Serialism