The structural significance of the Method of Composing with Twelve Tones is expressed in the following statements by Arnold Schoenberg in ‘Composition with Twelve Tones’ (Style and Idea, Williams & Norgate Ltd., London, p. 107):

After many unsuccessful attempts during a period of approximately twelve years, I laid the foundation for a new procedure in musical construction which seemed fitted to replace those structural differentiations provided formerly by tonal harmonies. I called this procedure Method of Composing with Twelve Tones which are related only with one another.

1. Not repudiated; but shelved for better times or lost in worse. The question, however, was imprecise; and it allowed Spinner's many-enveloped reply to escape from the period between 1936 and 1941 (the year of the op. 2 string quartet).

2. Snapshots of opp. 1–28 have always shown the same immaculate flower-beds; row upon row. Such views seldom invite questions concerning the uprooted groundsel and convolvulus. Although closer inspection reveals that many of the works with opus numbers are still unpublished and unperformed, even that discovery may not prompt urgent questions about the development of a composer whose published works are all, to varying extents, rooted in Webernian precept. For instance, one might assume from a glance at the published scores of opp. 3–4 that the unpublished opp. 1–2 could safely be taken for granted (and that the 1941 revision of op. 1 brought it ‘in line’ with the rest). One would be wrong.

The prince of the pagodas, Britten's only ballet score (his only mature score originally composed for the ballet, that is), and that comparatively rare bird in the 20th century, a full-length ballet, was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1957, on the first day of the new year, with the composer conducting. The choreographer was John Cranko and the scenery was designed by John Piper.

Philip Grange has been an outstandingly successful young composer by any standard. He has a large number of works to his credit, commissions which look like occupying him for some time, and his works are receiving regular performances. Critically he has been described as a ‘distinctive … bright new talent, with a strong music concept beautifully worked out’ (Times, June 1980) and ‘a new and individual compositional voice’ (Daily Telegraph, January 1981). These were both descriptions of the work with which he first attracted attention in London. Cimmerian Nocturne was composed in 1979, commissioned by The Fires of London, and received a performance on the 7 August as part of the Proms season.

Dodecaphonic theory is potent and persuasive; perhaps too persuasive. There is a promise implicit in Schoenberg's statement: ‘Composition with twelve tones has no other aim than comprehensibility’. This promise is made even more explicit by Webern:

…when that kind of unity [of 12-tone rows] is the basis, even the most fragmented sounds must have a completely coherent effect, and leave hardly anything to be desired as far as ‘comprehensibility’ is concerned.