Joonas Kokkonen’s “Free” Dodecaphonic Composition?

A Study of the Passacaglia from the String Quartet No. 2

Abstract

This paper challenges the prevalent notion that such features as multiple row orderings, incomplete row statements, and harmonies which seem to bear no relationship to a precompositionally assumed row ordering in the dodecaphonic compositions by the Finnish composer Joonas Kokkonen are the result of a deliberate disregard of the compositional practices of such classical dodecaphonic composers as Schoenberg and Webern. Rather, Kokkonenís works are seen to contain a highly sophisticated and imaginative use of the twelve-tone system, where dodecaphonic procedures are not compositional ends in themselves but, instead, serve larger structural intentions in a work.