The scope of this study includes relevant background information on Peter Schat and his compositions and process, an explanation of the Tone Clock system and a detailed analysis of one of his compositions, the Etudes for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 39. The intent is to demonstrate how the Tone Clock naturally evolved from the practices of the Second Viennese School and how it relates to both new and existing modern music. The study is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 presents a brief introduction to Peter Schat and the Tone Clock. Chapter 2 provides a more detailed biography of Peter Schat and traces the development and evolution of his compositional techniques, ultimately culminating in the Tone Clock. Chapter 3 provides a basic explanation of the Tone Clock itself, with demonstrations of various components through musical examples and illustrations. Chapter 4 is a detailed analysis of the Etudes for Piano and Orchestra, Opus. 39. Chapter 5 summarizes the results of the study, with special attention to the impact of the Tone Clock on performance from the perspective of the performer. The analysis of the Etudes was completed by using the Tone Clock as an analytical tool, aided by the composer's original manuscript and sketches for the work. The goal of the study is to establish the value of the Tone Clock as both a compositional and analytical tool.

Dutch composer Peter Schat’s (1935-2003) pursuit of a compositional system that could generate and preserve intervallic relationships, while allowing the composer as much flexibility as possible to manipulate musical material, led him to develop the tone-clock system. Fundamentally comprised of the twelve possible trichords, the tone clock permits each to generate a complete twelve-tone series through the “steering” principle, a concept traced to Boulez’s technique of pitch-class set multiplication. This study serves as an overview of Schat’s tone-clock system and focuses primarily on the effects of the steering function in “Genen” (2000). Furthermore, I expand on the tone-clock system by combining transformational theory with Julian Hook’s uniform triadic transformations and my proposed STEER and STEERS functions, which express the procedures of the steering principle as a mathematical formula. Using a series of transformational networks, I illustrate the unifying effect steering has on different structural levels in “Genen,” a post-tonal composition.