Felix Delbrueck wrote:

>that in 12-tone music we can still have oases of calm in a sea of
>instability - and that we can have free melodic invention over and above
>the rows? Furthermore, are these oases side-effects of the rows themselves,
>or can they be deliberately introduced into the music at strategic points?
>I can hardly believe that such 'romantic' concerns should suddenly be
>inappropriate or irrelevant in this music - after all music is meant to be
>listened to, and the ears of Schonberg and Berg were themselves formed in
>the context of German musical late romanticism.

Hard to believe that after 50 years there are still questions like
these.

Atonal, tonal, twelve-tone, serial, chance, blah blah etc. are just
arbitrary systems/guides for composing a piece, just as any other
art form, or human activity for that matter, has various systems,
guidelines, rules, etc.  None of the traits you mention are inherent
in dodecaphonic or tonal music.  Composers do with them what they will,
communicate what they want to communicate, and for all the ideological
nonsence, garbage, and, yes, crap, a piece of music is a  byproduct of
how the composer has chosen to apply the system rather than the system
itself.  Sure, there have been plently of serial composers that have
spun off empty notes that offer nothing more than a surface exploration
of properly applying textbook rules, but then what's left of classical
radio is now padded, to bring in another thread here, minor composers
who two hundered years ago spun empty notes properly applying that
time's accepted systems.  Berg is the best example of this--he learned
whatever system Schoenberg postulated from time to time, and then
applied it to write the Mahlerian music he wanted to write.

Jason