Felix Delbruck asks:

>Coming from a tonal perspective, I am used to reacting to more diatonic
>music as calmer and more stable, more chromatic music as more nervous and
>unstable.  To me, atonal music sounds like the extreme of chromaticism.  It
>seems ideally suited to 20th century notions of dislocation and angst.  I
>am thinking about Wozzeck or Lulu, or Schonberg's 'Erwartung'.  The problem
>then is - can this music express anything else? (Note that I am theorizing
>here - I have very little experience in listening to this kind of music -
>that's why I want some starting hints).

It depends on the piece.  I'd say you're largely right, but there are
exceptions.  Some of Webern's stuff comes across as serenely otherworldly,
for example.  I also think you're right about things happening "at great
speed," which could come across as "unstable." For what it's worth, I don't
really believe that Schoenberg, at any rate, is "atonal." I hear tonal
centers in a lot of his supposedly atonal music; it's just that they change
pretty rapidly.

By the way, "atonal," "twelve-tone," and "serial" are not necessarily
identical.  Schoenberg, for example, wrote atonal music that was neither
twelve-tone or serial.  Others have written tonal serial and tonal 12-tone
pieces.

>Now the question is: am I reacting to it with inappropriate baggage, so
>to speak?

Oh, I don't know.  I react to it technically pretty much as you do.  Maybe
I also have inappropriate baggage.  It's hard to jettison entirely one's
sense of harmony, for example, which theoretically has nothing to do with
"atonality," but not necessarily 12-tonalism.

>Now that comedy was not simply atonal, but in the 12-tone system: to
>what extent are these two different kettles of fish?

First, there have been several 12-tone systems; Schoenberg's was simply
the most influential.  Other folks who used "a system of composing with 12
tones" include Richard Yardumian, a strongly tonal (even modal) composer,
who derived his 12 tones by alternating a series of major and minor
thirds.  Going the other way, there have been many composers who use "free
atonality" - that is, who don't come up with a basic series of the 12
different tones of the chromatic scale and manipulate them according to
Schoenberg's rules: straight, transposed, backwards, upside-down, and
upside-down and backwards.

>In 12-tone music it seems to me that we still have chaos from a
>conventional harmonic perspective but this is now coupled with a very
>strict 'horizontal' order (but is it purely horizontal, or are the rows
>organized vertically too?).

Both horizontal and vertical.

>Should you hear the tone rows as you ordinarily hear musical themes?

I've known amazing musicians who claim to be able to do this.  I certainly
can't.  I tend to hear "characteristic intervals," rather than themes.

>Do the rows and their manipulations 'speak' or are they just musical
>patterns, emotional meaning depending on rhythm and tone-colour?

I'd say the latter, definitely.

>Should you listen purely horizontally for the music's polyphonic
>interplay, ignoring the (seemingly) 'harmonic' implications?

I don't think there's a "should" about it.  Should you listen purely to
Debussy's counterpoint? To me, it's all music.  "Atonal" and "Tonal" and
"Twelve-tone" seem to me false distinctions, especially when even trained
professionals often can't categorize a piece simply by listening.

>If tonality and traditional harmonic concerns have been transcended,
>then we by implication would have to listen on another plane as well.

I don't see that this follows.  I mean, you listen to all sorts of music
on all sorts of levels.  It's like saying that you have to listen to Bach
on a purely contrapuntal level.  I don't see why.  Obviously, Bach's
counterpoint gives you something to listen to, but I'm sure there are lots
of people who enjoy Bach tremendously who haven't a clue to what he's doing
contrapuntally.

>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.

I think you've got the heart of it.  Schoenberg himself saw no meaningful
distinction among his tonal, atonal, and dodecaphonic selves.  As far as
he was concerned, he was always writing another Verklaerte Nacht.

Steve Schwartz