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Atonality and Serialism

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Atonality and Serialism music theory for musicians and normal people by toby w. rush globe theatre london, england as v n , 1875 son” t ca r e n n o l mo e oi and he t claud one m e m a no, really, d a m - asol r a p h a t i w an m wo “ come on in, guys! Atonality and Serialism they love us! # after the steady increase of chromaticism through‹ bthe romantic era, composers in the early twentieth century were ready to take things to their natural conclusion! since tonality is defined as how a piece centers around a particular note, the inclusion of more and more chromatic notes can be thought of as a progression toward atonality: the absence of tonality! enter arnold schoenberg, an austrian composer who came up with a system to create complete atonality... using math! noooo! schoenberg figured that tonal music scho emphasizes pitches unequally, so the enberg way to write a truly atonal piece was to ensure that every pitch is represented equally! w.a. mozart a. schoenberg minuet in c, K. 61g string quartet no. 4 schoenberg would begin each composition by coming up a sequence of twelve notes, where each pitch of the chromatic scale was included only once... we call this a twelve-tone row! C F B B D G G E E A A D when building a row, avoid bitsb of tonality like triadsb orb fragments of familiarb scales!b once you have a good row, you’ve created a pure (albiet short) atonal composition! as a way to come up with more rows that are related to our the matrix is a 12 x 12 grid original row, schoenberg used a twelve-tone matrix. with our original notes placed in the top row. I-1 I-6 I-12 I-11 I-3 I-8 I-7 I-4 I-5 I-10 I-9 I-2 we call we can make this row p-1: P-1 C F B Bb D G Gb Eb E A Ab Db R-1 other rows “p” stands by going for “prime”! P-8 G C Gb F A D Db Bb B E Eb Ab R-8 backward: “R” is for P-2 D G C B E A G E F B A D R-2 “Retrograde”! to fill in the rest of b b b b b the matrix, start by P-3 D G D C E A A F G B B E R-3 taking the original b b b b b after putting in row and writing its row I-1, we P-11 B E A A C F E D D G G B R-11 inversion: a row that b b b b b transpose the starts on the same original row P-6 F B E E G C B A A D D G R-6 pitch, but proceeds b b b b b so that it begins upside-down: if the on each of the P-7 G B F E A D C A B E D G R-7 original goes up a b b b b b notes going down perfect fourth, the the left, creating P-10 A D A G B E E C D G F B R-10 inversion should go b b b b b P-2 through P-12. down a perfect And, of course P-9 fourth! Ab Db G Gb Bb Eb D B C F E A R-9 R-2 through R-12! P-4 E A D D F B A G G C B E R-4 doing so will also take the inversion b b b b b and write it going create rows I-2 P-5 E A E D G B B G A D C F R-5 through and down the left-hand b b b b b I-12. reading from side of the matrix. P-12 B E Bb A Db Gb F D Eb Ab G C R-12 bottom to top RI-1 RI-6 RI-12 RI-11 RI-3 RI-8 RI-7 RI-4 RI-5 RI-10 RI-9 RI-2 gives you RI-1 through RI-12: to use the matrix to create an entire twelve-tone row composition: Retrograde things you can do: things you can’t do: inversion! use any row, any time combine adjacent notes use partial rows restrike notes before into chords change order of notes oh, and moving to the next one pass rows between voices within a row start your piece with so someone overlap rows try to bend things toward P-1, analyzing your piece can tonality figure out your matrix! licensed under a creative commons BY-NC-ND license - visit tobyrush.com for more.
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