Can someone please explain the 12-tone musical innovation of Arnold Shoenberg?

Question

Can you explain this idea in simple terms to a layman who doesn't know about music theory? Why was this so important and influential?

Answer 1

I could explain this to you, but I'd need a rather large white board.

Answer 2

Schoenberg used that scale mainly experimentally

It's atonal, meaning without organization of tones

he practically reversed musical notes and arranged them chaotically

it's only importance was that it led to other experiments that aimed not to repeat what Schoenberg displayed in his first concert

basically Rock music evolved from it, but Rock abandoned Schoenberg's atonal scale

personally speaking I think Shoenberg was insane

his music sounded like someone was dying!

Answer 3

the basic principal of 12-tone music is to let an orderly systematic structure guide the musical ideas of a composition. much in the same way that the chaotic and often contradictory rules of voice-leading and counterpoint guide tonal compositions.

It's very important to remember that 12-tone music is meant to be hyper-expressive. that's part of the reason Schoenberg wanted to use all the tones in the chromatic scale: in order to maximize the expressive possibilities of his music.

Prime form is the row of 12 notes in sequence, P1 would be this sequence transposed up a half-step.

P0 C E G# C# F A D D# F# G A# B

Inversion would be reversing the intervalic direction of the row. so instead of leaping up a third you leap down a third.

I0 C G# E B G E A# A F# F D C#

Retrograde is going backwards through the row. ( labeling get's tricky here as you can label R1 as either the row that begins on 1 in retrograde or the row that is the retrograde of P1. different composers and theorists have labeled both ways)

R0 B A# G F# D# D A F C# G# E C

Retrograde Inversion is both going backwards and upside down through a row.

There was a time for about 30-40 years after Schoenberg when serialism was the only academic music taken seriously. though that era is over. As to why Serialism became so influential and important I can't say for sure. Part of it is coming on the heels of the first world war there was both a need for order and expressiveness in music, and Schoenberg found a way to take both to an extreme. Part of why it caught on is that Schoenberg had many students who went on to teach at conservatories and spread the ideas to other young composers.

Please note that Schoenberg's version of 12-tone music has been modified to various degrees by later composers to their own ends. 12-tone music is a process of composition and not an aesthetic. Charles Wourinen and Pierre Boulez serialized other parts of music such as dynamics and articulation. Dalapicolla and Berg were not nearly as strict about keeping to the row. while Anton Webern was even more methodical than Schoenberg in the construction and organization of his music.

Answer 4

The two answers above me are very clear explanations of what a row is, and the four (basic) transformations of a row...which are transposing, inverting, retrogression, and retrogression of the inverted form.

The reason this was so important (to Schoenberg, at least) is because this method guaranteed him a certain degree of unity.  Prior to the 20th century (roughly), most pieces of music were unified through the underlying tonality.  Once that tonality is removed, composers needed to seek new methods of creating unity.  In general, they were able to do this, but only for relatively short stretches of music -- this is, in large part, why Schoenberg's atonal (not 12-tone) music, from roughly op. 11-20ish is so aphoristic.  

If all your musical material comes out of the same pattern of intervals (a much clearer way of thinking about 12-tone music, despite what Milton Babbitt says...), then you've got a common thread that can run through the whole piece.  If you know anything about Schoenberg's ideas of "developing variation," this fits right in.  (If you don't...just think of Goethe's theory of plants, archetypal plants and what-not)

[Now, whether or not you agree with that is another story...but this is Schoenberg's logic, and I, at least, agree.]  

Having this kind of unity "built in" to his compositional approach was a very liberating thing, and it allowed Schoenberg to experiment with large(r) forms, while still not needing a tonal center.  Schoenberg WAS a chronologically misplaced romantic, after all, so he still was interested in composing in more "traditional" forms, but with a more "advanced" language.

There's much more to be said about the evolution of 12-tone music beyond Schoenberg (and Webern, who is the REAL master of early serialism, IMHO), but that's a book's worth of material...

Hope this helps!  

Answer 5

This music is not random or chaotic.  On the contrary, it is extremely organized.

During his experimental phase, Schoenberg was fascinated with the idea of nonrepetition.  He got to the point where he didn't even want to repeat pitches, but thought of the moment when all 12 pitches were presented in some way without repeating one as an event.

Eventaully, he formulated a 12-tone system of composition.  Each composition would be based on a tone-row.  A tone row is any series of all 12 pitches, as long as all 12 pitches are different.

Example:

C C# G# D G B F E Bb Eb A F#

This order of pitches would be used as a basis for composition.  An entire piece might be based on this order of notes.  (He was allowed to make chords and have some pitches played simultaneously.)

Further, he could alter this row by means of Transposition, Inversion, Retrograde, and any combination of these.  Transposition might be moving all these pitches up 1 semitone to get:

C# D A Eb G# C F# F B E Bb G

Retrograde would be playing the row backwards.

Inversion is trickier, and I won't go into it now, but it is a way to get another row out of the original.

He would refine this compositional process further in years to come.  Things like hexachordal combinatoriality allowed him to have "tonal areas."  He used these rows as an analogy to tonality, and, aside from the basic language, wrote traditional Sonata forms, Dance forms, etc. with analogies to the tonal system (tonic/dominant relationships.).

By using this system, his idea of nonrepetition was "built in" to his compositions.  The moment when all 12 pitches have been sounded without repeating any is called a "chromatic saturation" or "chromatic completion."

To simplify this whole process, he assigned each pitch a number:

C=0, C# = 1, etc.  He could then make a mathematical chart called a "matrix" to plan out the various row-forms he could use with any given row.

I know this is confusing, but so is the music!  

Also, Schoenbergs main influences were Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms.  He viewed himself as just another step, a direct lineage of their tradition.  In many ways, he was very correct.

His book "Style and Idea" is very entertaining and informative.

J. Peter Burkholder's article "Schoenberg the Reactionary" is worth reading.

Hope that makes at least a little sense!

Answer 6

If you find someone here that can answer this I will be amazed.