Arnold Schoenberg

The twelve-tone technique is a compositional method in which all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are organized into a fixed ordering called a tone row, used as the structural foundation of a piece rather than traditional tonal harmony. Schoenberg developed this method in the early 1920s as a systematic approach to atonal composition.

Schoenberg was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1874 and later emigrated to the United States in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism. He settled in Los Angeles, where he taught at UCLA and became an American citizen.

Key works include "Verklärte Nacht" (Transfigured Night, 1899), "Pierrot Lunaire" (1912), and the unfinished opera "Moses und Aron." His String Quartet No. 2, completed in 1908, marked a pivotal break from traditional tonality by incorporating a soprano voice in its final two movements.

The Second Viennese School consisted of Arnold Schoenberg and his two most prominent students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Both Berg and Webern became major composers in their own right, further developing and extending Schoenberg's twelve-tone innovations.