In musical composition, developing variation is a formal technique in which the concepts of

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped * Photograph ...

and variation are united in that variations are produced through the development of existing material. The term was coined by Arnold Schoenberg, twentieth-century composer and inventor of the

twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...

, who believed it was one of the most important compositional principles since around 1750:Haimo, Ethan. 1990. ''Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey: The Evolution of his Twelve-Tone Method, 1914–1928'', p.73n8. Oxford ngland: Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press . Schoenberg distinguished this from the "unravelling" procedures of

contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

tonal music but developing variation may be related to other textures and to Schoenberg's own freely

atonal Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...

pieces which employ a "method of atonal developing variation each chord, line, and harmony results from the subtle alteration and recombination of

musical idea In music, a motif IPA: ( /moʊˈtiːf/) (also motive) is a short musical phrase, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition: "The motive ...

s from earlier in the piece" and Schoenberg describes its importance to his development of serialism. Haimo applies the concept to vertical ( pitch) as well as horizontal (

rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...

and permutation) transformations in twelve-tone music on the premise of "the 'unity of musical space after suggesting that Schoenberg reconciled serial organization and developing variation in the twelve-tone technique.

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