The "Variazioni canoniche" (1950) takes as its point of departure the 12-tone row of Arnold Schoenberg's "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte" op. 41, subjecting it to a serial procedure so arcane that even the composer himself could not reconstruct decades later how exactly he built up the piece. But regardless of method, the result sounds eerily hieratic, invariably at low dynamic, slowly progressing through long held notes and drumbeats.