Schoenberg's search for "unity and regularity" in music was to be achieved without the procedures of tonality, for Schoenberg felt tonality had run its course. For fifteen years, he followed a path that led to his "discovery" of the "method of composing with twelve tones which are related only with one another." Schoenberg experimented with the serialization of smaller groups of notes before applying the idea to all twelve; some of these experiments appear in the Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23. Schoenberg's first compositions in the new, twelve-tone idiom were published in the Suite for Piano. Op. 25, in which each of the six pieces is dodecaphonic.

Each piece bears a title as well as a tempo marking. The six works are labeled Prelude, Gavotte, Musette, Intermezzo, Minuet and Gigue. Schoenberg's use of Baroque-era titles for each of the individual pieces elicited questions from his contemporaries. Was he trying to revive the old dance forms? Was he trying to create an impression in the listener that would assist in the interpretation of the pieces? When asked about this very point, Schoenberg replied, "As far as I am concerned, I would call [them] all exercises…." That doesn't help very much.

The Prelude and part of the Intermezzo (No. 3) of Op. 25 were composed in July 1921; the rest of the set was completed in February and March 1923, at the same time Schoenberg completed his Five Piano Pieces, Op. 23. Thus, despite their later opus number, portions of the twelve-tone works of Op. 25 were composed before the "Walzer" of Op. 23, which is Schoenberg's first published twelve-tone work. A single row—E, F, G, D flat, G flat, E flat, A flat, D, B, C, A, B flat—forms the basis for the entire suite. Various permutations, such as transpositions, inversions, retrogrades and retrograde inversions provide contrasting "harmonic" areas. Often, the rows are broken into tetrachords (four-note groups) that are presented either vertically, horizontally, or both.

Schoenberg's application of the method in the Suite, Op. 25, is almost academically strict. Like the Quintet for Winds, Op. 26, composed with the same rigor, the suite is not an easy listen. Other than the repetition of row forms, almost all material bombarding the audience is, at any moment, new, and a tremendous amount of concentration is necessary to follow these works. His decision to use repeats in the individual pieces of Op. 25 forced him to direct his developing variation tendencies to create a structure that made sense when repeated.

Because Schoenberg used the series for both melody and accompaniment, the possibility exists for two or more of the same pitch to occur simultaneously. From the beginning of the Prelude, however, we see how the composer avoids this. While the primary form of the row appears in the upper voice, a form transposed by a tritone (from E natural down to B flat) follows the melody in the left hand.

Occasional passages in the "Gavotte" use the pitches of the series in the wrong order. Schoenberg justified this by noting that the "Gavotte" is the second movement, and the set would already be familiar to the listener. Furthermore, since the Gavotte uses the series in tetrachords, and the integrity of each tetrachord remains constant, Schoenberg does not find the discrepancies problematic.

The Minuet contains a trio that is a strict canon. However, the style of counterpoint is not like that of the Baroque. All voices are not equal; the main theme is clearly of greater importance than the other accompanimental lines.



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