The Logo as Symbol of Twelve-Tone Music
The logo as central element of the visual embodiment of the Arnold Schönberg Center graphically depicts the "Method of Composition with twelve tones relating only to one another."
"The method of composing with twelve tones grew out of a necessity.
In the last hundred years the concept of harmony has changed tremendously through the development of chromaticism. The idea that one basic tone, the root, dominated the construction of chords and regulated their succession - the concept of tonality - had to develop first into the concept of ‚extended tonality‘. Very soon it became doubtful whether such a root still remained the centre to which every harmony and harmonic succession must be referred. [...] This alone would perhaps not have caused a radical change in compositional technique. However, such a change became necessary when there occured simultaneously a development which ended in what I call the emancipation of the dissonance. [...] After many unsuccessful attempts during a period of approximately twelve years, I laid the foundations for a new procedure in musical construction which seemed fitted to replace those structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmonies.
The Wind Quintet, op. 26, composed 1923/24, is based upon this row.
 |
The row of Arnold Schönberg‘s Wind Quintet, op. 26, graphically depicted.
 |
I called this procedure ‚Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One Another.‘ This method consists primarily of the constant and exclusive use of a set of twelve different tones. This means, of course, that no tone is repeated within the series and that it uses all twelve tones of the chromatic scale, though in a different order. It is in no way identical with the chromatic scale." (Arnold Schönberg, Composition with Twelve Tones, 1941)
