Talk:Twelve-tone technique

message: Retrograde is a redirect page to an article about astronomy.  Invariance is a page that lists various mathematical and physical concepts.  Where those links should go instead, if anywhere, is something that those who care about this page should think about. Michael Hardy 17:55, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: The retrograde page did, however, include a link to Musical terminology, which previously discussed retrograde. I just changed that link to Counterpoint, which discusses "Contrapuntal derivations" including retrograde. Invariance (which redirects to Invariant), also discusses invariance as it relates to twelve tone music. Hyacinth 18:22, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Links

message: We should create a page called "dodecaphonism" that redirects to this article.  --Pat 02:30, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Only if we think readers are really going to look for this subject under that term. Hyacinth 01:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguity 

message: The combinatoriality section should also include first, second, third, and sixth order all-combinatorial hexachords.  In addition to the definition of these orders, there applications to various theorems could be included.  (For example, the pattern of M5-symmetrical and TnM5, TnM7 mappings in first order all-combinatorial hexachords.)  In order to arrive at a complete explanation of basic combinatoriality, aspects such as complementation, Tn, TnI operations, and most of Rahn's common-tone theorem should be used as a primer.  Inclusion of the combinatorial matrix would also be a good introduction to the topic.
I would also include a section on the use of the set-complex to construct a 12-tone row.  For this to be effectively achieved, perhaps a seperate article that covers the second part of Forte's "The Structure of Atonal Music" is needed.
For a strong introduction to combinatoriality, the section would basically summarize chapter 5.6 of Rahn's "Basic Atonal Theory," as well as some of Perle's text and Babbitt's articles in "Perspectives of New Music." 65.9.15.143 04:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See Combinatoriality. Hyacinth 01:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additions to the outline 

message: I removed the following:
*"In modern music, noted electronic innovator, Tobi Love, used the technique applied to dance music and classical, allowing songs of either genre to switch back in genre comfortably."
I couldn't find mention of Love on AllMusicGuide. Hyacinth 10:38, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed

message: The twelve-tone technique is a confusing topic, but that doesn't mean the article needs to be confusing. I think that there's some language in the article that would make it impossible to decipher for someone who isn't educated in the subject, so I added the template at the top of this talk page.
Smedley Hirkum 18:54, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which language is confusing? Hyacinth 01:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A confusing topic 

message: Does R, I, RI = Retrograde, Inversion, Retro-Inversion? --CyclePat 03:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, though I think this section of the article should be removed. There is at least one external link to a row-form generator (if that's what the user needs), but even without that the kind of calculation these things do is more or less trivial even by hand (with a little practice a person can easily hand-calculate an entire twelve-tone matrix in about five minutes). This isn't even a computer related topic, and scheme isn't really one of the more widely used programming languages. Who is going to find this useful? - Rainwarrior 06:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Usefullness is in the eye of the beholder. I personally find that the computer matrix generator that I used online was an excellent education tool to learn about 12-tone music. Furthermore, generally historians are pre-occupied with every detail. At wikipedia however, many wikipedian fail to realize the historical significance. Take for example Electric bicycle laws. In october the laws changed and someone decided... "hey! that information is no longer... usefull... or accurate." In fact, the information that this editor removed (and I placed back with a little reformating for historical purposes) was accurate (for that time). Information that is well sourced, and that meets our requirements of wiki rules, should rarely be removed. "usefulness" is a not a wikirule for exclusion. I do not believe we should exclude information because based on our short citedness of "usefullness". (Our "future" generations depend on it...) Back to the law example, we sourced the information but it changed. Though the source might no longer be valide it was at the time and History has a record of this somewhere. I object to the removal. I recomend a re-write. Finally, many tragedies in histories are often linked to the removal or anialition or control of certain information. Take for example the CF-105 Arrow. Unfortunatelly it is difficult to find scematics of this airplane because the program was entirelly scraped (with a conspiracy twist). Let us not kill "the matrix" computer generator. --CyclePat 19:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So, already having two external links to ready-to-go matrix generators, you think we should keep the computer code written in an obscure language that does this as well? Do you think we should have code in other languages too? - Rainwarrior 22:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes to the first question! And yes to the second! If we have code in other languages (such as Java, or C++ or musical "notes", or numbers, or scribbles etc...) and it is part of the core subject, obviously, it should be in the article. The programming language Java etc... or whatever programming language is used I believe would be external to the subject, however, 12-tone should point to it. If we are placing code in other languages (music is another language!) then we should try to reference it to a main article. For matrix software I would suggest that if we actually manage to get to the point of discussing the program language, it should be split from this article and place within its own. (Perhaps the article being Matrix Software Generator (Music).) For the code, in reference to the matrix, it should be directly referenced because it is inherently part of the representation of (just like a musical note (which is according to Wikipedia a symbol drawing)) the musical form 12-tone. --CyclePat 00:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I still think it's trivial information, but if it stays I do like the idea of putting these things into a different article. Here's a java matrix generator that's basically about the same functionality as the scheme program. It took about fifteen minutes to write. - Rainwarrior 04:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Okay! I've though about it... that code is related to the subject but it's so far out that it doesn't need to be in our article. (We have enough as it is with people probably trying to understand the concept of the matrix that we don't need to bombard them with how to make a program for it. I would place it in it's own article... as perhaps the afformentioned suggestion. Code should leave the article and be placed in a seperate article. --CyclePat 05:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I definitely agree with that. For now, how about we just keep it safe here on the talk page? The following material was added by  in this edit. - Rainwarrior 06:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

