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The Evolution of Twelve-Note Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

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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
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1954

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References

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

4 Section 132, bars 1–3, 911; 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, 58, 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