ABSTRACT
Skalkottass surviving Berlin works demonstrate the development of his harmonic language from advanced chromaticism to dodecaphonism, and they exhibit, in an embryonic form, many of the motivic, harmonic and formal techniques and compositional features employed in later twelve-note works. The earliest surviving Berlin works the tonal Greek Suite for piano and two suites for two pianos, one of the two-piano suites is a transcription of two movements of the Greek Suite and the other is in two movements. The 15 Little Variations Skalkottass last composition before undertaking lessons with Schoenberg is a seminal work featuring the use and controlled manipulation of a referential group of unordered, but clearly defined pitch-class sets; this is a definitive moment in the evolution of his mature compositional technique. Although the texture consists exclusively of twelve-note material, Skalkottas also employs tonal elements in both the internal structure of the sets and the overall harmonic fabric, and he relies on functional analogues to construct the form.