text: What does this have to do with the article? Hyacinth (talk) 01:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't think it had much at all to do with the article. That's why I moved it here for discussion. - Rainwarrior (talk) 05:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computer program generating R, I, RI 

message: You can get R, I, RI easily using computer programming.
A Scheme program:
  (define (retro l) (reverse l))
  (define (inverse l) (map (lambda (x) (remainder (- 12 x) 12)) l))
  (define prime-row1 '(8 7 5 10 4 11 3 2 1 0 6 9))
  (display prime-row1) (newline)
  (display (retro prime-row1)) (newline)
  (display (inverse prime-row1)) (newline)
  (display (retro (inverse prime-row1))) (newline)
Output:
  (8 7 5 10 4 11 3 2 1 0 6 9)
  (9 6 0 1 2 3 11 4 10 5 7 8)
  (4 5 7 2 8 1 9 10 11 0 6 3)
  (3 6 0 11 10 9 1 8 2 7 5 4)
:What does this have to do with the article? Hyacinth (talk) 01:06, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't think it had much at all to do with the article. That's why I moved it here for discussion. - Rainwarrior (talk) 05:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Computer program generating R, I, RI

message: How is the tone of this article not formal? Hyacinth 19:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not not formal. The tag was added by Joeyramoney in this edit, with no accompanying explanation. I've removed it. - Nunh-huh 20:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tone

message: What citation style is used in this article? Hyacinth (talk) 00:27, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The citation style used here is called "author-date style" in the Chicago Manual of Style, and elsewhere is called Harvard Style. In this particular case, the citations are displayed in footnotes. Both Chicago Style and the footnote variant are accepted styles according to Wikipedia:Manual of style. Many other styles are also acceptable. If you are referring more specifically to the question of whether footnote numbers in the text are to be placed before or after closing punctuation, the Wikipedia position is here : Wikipedia:Manual_of_style#Punctuation_and_inline_citations.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:39, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation style

message: I propose a new category: "Dead-ends in Composition". This article would be the main article of the category. InFairness (talk) 08:28, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:NPOV. Hyacinth (talk) 09:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Category? 

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thread_title: File:Schoenberg - Op. 23, mov. 5.png Nominated for Deletion

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thread_title: File:Schoenberg - Op. 23, mov. 5.mid Nominated for Deletion

message: *In 1971 jazz pianist Bill Evans – who played on the landmark modal jazz album Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis – recorded a Grammy Award-winning album called The Bill Evans Album, which included a composition called "T.T.T. (Twelve Tone Tune)" where his trio explored the jazz implications of using the twelve-tone compositional technique.
*More recently progressive metal guitarist Ron Jarzombek (Watchtower, Spastic Ink, Blotted Science) used the technique almost exclusively on the track "Oscillation Cycles" off of Blotted Science's album "The Machinations of Dementia". Ron also released a DVD titled "12 Tone Variations" in which similar techniques are explained.
The above was removed as uncited. Hyacinth (talk) 07:08, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed: Uncited

