# Unified field

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This article is about the music topic. For the physics theory, see [unified field theory](/source/Unified_field_theory).

In music, **unified field** is the 'unity of musical space' created by the free use of [melodic](/source/Melody) material as [harmonic](/source/Harmony) material and vice versa.

The technique is most associated with the [twelve-tone technique](/source/Twelve-tone_technique), created by its 'total thematicism' where a [tone-row](/source/Tone-row) (melody) generates all (harmonic) material. It was also used by [Alexander Scriabin](/source/Alexander_Scriabin), though from a diametrically opposed direction, created by his use of extremely slow [harmonic rhythm](/source/Harmonic_rhythm) which eventually led to his use of unordered [pitch-class](/source/Pitch-class) sets, usually [hexachords](/source/Hexachord) (of six pitches) as harmony from which melody may also be created.[1]

It may also be observed in [Igor Stravinsky](/source/Igor_Stravinsky)'s Russian period, such as in *Les Noces*, derived from his use of folk melodies as generating material and influenced by shorter pieces by [Claude Debussy](/source/Claude_Debussy), such as *Voiles*, and [Modest Mussorgsky](/source/Modest_Mussorgsky). In [Béla Bartók](/source/B%C3%A9la_Bart%C3%B3k)'s Bagatelles, and several of [Alfredo Casella](/source/Alfredo_Casella)'s *Nine Piano Pieces* such as No. 4 'In Modo Burlesco' the close intervallic relationship between motive and chord creates or justifies the great harmonic [dissonance](/source/Consonance_and_dissonance).[2]

Webern was the only one...who was conscious of a new sound-dimension, of the abolition of horizontal-vertical opposition, so that he saw in the series only a way of giving structure to the sound-space....That functional redistribution of intervals toward which he tended marks an extremely important moment in the history of language.

— Pierre Boulez, *Notes of an Apprenticeship*, p.149, *[3]*

## See also

- [Counterpoint](/source/Counterpoint)
- [Polyphony](/source/Polyphony)
- [Pitch space](/source/Pitch_space)

## Further reading

[Schoenberg, Arnold](/source/Arnold_Schoenberg). *The Musical Idea, and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation* [edited, translated, and with a commentary by Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff]. New York: Columbia University Press. 1995.

## Sources

1. Samson 1977

1. Samson, Jim (1977). *[Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-1920](https://archive.org/details/musicintransitio0000sams)*, [page needed]. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02193-9.

1. Brian Clarence Hulse, Nick Nesbitt, Brian Hulse (2010). *Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Theory and Philosophy of Music*, p.113. ISBN 9780754667735.

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