Walter Meyer asks:

>I don't know the difference, if any, between dodecaphonic and 12-tone and
>simply atonal music, and at this point I don't care.

Bravo!  I don't either.

>My question is, should a theory, such as Schoenberg's for composition of
>music be necessary? If, in his mind, Schoenberg found a sequence of notes
>and their combinations, pleasing and worthy of presentation to the rest of
>the world, is it really necessary for them to be the product of a set of
>compositional rules such as he developed?

I think we ought to distinguish between "rules" and "procedures." A rule is
static, a procedure dynamic.  Schoenberg devised a set of procedures.  It's
a very, very simple set, which applies to only the very first stages of
composing.  If I were to tell you all the procedures, you'd laugh and say,
"Is that all there is to it?" To the procedures? Yes.  To the business of
composing a piece of music, not hardly.  As Schoenberg said, "Of course, a
soul you have to have."

>At the risk of posing a question the discussion of which I missed or
>which may not even be deemed worthy of further examination, I ask, should
>music be composed pursuant to a set of rules or are those rules more
>appropriately formulated to explain what we find pleasing in music that
>has already been written?

I vote for the latter.  In these cases, rules mean a statistical
probability.  That is, Bach *usually* does such and such in this situation,
or Haydn *usually* does this.  However, Haydn and Bach (and any other
master) also do something rare, out of their routine.

Steve Schwartz