Josef Matthias Hauer

about

Josef Matthias Hauer (19 March 1883 – 22 September 1959) was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is most famous for developing, independent of and years before Arnold Schönberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Hauer was born in Wiener Neustadt and died in Vienna. He had an early musical training which included zither, cello, choral conducting, and organ, but evidently did not include theory and composition, for he claimed that he was self-taught. In 1918 he published his first work on music theory (a tone-color theory based on Goethe's), and in August 1919 devised his method for composing with twelve tones. Hauer's compositional techniques of composition are extraordinarily various and range from building-block techniques to methods using a chord series that is generated out of the twelve-tone row (["Melos"). In fact, his compositional techniques change almost from each piece to the next. The so-called 44 "tropes" and their compositional usage ("trope-technique") are essential to Hauer's twelve-tone techniques. In contrast to a twelve-tone row that contains a fixed succession of twelve tones, a trope consists of two complementary hexachords in which there's no fixed tone sequence. The tropes are used for structural and intervallic views on the twelve-tone system. Every trope offers certain symmetries that can be used by the composer. Hauer wrote prolifically, both music and prose describing his methods, until 1938, when his music w

top songs

albums

A Young Person's Guide To The Avant-Garde

Hauer: Atonale Musik, Op. 20

Works for piano

Hauer: Violin Concerto, Apokalyptische Phantasie & Romantische Phantasie

Hauer: Zwölftonspiele

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Bauhaus Reviewed 1919-1933

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Repertoire De Stijl : Bauhaus : Dada

Das Zwölftonspiel

Hauer: Klavierwerke

Hauer: Music with Hölderlin & Piano Pieces, Op. 25

Klavierwerke

Music at the Bauhaus

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