"Echo Chamber" - Michael J. Calamas (12 Tone Serialism)

gigilzeg

Dec 8, 20206 min read

Updated: Jan 1, 2021

What is 12 Tone Serialism:

In music there is a distinction that must be made between pitch, a note with a certain frequency, and pitch class, a group of pitches with the same or enharmonic name. The former is specific such as a cello's lowest note is a C where as the latter is abstract such as the tonic of Beethoven's Fifth is C. [Straus p.4]

We think of music, even if subconsciously, either in terms of unordered sets of pitch classes or ordered sets of pitch classes. One such way of ordering sets of pitch classes is a series, often also called a row. A series is described best as a line of pitch classes, and the order in which the pitch classes occur dictates its identity. It can be any length but the most common as seen in "Echo Chamber" is a 12 tone row which contains each of the 12 pitch classes (which makes up the chromatic scale). [Straus p.294]

Each series can be inverted or transposed which will only change the order not the content as the notes will be the same. Due to the operations composers utilize we name the original series prime and all others are calculated from their relation to it.

- Transposition: "Moving a pitch or pitch class up or down in pitch by a constant interval" [Wikipedia]

- Retrograde: "Simply reverses the prime ordering." [Straus p.297]

- Inversion: Involves inverting each pitch class in the series. It can help to visualize the pitches on the following tone clock.

An example of inversion is that 1 (C#) inverts to 11 (B).

- Retrograde Inversion: It is the retrograde of the inversion.

We shorthand these operations as "P" Prime, "R" Retrograde, "I" Inversion and "RI" Retrograde inversion. We do not use "T" as transposition does not reference a specific series but rather we add a subscript number to notate the difference in semitones between series starting points.

With a 12 tone row (series) it would be beneficial to have a list of all possible 48 forms of the series, especially as a composer or music theorist. To do so we create a 12 X 12 Matrix such as composer Michael J. Calamas did and shared with us in his piece introduction.

His prime row: [D, Bb, A, Eb, E, Ab, G, F, Db, C, B, Gb] or [2, 10, 9, 4, 8, 7, 5, 1, 0, 11, 6]

is seen as P0 on the matrix enlarged below for study if one reads left to right.

Michael J. Calamas said it best that there are multiple ways to utilize these rows, strictly or with a more loose approach and he showcases both options as seen in the score below. Try to pin point what measures row P0 occurs in the Clarinet voice.

The History Behind It:

Typically 12 Tone Serialism's invention is accreted to Arnold Schoenberg in 1921, although Josef Matthias Hauer (Austrian Composer and Theorist) first published "law of the twelve tones" approximately two years before Schoenberg. Furthermore, musicologists and theorists alike argue that both aforementioned composers simply systematized a technique that was utilized by other greats such as Alexander Scriabin, Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók. Disregarding that history and focusing on Schoenberg we can see how impactful this invention was as it was used for the next 20 years almost exclusively by composers of the Second Viennese School; Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. [Wikipedia]

- Second Viennese School: This was a group of composers and close associates who lived in Vienna around 1903-1925, or early 20th century, whose music was initially categorized as late romantic expanded tonality but morphed into total chromatic expressionism or atonality and finally 12 tone serialism. This was not a clean cut path as all three principle members went about these theoretical changes differently, often bouncing back and forth, but in the end we are able to see distinct shifts in their works.

Who Was Arnold Schoenberg?:

Arnold Schoenberg lived from September 1874 to July 1951 and was an Austrian-born music theorist, composer, teacher, writer and painter. He was primarily self taught having only taken counterpoint lessons from Alexander Zemlinsky. He would catch the eyes of both Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler although neither would truly grasp Schoenberg's full vision.

Associated with the expressionist movement especially in German poetry and art as well being the leader of the Second Viennese School Schoenberg's music has always been a divisive topic albeit for different reasons. As a Jewish composer he was targeted by the Nazi Party who forbade his works from being published calling them degenerate music. Schoenberg served, starting in 1926, as Director of a Master Class in Composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, but in 1933 with the Nazis rise to power he was warned while on vacation in France that to return home would be disastrous, so he and his family escaped to the United States, although this was not his first choice of relocation.

Life in the United States had its ups and downs as he Americanized his last name and still faced discrimination for being Jewish in the work place, but he was able to live comfortably and teach as well as compose many notable works such as "Violin Concerto Op.36", "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" and "A Survivor from Warsaw Op.46."

He bounced between tonality and atonality, although he loathed the latter term even into the later years of his life. Musicologists will divide his works into 3 periods traditionally: Late Romanticism, Free atonality and Twelve-tone and tonal works. Interestingly enough Schoenberg never deprecated any of his earlier works or compositional choices and is quoted saying;

"For the present, it matters more to me if people understand my older works ... They are the natural forerunners of my later works, and only those who understand and comprehend these will be able to gain an understanding of the later works that goes beyond a fashionable bare minimum. I do not attach so much importance to being a musical bogey-man as to being a natural continuer of properly-understood good old tradition!"

Schoenberg's death is somewhat of an oddity and many wonder if his superstitious nature triggered it. He was diagnosed with severe triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13) and was fearful that he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13. This phobia could be traced back to 1908 when he composed the 13th song of the cycle "Das Buch der hängenden Gärten Op.15" but is most clearly seen starting on his 65th birthday in 1939. Dane Rudhyar, composer and astrologer, was tasked to prepare Schoenberg's horoscope and deemed the year dangerous but not fatal. Sadly the composer received a note in 1950 on his 76th birthday that the year would be a critical one as 7 + 6 = 13. Schoenberg fell into a depression as he never considered adding digits up for his age, only multiples for the date. He died on Friday 13th of July 1951. [Wikipedia]

Moses und Aron

One additional notable work which showcases how far one can go with stretching out a single row and playing with how rows interact is Schoenberg's 3 act opera "Moses und Aron" which is an extremely strict 12 tone piece so much so that he eliminates one "a" from Aaron's name to make the title exactly 12 letters, although perhaps this was also due to the triskaidekaphobia.

The third act is unfinished but was completed by Hungarian composer Zoltan Kocsis with the permission of Schoenberg's heirs, however as of 2014 it is almost always performed as the composer had originally written it. Not only was the subject matter so deeply important to the composer, it was also and still is considered a divisive work due to the graphic nature of the piece. Written after his prose drama "Der biblische Weg" in 1926/27 both it and the earlier work were a response to the growing anti-Jewish movements after 1848 and a personal expression of his own "Jewish identity" crisis. [Wikipedia] It was originally conceived as an oratorio but later began an opera with the first two act composed between 1930 and 1932 but sketches are traced back to 1926. It was not premiered at all until just 11 days after Schoenberg's death, with the first full performance at the Royal Opera House in London in June 1965.

We see that Moses und Aron is based on a single tone row, consisting of smaller cells and combines with versions of itself so that each first half still provides six different pitches.