Reverse Psychology: Expecting the Unexpected

Listeners are able to learn to expect the unexpected.

• Schoenberg's system of composing with 12 tones. Schoenberg (correctly) claimed that undue emphasis on a pitch would raise it to the status of a tonic.
  
  
• 12-tone composition: a system for avoiding a tonal hierarchy
  
  
• 12-tone rows exhibit near optimum contra-tonal structure (Huron & von Hippel)
  
  E.g. Schoenberg's Opus 27, No. 3:
  
  

  Initial Row			Possible Continuation	Maximum Key Correlation
  G, F#, D, E			C	+0.64
  G, F#, D, E			C#	+0.50
  G, F#, D, E			D#	+0.47
  G, F#, D, E			F	+0.43
  G, F#, D, E			G#	+0.46
  G, F#, D, E			A	+0.81
  G, F#, D, E			A#	+0.55
  G, F#, D, E			B	+0.79