Tone-row music and serialism II
Alban Berg - Violin Concerto. The tone-row of this work is made out of ascending thirds and a whole-tone scale fragment:
G - Bb - D - F# - A - C - E - G# - B and (B) - C# - Eb - F - (G)
As in the case of the Variations for Orchestra by Arnold Schoenberg, the tone-row here reflects complex and multiple compositional reasons some of which preceed the writing of the actual notes in the piece (pre-compositional work):
produces a work which can be regarded both as tone-row music and (at least partially) as a tonal composition
allows the quotation of the choral Es ist genug ! in Bach's harmonization in the last half of the last movement
allows the introduction of the Carinthian folk tune appearing towards the end of the first movement.
The 10 bar Introduction constructs the row in front of our eyes (or ears). The solo violin plays sounds 1-3-5-7 of the row (open strings) in bar 2 while the orchestra fills in the other sounds (2-4-6). The procedure is repeated in bar 4 starting with sound 2 and continues every other bar until the entire row is swept from left to right.
Meantime, in the even-numbered bars, the orchestra performs the same "sweeping" of P3. In these 10 measures, Alban Berg seems to introduce his audience to the (pre-)compositional process itself by constructing the row from scratch and offering this insight as part of the musical object itself (the Concerto).