Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Relating to, consisting of, or based on an arrangement of the 12 chromatic tones.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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I've never been able to make sense of that story that after Rochberg's son died he realized he could no longer write twelve-tone music.
They put you down, they say I'm wrong Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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Incidentally, I think that Babbitt's Words About Music is about the best explanation of what it is about twelve-tone music that would maybe make someone want to play that particular game.
My Prerogative Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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In music, conventional rhythm and melody were set aside in favor of atonal, serial, dissonant, and twelve-tone compositions.
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Speaking only for myself, I was very relieved when I heard a twelve-tone piece of Rochberg's and I disliked it just as much as I disliked his tonal stuff.
They put you down, they say I'm wrong Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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I've just been teaching some twelve-tone pieces (Babbitt Duet and Widow's Lament in Springtime, Schoenberg 4th quartet and Serenade) so I'm interested in the subject.
My Prerogative Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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Probably the Rochberg story was made significant by people who were looking for yet another way to bash twelve-tone music (whatever that is).
They put you down, they say I'm wrong Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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In music, conventional rhythm and melody were set aside in favor of atonal, serial, dissonant, and twelve-tone compositions.
Archive 2010-01-10 2010
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An uninspired twelve-tone composition may strike us as "academic" in a way that a paint-by-numbers sonata movement may not, but in both cases the weakness is not the process used but that the finished product was so lame that the process was left as the most interesting feature.
Spark plugs and transmissions Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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I'll refer you to Alex Ross, who writes in The Rest is Noise: In the late sixties and early seventies, twelve-tone composers were reaching the height of their influence.
Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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Despite brief experiments with twelve-tone writing in the 1940s and 1950s, her music rarely ventures beyond extended tonality, emphasizing coloristic harmony and diatonic dissonance.
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