Definition of "twelve-tone" [twelve-tone]

• Music Relating to, consisting of, or based on an arrangement of the 12 chromatic tones. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In music, conventional rhythm and melody were set aside in favor of atonal, serial, dissonant, and twelve-tone compositions."
• "An uninspired twelve-tone composition may strike us as "academic" in a way that a paint-by-numbers sonata movement may not, but in both cases the weakness is not the process used but that the finished product was so lame that the process was left as the most interesting feature."
• "Probably the Rochberg story was made significant by people who were looking for yet another way to bash twelve-tone music (whatever that is)."