In music, a tone row or note row (German: Tonreihe) refers to a non-repetitive ordering of the twelve notes (pitch-classes in musical set theory) of the chromatic scale. Tone rows are the basis of Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and serial music. Tone rows were widely used in 20th century contemporary music. Music is a form of expression in the medium of time using the structures of tones and silence. ... Human pitch-perception is periodic: pitches separated by an integral number of octaves are perceived as having a similar quality or color. ... Musical set theory is an atonal or post-tonal method of musical analysis and composition which is based on explaining and proving musical phenomena, taken as sets and subsets, using mathematical rules and notation and using that information to gain insight to compositions or their creation. ... The chromatic scale is the scale that contains all twelve pitches of the Western tempered scale. ... Arnold Schoenberg, Los Angeles, 1938 Schoenberg redirects here. ... Twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg. ... Serialism is a rigorous system of composing music in which various elements of the piece are ordered according to a pre-determined ordered set or sets, and variations on them. ...

A twelve-tone or serial composition will take one or more tone rows, called the prime form, as its basis plus their transformations (inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversion; see twelve-tone technique for details). In music, a transformation consists of any operation or process that a composer or performer may apply to a musical variable (usually a set or tone row in twelve tone music). ... In music theory, the word inversion has several meanings. ... Categories: Wikipedia cleanup | Stub ... Biography Retrograde Inversion are young underground prog rock/funk band which formed in 2003 as part of the Live and Direct Youth Scheme. ... Twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg. ...

Initially, Schoenberg required composers to avoid suggestions of tonality - such as the use of consecutive imperfect consonances (thirds or sixths) - when constructing tone rows, reserving such use for the time when the dissonance is competely emancipated. Alban Berg, however, sometimes incorporated tonal elements into his twelve-tone works, and the main tone row of his Violin Concerto hints at this tonality: Tonality is a system of writing music according to certain hierarchical pitch relationships around a center or tonic. ... The emancipation of the dissonance was a concept or goal put forth by Arnold Schoenberg and others, including his pupil Anton Webern, composer of atonal music and the inventor of the twelve tone technique. ... Alban Maria Johannes Berg (February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austrian composer. ... Alban Bergs Violin Concerto was written in 1935 (the score is dated August 11, 1935). ...

The principal tone row from Alban Bergs Violin Concerto This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ...

This tone row consists of alternating minor and major triads starting on the open strings of the violin, followed by a portion of an ascending whole tone scale. This whole tone scale reappears in the second movement when the chorale "It is enough" (Es ist genug) from Bach's cantata no. 60, which opens with consecutive whole tones, is quoted literally in the woodwinds (mostly clarinet). Fingering for a C-major trichord on a guitar in standard tuning (assuming all six strings are played). ... In music, a whole tone scale (set form 6-35, 02468t) is a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole step. ... A chorale was originally a hymn of the Lutheran church sung by the entire congregation. ... Bach redirects here. ...

Some tone rows have a high degree of internal organisation. Here is the tone row from Anton Webern's Concerto: Anton Webern (December 3, 1883 – September 15, 1945) was an Austrian composer. ...

Image File history File links Webern_concerto_tone_row. ...

If the first three notes are regarded as the "original" cell, then the next three are its retrograde inversion (backwards and upside down), the next three are retrograde (backwards), and the last three are its inversion (upside down). A row created in this manner, through variants of a trichord or tetrachord called the generator, is called a derived row. The tone rows of many of Webern's other late works are similarly intricate. Fingering for a C-major trichord on a guitar in standard tuning (assuming all six strings are played). ... The tetrachord is a concept of music theory borrowed from ancient Greece. ... In abstract algebra, a generating set of a group is a subset S such that every element of G can be expressed as the product of finitely many elements of S and their inverses. ... In music using the twelve tone technique a derived row is a tone row whose entirety of twelve tones is constructed from a segment or portion of the whole, the generator. ...

A literary parallel of the tone row is found in Georges Perec's poems which use each of a particular set of letters only once. Image of artist Georges Perec (March 7, 1936 - March 3, 1982) was a 20th century French novelist, filmmaker and essayist, a member of the Oulipo group and considered by many to be one of the most important post-WWII authors. ...

Tone row may also be used to describe other musical collections or scales such as in Arab music. Arab music is the music of Arabic-speaking people or countries, especially those centered around the Arabian Peninsula. ...

See also: musical set theory, operation, unified field Musical set theory is an atonal or post-tonal method of musical analysis and composition which is based on explaining and proving musical phenomena, taken as sets and subsets, using mathematical rules and notation and using that information to gain insight to compositions or their creation. ... The word operation can mean any of several things: The method, act, process, or effect of using a device or system. ... In music unified field is often used to refer to the unity of musical space created by the free use of melodic as harmonic and harmonic as melodic material. ...

External links

• How Rare Is Symmetry in Musical 12-Tone Rows by David J. Hunter and Paul T. von Hippel