I wanted to try an experiment with my third sonata: could I use 12-note technique to undermine or at least to question the technique itself? Could I find a path outside the circle? Some tonal composers ( Britten, Shostakovich and Barber spring to mind) used note-rows in their works as symbols of modernity, as decorative or cynical nods to a musical establishment which had disowned them, but could a whole piece be constructed with this in mind? Could a system which was designed to avoid tonality become one which unashamedly reclaimed it? For many post-war years it was pretty much the only map in print for young composers who wanted to be performed, commissioned or broadcast. Conversely the 12-note system ensures that all roads are equal, that no note is more important than another, that all lanes lead only to each other – a nomadic, circular path where home is the journey itself. Traditional tonality works by creating tensions which are resolved, by mixing familiarity and repetition as if signposts, markers along the way, paths to return home. Photograph: Fred Stein Archive/Getty Images ‘New freedoms needed new structures’ = Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), inventor of the 12-tone technique of composition.
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