A Heretic in the Schoenberg Circle: Roberto Gerhard's First Engagement with Twelve-Tone Procedures inAndantino

Diego Alonso Tomás

doi:10.1017/s1478572219000306

Abstract

AbstractShortly before finishing his studies with Arnold Schoenberg, Roberto Gerhard composedAndantino, a short piece in which he used for the first time a compositional technique for the systematic circulation of all pitch classes in both the melodic and the harmonic dimensions of the music. He modelled this technique on the tri-tetrachordal procedure in Schoenberg's Prelude from the Suite for Piano, Op. 25 but, unlike his teacher, Gerhard treated the tetrachords as internally unordered pitch-class collections. This decision was possibly encouraged by his exposure from the mid-1920s onwards to Josef Matthias Hauer's writings on ‘trope theory’. Although rarely discussed by scholars,Andantinooccupies a special place in Gerhard's creative output for being his first attempt at ‘twelve-tone composition’ and foreshadowing the permutation techniques that would become a distinctive feature of his later serial compositions. This article analysesAndantinowithin the context of the early history of twelve-tone music and theory.

Highlights

How well I do remember our Berlin days, what a couple we made, you and I; you the anti-Schoenberguian [sic], or the very reluctant Schoenberguian, and I, the non-conformist, or the Schoenberguian malgré moi
Almost a century after Arnold Schoenberg revealed to his closest circle of friends and disciples his novel technique of ‘composition with twelve tones’, serialism is regarded as one of the most significant innovations in twentieth-century art music
As a crucial marker of musical modernism, preliminary and early developments in serial composition have received increased academic interest over the past three decades; significant effort has been made to understand the different processes by which the first generation of twelve-tone composers gradually found their personal twelve-tone voices through different implementations of serial procedures in their works

Summary

Introduction

How well I do remember our Berlin days, what a couple we made, you and I; you (at that time) the anti-Schoenberguian [sic], or the very reluctant Schoenberguian, and I, the non-conformist, or the Schoenberguian malgré moi. Gerhard’s procedure for melodic and harmonic organization in Andantino was influenced by Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique in the Prelude of the Suite for Piano, Op. 25, composed

Results

Conclusion