message: Currently the article states that there are 9,985,920 unique tone rows. This is dubious: 9,985,920 does not divide 12!. I think the correct statement should be:
::although 469,022,400 of these are merely transformations of other rows. There are 9,979,200 truly unique twelve-tone rows.
The numbers come from the fact that each equivalence class has 48 elements (12 transpositions, times 2 for inversion, times 2 for retrograde). Choosing one representative from each equivalence class gives 12!/48=9,979,200 representatives. Subtracting this from the total number of tone rows leaves 469,022,400 remaining which are "merely transformations".
--Leo C Stein (talk) 16:11, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You are probably right. However, what is needed is a reliable source that gives this figure.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:09, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Not knowing the music theory literature, I will update the figure and change the tag to Citation needed. --Leo C Stein (talk) 21:47, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have made a cursory search of some of the more likely candidates in the music theory literature, with no result. However, I'm afraid I have never been very interested in the mathematical properties of twelve-tone rows (like Schoenberg, I am more interested in twelve-tone music than twelve-tone music), so other hands may be able more quickly to find the relevant literature. Part of the problem here, of course, is what the criteria are to define "unique forms" of a 12-tone row. The canonic operations of course include transposition, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion, but do they also include, for example, rotation? What about cycle-of-fourths (M5) and cycle-of-fifths (M7) transformations? If these are included, then various combinatorial properties of certain rows would ensure that the total number could not be an integer division of 12!.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:15, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This is getting slightly off-topic, but I don't believe you can rig up some well-defined equivalence relationship where you'll end up with a number of equivalence classes which does not divide 12!. Including time-rotations is division by another 12, giving 831,600 which is still an integer. Cycle-of-fifths and cycle-of-fourths are inverses so we only need to consider one of them; I believe that is also another factor of 12, giving 69,300 which is again an integer. You can't use any intervals besides fifths and fourths for that type of transformation since otherwise you'll violate the condition of being a tone row. --Leo C Stein (talk) 00:14, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I mis-spoke. What I meant to say was: a number that divides 12! evenly. As I said, I'm not much interested in the maths of twelve-tone technique (though the maths can be very useful to analysis), but if just one particular confluence of transposition, rotation and M5 transform happens to coincide with (for example) one TnRI form, I'm not at all sure that there will be a symmetrical set of similar forms that will add up to such an even division of 12!. If you knock out just one row form as a duplicate, then you have got an extra 11 forms floating around in there.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:53, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

text: Hardly surprising, since there are multiple ways of defining what constitutes a "unique form" of a twelve-tone row.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:59, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

text: Thanks, Hyacinth. One assumes that Hunter specifies the canonic operations within which a "distinct row" is regarded to exist.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:15, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of unique tone rows 

message: I am surprised there is no reference to Joseph Mathias Hauer or Othmar Steinbauer in this article, or that wikipedia does not have wiki articles on them yet. One of the books cited in this article is all about Hauer and Steinbauer and their contribution to 12-tone and serialism.4meter4 (talk) 16:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Assuming that you meant Josef Matthias Hauer, there has been a wiki article on him now for a very long time. He should undoubtedly be mentioned in the present article (in fact, he is: see the third paragraph of the lede). Although of course his "twelve-tone method" does not correspond to Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, it is sometimes confused with it (for example in connection with Roger Sessions's music), and historically there has been some dissension over whether Schoenberg or Hauer had the best claim on the "invention" of "twelve-tone music".—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:05, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. :-) I'm not sure how I missed that. Steinbauer and his school in Vienna would be a nice addition as well.4meter4 (talk) 23:53, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not at all familiar with Steinbauer. From what I read on his article in the German Wikipedia, he appears to have been a follower of both Hauer and Schoenberg (not to mention being a pupil of Webern). Just where he fits into the history of twelve-tone technique, and how notable he is in this context (whether a leader or a follower, for example), I am not yet sure about.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:11, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I just discovered his contributions are covered in part in the last paragraph in the combinatoriality article. I do recall reading somewhere that his school in Vienna produced some notable 12-tone composers. I'll see what I can dig up in google books.4meter4 (talk) 04:58, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It sounds like you are looking for a teacher of notable students. That's a good goal, but I would prioritize the question of his importance as either a composer (compared with, say Apostel, Jelinek, Heiß, or Krenek) or a theorist (compared again with Krenek, but also Eimert in Europe, or Babbitt, Perle, and Martino in the US).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hauer and Steinbauer 

