Inversional Balance and the “Normal” Body in the Music of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern

Inversional symmetry and the sense of harmonic balance it creates play a central role in the free atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, written between 1908 and the outbreak of World War I. In some ways, inversional symmetry comes to function in this music in a manner analogous to key in tonal music: a systematic way of regulating the relationships among the tones, a normative principle of pitch organization. And, as with any normative principle, inversional symmetry may be subject to deviation and disruption.