Boulez: Sur Incises; Messagesquisse; Anthèmes 2

Twelve-tone technique (also called dodecaphony or twelve-note serialism) is a method of musical composition that treats all twelve pitch classes of the chromatic scale with equal priority, intentionally avoiding a tonal center. Composers construct a tone row (ordered series of the 12 pitch classes) and derive all musical material from transformations of that row—prime, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion—at any transpositional level. By preventing repetition or emphasis of any single pitch class outside the order-logic of the row, the technique suppresses traditional functional harmony and tonal hierarchy. Although it is a compositional method rather than a style, twelve-tone writing is commonly associated with concentrated motivic work, rigorous motivic development, extreme attention to intervallic content, and a modernist aesthetic ranging from taut, pointillistic textures to intensely expressive, large-scale orchestral or vocal works.