Klavierstück No. 1 (Mäßig bewegt), Op. 11

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Musical Terms (2)

• emancipation of dissonance English
  Schoenberg's term for the principle, realised in his music around 1908–09, that dissonant intervals need not resolve to consonances in the traditional way — that dissonance is no longer functionally subordinate to consonance but is emancipated as an expressive end in itself. The Three Piano Pieces Op.11 (1909) are the locus classicus: every chord is theoretically dissonant by traditional standards, yet the music makes complete expressive sense. Schoenberg argued this was not a break from the tradition of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms but its logical continuation.
  When playing Op.11, resist the urge to treat dissonances as problems to be softened or resolved. Each interval carries its full weight and emotional charge. The harshness of a major seventh or minor ninth is expressive content, not a mistake. Listen across the texture for motivic connections rather than harmonic progressions — the coherence is motivic, not tonal.
• tone-row English
  Also called a twelve-tone row, series, or Grundreihe (basic row). The ordered sequence of all twelve chromatic pitches that forms the structural foundation of a twelve-tone composition. No pitch appears twice in the row until all twelve have appeared. The row is not a theme but a precompositional ordering constraint; themes, harmonies, and textures are all derived from the row in its four standard transformations (original, inversion, retrograde, retrograde inversion) at all twelve transpositions — giving 48 possible forms. Schoenberg believed the row gave atonal music the same kind of internal coherence that tonality had previously provided.
  Understanding the row analytically helps enormously when learning twelve-tone piano music, but the performance goal is always musical expression, not serial demonstration. In Op.25, the row is audible as a surface gesture in many places; in Op.42, the serial organisation is more absorbed into a lyrical, almost tonal surface. Let the row inform your understanding of phrase structure and motivic return without making it the basis of your expression.