message: Nobody has bothered to list the reactions? The fact that 12-tone is in violation of all of the principles Bach spent decades discovering and that, along with atonal music, is pretty much unlistenable? John Cage revisted all of this stuff in the 60's and came out the other end with very little change - even he concluded most of it just covered old, empty ground. A criticism section would be highly appropriate, particularly considering this kind of 'research' did not escape scot-free. 203.166.241.56 (talk) 07:02, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed that a reception and/or criticism section would be a good idea, but I hope you have got some really good sources about Bach and his decades-long invention of whatever it is that "the 12-tone" violates, and why that makes any difference at all. I have no doubt you will be able to find sources (though just how reliable remains to be seen) claiming that atonal music is "unlistenable". There is a lot of this sort of thing about. It will be especially interesting to see what you can produce from John Cage concerning his conclusions about twelve-tone technique. Have at it. Everyone is an editor on Wikipedia.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:53, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

text: A melodic minor scale, plus its dominant and subdominant, will cover all 12 notes. That's... not hard nor rare. And that's not related to the 12-note technique here. Ahyangyi (talk) 11:25, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed not, and neither is the presence of twelve pitch classes necessary for serial composition, though it is difficult to imagine how twelve-tone technique could exist without this precondition. Hans Keller makes the distinction between chromatic saturation and serial techniques very clearly in his 1955 article, "Strict Serial Technique in Classical Music", Tempo (new series) no. 37 (Autumn): 12–16, 21–24. Significantly, Keller does not include any of Bach's many chromatic compositions in his discussion.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:51, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Criticism or Reception?? 

message: The second postulate, "No note is repeated within the row" as stated, is misleading. The immediate repetition of a note is permitted. What the twelve tone method prohibits is returning to a note, call it 'n', after one or more notes following 'n' in the row have been heard, and before the remaining notes of the row have all been heard. As an example, consider the row { c, d, bb, eb, db, f, f# g#, e, a, g, b }. When the note f# is played for the first time, it may be repeated as often as the composer wishes, but once g# is played, the f# cannot be played again until e, a, g and b have been played. 
Also, the rule above only applies to monophonic lines. If the music consists of two or more voices, nothing prohibits one voice from progressing through the tone row while the other voice(s) sustain or repeat their current note. Yamex5 (talk) 23:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think if you read this article a little more carefully, you will notice that the passage to which you are referring concerns the construction of tone rows. A little further down is a section on "Application in composition", which points out this distinction, and goes on to say "Thus, for example, postulate 2 does not mean, contrary to common belief, that no note in a twelve-tone work can be repeated until all twelve have been sounded". Similarly, a twelve-tone row does not have "other voices"—in fact, it could be argued that it is not even a "monophonic line" in fact, but rather a theoretical abstraction that may be manifested in a variety of ways, including monophonic lines.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:52, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

text: It is usually best to leave discussions in place, even if they may cause some slight embarrassment. In this case, it may serve as a suggestion for something that might be made clearer in future, or at least a caution not to make that section less clear.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:56, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone Row Postulates 

message: Joseph Nathan Straus (Twelve-tone music in America, chapter 8, pp.177 et seq) makes the point (which I agree with, but - irrelevant) that no music (aside from exercises for theory classes, obviously, etc etc- one makes certain assumptions and means no music actually and intentionally composed, not just to contradict this point...) - is "Twelve-tone" in any strict way, nor does this matter. (Nor is it a form of serialism; you can repeat notes without repeating them indefinitely without their being based on any finite tone-row, and vice versa, etc; the concepts are orthogonal.) Many a composer has, it seems, apologized for writing insufficiently non-repetitive, non-twelve-tone music without realizing that's not the point... (I should put apologize in silly-quotes; who cares what kind of music one writes, so long as it's not boring... but I hope what I really mean is - well, will edit later; no time.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 21:44, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds like a point that is worth developing. Joe certainly knows his beans when it comes to twelve-tone music (in contradistinction to twelve-tone music, as Schoenberg so aptly put it). In this connection, you may be interested in taking a look at the edit history of Piano Concerto (Schoenberg), where certain former claims about "strict" twelve-tone practice have been adjusted quite a bit recently. Nearly a century after Schoenberg first devised the technique very few people really understand how it works in practice, though many, having read about it in a book, think they know what it is supposed to be. Joe is one of the rare exceptions.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:22, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism by (J.N.) Straus 

message: I attempted to add some references concerning Copland's and Stravinsky's history with serial composition, and also a link to an English translation of Hauer's original treatise, but the edits didn't "take".  An hour's worth of work lost in the ozone before I even finished adding all the reference links.
Don't have time for this.  The article is full of "citation needed" and "failed verification" tags, but apparently they can't currently be corrected with citations and verification sources.
Give that issue, the article should probably be deleted and rewritten, since as it stands it is full of (apparently uncorrectable) errors.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.253 (talk) 02:17, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken article