Dodcecaphony-Elizabeth+Laushway

Dodecaphony is a method of composition which was created by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 1900s. Also known as the Twelve Tone Technique, it has no key and no tonic note, or “doh”. Instead, all twelve tones appear in a sequence where they are only linked to each other.
 * Dodecaphony **

History
Arnold Shoenburg founded the method of dodecaphony in the late 1910s. Born in Vienna, Austria, he was influenced by modern-romantic music and composers such as Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. When he premiered his atonal Chamber Symphony No. 1 in 1907, it was not a very popular method, but when it was played again six years later, the responses were drastic: students and followers loved his music and praised him for being a visionary; critics hated his work on a whole. Over the following 20 years his atonal technique was only used by certain composers who were students of Shoenburg. Later, Shoenburg created the Twelve Tone Technique and the concept of the matrix for music.

Four Forms
Dodecaphony works off of one simple principle: all twelve tones of a chromatic scale must be heard before a tone can be repeated. Example 1 shows a line of notes that will be used to create dodecaphonic music. You can see the order of the twelve notes in the song. Those notes can be played in any octave in any rhythmic pattern, but each one must be played before one can be repeated.

This line is called the prime because this is the original order of the notes, the first line that the composer thought up. The way the composer decides on the prime can seem fairly random, but is actually very mathematical. Since there are twelve tones in the prime, the composer can divide the prime into either two groups of six notes (called hexachords) or three groups of four notes (tetrachords). This line was divided into hexachords, and each hexachord has the same interval progression – a minor third from the first to second notes, a major second from the second to third notes and so on. The prime is one of four basic forms that make up dodecaphonic music. The four forms are 1. Prime 2. Retrograde 3. Inversion 4. Retrograde Inversion. Once the prime is established, it can be written in retrograde by reversing the order of the notes. The retrograde of Example 1 would look like this:

To get the inversion, each interval of the prime must be inverted. This means that each interval must go the opposite direction than it did in the prime. Instead of starting with a minor third down, the inversion starts with a minor third up. It looks like this:

Finally, the retrograde inversion is achieved by reversing the order of the inversion:

The Matrix
Schoenberg developed a “map” to allow composers to see all of the possibilities of their prime. It is borrowed from the mathematical idea of the matrix. Example 2 displays how it can be read once notes are put into it. In order to complete the matrix, the prime is inputted along the very top and the inversion down the left-hand side, like this: From there, the composer just has to transpose the prime based on a note of the inversion. The second row down would look like this: By completing the matrix, composers can see exactly what their options are for composition.

While the first pieces of dodecaphonic music were very atonal sounding, some composers have managed to adapt dodecaphony into a more modern, pleasant sound. There is even dodecaphonic jazz and blues! Below are some audio files with the different styles of dodecaphony

Dodecaphonic Symphony media type="file" key="Dodecaphony symphony.mp3" width="240" height="20"

Modern Dodecaphony Piano Composition media type="file" key="Dodecaphony, Atonal Music.mp3" width="240" height="20"

Dodecaphonic Blues media type="file" key="Dodecaphony Blues.mp3" width="240" height="20"