The vastly divergent reactions to twelve-tone composition of George Perle, David Del Tredici and Nicholas Thorne are a vivid reflection not only of their different generations, but of the unfolding of musical style change in America. Perle, born in 1915 and educated here at a time when twelve-tone composition was little understood, felt the urge to revise Schoenberg's method so as to reconcile serial chromaticism with the hierarchical elements of tonal practice. The system he evolved, known as “twelve-tone tonality,” has been the basis of most of his compositions until 1969, and all since.

Del Tredici, born in 1937, studied at Princeton at a time when serialism had become dogma. Yet he eventually repudiated the technique and turned to a highly eccentric form of tonality.

Thorne, born in 1953, gave little thought to twelve-tone composition. “It was the generation before me who had this monkey on its back,” he says. Instead, Thorne came to maturity amid the welter of styles, from minimalism to neo-Romanticism, that characterized America during the 1970s. All three attitudes offer us invaluable insights into the composers and their music.