Alban Berg
Lyric Suite: Movement VI Largo Desolato

Kirsh. said on Friday, 26 August 2011:
This is a rather ingenious example of sampling. It's a lot of information to take in, but in the early 20th century, it became extremely popular to compose using mathematics rather than what we could call previous methods of musical inspiration. Notes were issued numerical designations with C being 0, C# being 1, D being 2, D#/Eb being 3, E being 4, F being 5, F#/Gb being 6, G being 7, G#/Ab being 8, A being 9, A#/Bb being 10 and B being 11. All 12 notes were arranged in an order at the discretion of the composer and this became the basis for a composition. What resulted was a completely dissonant and abstract form of music. If you want to learn more, look up serialism or 12 Tone Technique. In this piece, Alban Berg used A, B flat, B and F (0, 1, 2, 8) to represent the initials of him and his lover. At the same time, these notes met the same set type as the Tristan motive which was an allusion in Berg's Lyric suite to the tragedy of the story of Tristan and Isolde since Berg and the woman he loved were both married to different people. Somehow Berg had managed to bridge the gap between Serialism and Romanticism in music.

Straus, Joseph N. "Tristan and Berg's Lyric Suite." In Theory Only 8, no. 3 (October 1984): 33-41.
http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/chmtl/ifetch?borrowing+11543833+F