Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-5wl6q Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T22:13:32.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Evolution of Twelve-Note Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Oliver Neighbour
Get access

Extract

There has been a tendency to treat twelve-note music as an isolated phenomenon. This is appropriate in a close study of its structural features and musical purpose, but we shall be in a better position to ask the right questions about its origin and influence if we take into account other music which shows parallel developments. Such a preliminary enquiry may affect our view of its nature and historical significance, and my subject is this first step: less the evolution of twelve-note music than its place in the general evolution of music at about the time of its emergence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 81 , 1954 , pp. 49 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1954

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 p. 469.Google Scholar

2 This is made explicit only in. the third edition of 1922, p. 504–5.Google Scholar

4 Section 132, bars 1–3, 9–11; section 133, bars 2–3; section 136, bars 9–10.Google Scholar

5 Section 82. Other examples are Section 104, bars 6–9 and Section 112 bars 1–3, in the original version.Google Scholar

6 Section 20, bars 1–4, 5–8, 9.Google Scholar

7 cf. especially Section 3, bar 6, to end of Section 4.Google Scholar

8 Bars 12–14 provide a good example. Four related forms of the fundamental chord are used, based on C, A, F♯ and D♯. Bar 12 is on A, except for the duration of the last two of the triplet semiquavers, where it is on C, the F♯ chord in the right hand acting as a pivot. The first half of bar 13 is on A, the second half on F♯, the left hand punning with the previous bar. The first half of bar 14 is on A, the second half on D♯, except the last two semiquavers which return to the C form. This passage is, I think, misunderstood by Zofia Lissa in her admirable article ‘O Harmonice Aleksandra Skrjabina’ in Kwartalnik muryczny (Warsaw), zeszyt 8 1930, p. 340.Google Scholar

9 e.g. Etude no. 9, bars 1 and 11.Google Scholar