(Reposted from UVLe)
Schoenberg setting up the stage for a so-called 'atonal revolution,' along with athemacism, poses its own problems as well. There's that dependence of different texts, usually poetry, that keeps the whole composition alive and progressing. The problem with unsustainability challenges this movement in music because of its lack of definite structure, or rather, its deliberate abandonment of tonal structure and the lack of underlying themes. A tent without a frame is simply a sheet of waterproof material.
You could say that probably sudden, or hopefully, intuitive bursts of ideas and feelings, more like stream-of-conciousness would provide a certain direction on a composition's structural progression. With technical aspects of developing variation and musical prose, a piece could be unpredictable (or ambiguous, depending on your perception), free as well as continuous in form. You can add a few dissonant segments here, abuse chromaticism there. There is that freedom to create something new. But what is new could not simply stand by itself just because it is the opposite or an extension of a pre-existing system.
There's this Law of Conservation of Mass, as well as Law of Conservation of Energy. Or simply, you cannot create something out of nothing. Or in the current context, without a definite logic that will define how these atonal compositions are created, I don't think they would stand by themselves (or at least, during the time 'atonal revolution' was just starting). Or maybe it's just me, together with other folks, who wants everything to be justified by a certain logic. You could just make up your own rules and explicitly state assumptions. Maybe that could do.
Luckily, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire worked pretty well. The use of Sprechtimme, although disturbing to me, made perfect sense thematically. I wonder if watching the actual performance would prove me wrong.
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