ABSTRACT
A twelve-tone row or twelve-tone series is an ordered arrangement of the twelve pitch classes. Twelve-tone music thus involves a basic set which consists of the aggregate (the total chromatic) and which is presented in a particular ordering. After building a twelve-tone row, a composer needs to decide which of the forty-eight row forms will be used in a particular composition, since it is highly unlikely that all of them will be used. Especially when the texture includes chords, identifying the exact order of pitch classes may require some guesswork and imagination because pitch classes may not necessarily appear in a predictable order. Compose a short twelve-tone piece for piano or two melodic instruments of our choice. Then use Dallapiccola’s “Contrapunctus Secundus” or one of the pieces the people have studied for one of the analytical assignments in this chapter as our model.
