: of, relating to, or being serial music utilizing the 12 chromatic tones

Examples of twelve-tone in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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Arnold Schoenberg’s music still challenges listeners, but his twelve-tone technique turns up in all sorts of unexpected places, from horror film scores to cartoons to jazz. Philip Clark, The New York Review of Books, 22 May 2025 Notable modernists include Virginia Woolf (stream-of-consciousness novels), Pablo Picasso (cubism), Arnold Schoenberg (twelve-tone technique), and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (International Style architecture). Hazlitt, 10 Apr. 2024 The First Quartet precedes Schoenberg’s break from tonality; the Third is from his twelve-tone period. Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 11 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1926, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of twelve-tone was in 1926

Cite this Entry

“Twelve-tone.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twelve-tone. Accessed 4 Jun. 2025.

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