twelve-tone technique

Zwölftontechnik — the compositional method developed by Arnold Schoenberg from 1921 in which all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are arranged into a fixed series (row) and the composition is derived from that row and its systematic transformations (inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversion) at all twelve transpositions. Berg was the last of the three Second Viennese School composers to adopt the technique. His first twelve-tone work was the second setting of 'Schliesse mir die Augen beide' (1925). Unlike Webern's strict application, Berg used the row flexibly — often hiding tonal references and familiar intervals within the row itself, as famously in the Violin Concerto.

Berg's twelve-tone music does not feel like a mathematical exercise because he deliberately chose or constructed rows with tonal implications. In the second 'Schliesse mir die Augen beide', the row itself contains triadic fragments. When learning Berg's twelve-tone works, trace the row through the texture to understand the architecture, but then perform from the musical surface — the expressivity, the phrasing, the voice-leading.