ABSTRACT
The later development of Nikos Skalkottas twelve-note technique occurred in complete isolation from Schoenberg and the European avant-garde, and hence led to the creation of his own personal, idiosyncratic style. His major achievement is his imaginative approach to twelve-note composition, and this, refracted through his personal, idiosyncratic style, adds another dimension to the early stages of the development of the twelve-note method. The technical devices he employed to realize this aesthetic include the use of a modified version of the twelve-note method, the establishment of an analogy between tonal regions and groups of twelve-note sets as a means of delineating form, and the reliance on continuous motivic and harmonic repetition and variation as a means of achieving coherence and comprehensibility within a movement. His formal designs evolve largely through the presence of harmonic regions, which are established by the use of referential groups of twelve-note sets and/or their transpositions.
