In music, unified field is often used to refer to the "unity of musical space" created by the free use of melodic

Melody

A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

 material as harmonic

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 material and vice-versa.

The technique is most associated with the twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...

, created by its "total thematicism" where a tone-row (melody) generates all (harmonic) material. It was also used by Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...

, though from a diametrically opposed direction, created by his use of extremely slow harmonic rhythm

Harmonic rhythm

In music theory, harmonic rhythm, also known as harmonic tempo is the rate at which the chords change. According to Joseph Swain it "is simply that perception of rhythm that depends on changes in aspects of harmony." According to Walter Piston , "the rhythmic life contributed to music by means of...

 which eventually led to his use of unordered pitch-class sets, usually hexachord

Hexachord

In music, a hexachord is a collection of six pitch classes including six-note segments of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory.-Middle Ages:...

s (of six pitches) as harmony from which melody may also be created. (Samson 1977)

It may also be observed in Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

'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

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

, such as Voiles, and Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Mussorgsky

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as 'The Five'. He was an innovator of Russian music in the romantic period...

. In Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

's Bagatelles, and several of Alfredo Casella

Alfredo Casella

Alfredo Casella was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.- Life and career :Casella was born in Turin; his family included many musicians; his grandfather, a friend of Paganini's, was first cello in the San Carlo Theatre in Lisbon and eventually was soloist in the Royal Chapel in Turin...

'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

Consonance and dissonance

In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...

. (Samson 1977)

Source

• Samson, Jim (1977). Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900-1920. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02193-9.