one day, a great man saw that after a thousand years the language of music had worn itself out and could only keep on repeating the same old messages. By revolutionary decree he abolished the hierarchy of tones and made them all equal. He imposed a strict discipline to prevent any of them from appearing in a piece more often than any other and thus from reclaiming old feudal privileges. Royal courts were abolished once and for all and replaced by a single empire based on equality and called the twelve-tone system.
