Wind Quintet op. 26 - Twelve-tone slide rule

Arnold Schönberg Estate.

At the beginning of the 1920s Arnold Schönberg revolutionized the existing rules of Western music with his “Method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another.” With the twelve-tone method, a visionary plan for a future musical order, he laid the twentieth century’s decisive foundation for the emancipation of traditional hierarchical principles of organization.

“This method consists primarily of the constant and exclusive use of a set of twelve different tones. This means, of course, that no tone is repeated within the series and that it uses all twelve tones of the chromatic scale, though in a different order [...] .The association of tones into harmonies and their succession is regulated [...] by the order of these tones. The basic set functions in the manner of a motive. This explains why such a basic set has to be invented anew for every piece.” (Schönberg: Composition With Twelve Tones, 1941).

In the Wind Quintet, op. 26, one of the earliest works to use the new compositional method, Schönberg bares all four movements an a common twelve-tone row.

The Arnold Schönberg Estate contains the records of Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), a composer, painter, teacher, theoretician, and innovator who is ranked amongst the prominent artistic figures in the history of western culture. His writings, apart from his compositions, are valuable documents for the musical, intellectual, and cultural history of the first half of the 20th century, as well as for exile studies, and thus for contemporary history. They are evidence of the multifaceted interests of an eminent artistic personality, and also address questions of aesthetics, Jewish affairs, politics, and religion.