When I was in music school there was a young violinist (only about a couple
of years younger than myself) for whom the biggest slam on a piece of music
was "that's head music, not heart music." A hifalutin' way of saying that
she didn't like it.

Joseph, your comment about gibberish brings to mind the one work that
I know to be avowedly gibberish, Mozart's "Galimathias Musicum," K. 32.
Not great, but not a bad way to spend 20 minutes or so.  It's interesting
that you mentioned (and rightly so) Mozart's g-minor symphony as an
example of music with heart.  Are you also saying that as such it has no
organization? Are you saying the same thing about Beethoven? For several
weeks now I've been perusing the first volume (Haydn to Dvorak) of Robert
Simpson's anthology "The Symphony." More theoretical stuff than even a
composer may want to know.  Check it out if you want to see how these
composers organized their symphonies.  For all that I don't agree with (and
for all the contributors that are full of themselves) the anthology makes
some provocative points.  Someone wrote "classicism is healthy, romanticism
ails," one of those half-truths that is more true than I wish it were.

As for the 12-tone language being inchoate and unsolidified, check out (for
starters) anything by Webern from op.  17 on.  Note that the recordings
supervised by Boulez make them sound like music.  ("Tashi plays Webern"
is also a great album, and the LaSalle does a great job with his string
quartet work.)

When I started composing I wanted to write nothing but the symphonies that
Mahler never started.  Now I realize that life is too short to spend it
composing anything but Rabushka.  No regrets.

Aaron J. Rabushka
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http://www.cowtown.net/users/arabushk/