“That sounds weird!”: A short beginners guide to 12- tone serialism

Most people think that atonal and serialism styles of music sound weird and unpleasant, which is understandable it is very outside the box. I believe most people are turned off by it because they don’t understand why the music sounds the way it does. This style of music should really be appreciated for what it is rather than disliked because it’s not like anything you’ve ever heard before. So, on that note lets try to better understand the method behind the madness of 12 tone technique.

12 tone music is a style of composition using a very specific method. The method uses only 12 tones and they are all to be of equal melodic and harmonic value within a piece, often called a twelve-tone row or series. The 12 tones are a basic set of notes that are merely a guide for the composition, unlike a theme that would have a distinct rhythm and melody. The twelve tones can only be used in specific ways as determined by a matrix, but we will discuss that later. The genius man who invented this mathematical technique to composition was twentieth century Austrian composer Arnold Schonberg. He and others who used his technique are part of what is called “The Second Viennese School” composers. Other pupils of Schonberg include Anton Webern and Alban Berg.

Anton Webern’s op. 25 No. 1 Wie bin ich froh uses the twelve-tone row G E D# F# C# F D B Bb C A G#. These pitches can be numbered 0-12. This row is presented in a few different ways throughout the piece and are the only pitches the composer used. It begins with what is called the prime form of the row or the way it appears in the 12-tone matrix.

The 12-tone matrix gives the composer all of the possible orders of notes that they could utilize in their composition. The main ways the notes are ordered are prime form, retrograde, inversion and retrograde-inversion forms of the prime row. Retrograde means that the notes are backwards the from the order they are in the prime form. The retrograde of the Webern example above is G# A C Bb B D F C# F# D# E G. The inversion of the row is what I like to refer as “upside down” because the intervals are inverted (if a note skips down a third it would be inverted and skip up a third instead). The note heads without stems can appear on the staff almost as though they are upside down. The inversion of the Webern example is G Bb B Ab Db A C Eb E D F Gb. The retrograde- inversion of a row is essentially “upside down and backwards”. The example would look like Gb F D E Eb C A Db Ab B Bb G. Anton Webern uses all three of the rows mentioned in his piece!

Now that you can better understand how 12 tone pieces are created and what they are based on it makes more sense. Things are only weird when you don’t understand them!

More Resources for 12- Tone music

http://pattheory4final.blogspot.com/2009/05/analysis.html (This link contains the 12 tone matrix for the piece pictured above)

https://unitus.org/FULL/12tone.pdf