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Originally Posted by demonic_advent
However, it's ultimate purpose was to use mathmatical forumlae to ensure that the music produced had absolutly no leaning into one tonality.
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First, I don't see where you're coming from with these "mathematic formulae". Dodecaphony, in it's basic form, is simply a set of relatively simple rules. Not much calculation going on there. And ensuring that the music had no leaning to tonality was certainly not the purpose of it. Yes, Schoenberg and Webern generally deliberately tried to avoid tonal sounding harmonies, but that has more to do with their personal styles than 12-tone theory. (Remember, Alban Berg wrote some 12-tone stuff that is very close to tonal music.) There is an aesthetic behind 12-tone music, if you believe it or not, and a sense of this aesthetic existed -before- there was 12-tone music. The system was merely an attempt to organise this aesthetic.
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Thus, it is trying to keep the music random, by avoiding all tonalities and making sure all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are used in equal distribution. At least, that's what true 12-tone theory states.
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The way 12-tone technique is used however, can provide highly different results. -Exactly- like you mentioned it in regard to fugues. The way you order a tone row, the intervals it consists of, the way you let them appear polyphonically, the rhythm, dynamics, timbre, tone repetitions, articulation, and so on all give a dodecaphonic composition a very individual face. If you seriously think this sounds random, you either haven't listened to actual random music, or to 12 tone music. (I could understand it a bit more if you applied it to certain later serialist works, like Boulez' "structures", but Schoenberg/Webern/Berg's music definitely sounds
nothing like random.)
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Regarding fugues: They do have strict rules. However, if you abide strictly by those rules with no freedom of expression, you get the crap that 19th century composers turned out in fugues. You need to have some freedom to it. That's what makes Bach the ultimate master of the fugue. He knew how to control it to his advantage, taking the rules and bending them to his needs.
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The same applies to every 12-tone composition by a good composer.
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To have a purpose is not random. However, that purpose can be random. Making sure that all 12 notes are used equally, to avoid any standard views on tonality is trying to be as random as possible. It might not be random in the sense that it's very structured, but the purpose of it is to make the music as random as possible, to the ears of the listener.
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Again: 12 tone music wasn't invented in order to sound as atonal as possible. It was, for the composeres of the second Viennese school, a -necessity-, to bring more structure into their already "established" ideal of atonal, expressive music. And how can you seriously think that an even distribution of all twelve notes in a piece of music is enough to make it sound random? Is there no such thing as intervallic lines, harmonies, rhythm, polyphonic workings etc.? Or do you only listen to the statistic distribution of notes in a piece?
(And before you say that this distribution, again, is the actual purpose of 12 tone theory: No. Of course Schoenberg said something about making "all notes equal". This doesn't mean distribution though, but trying to write music in which the expressive quality, or beauty if you want, of every single note can shine at its best. This had the 12-tone system with an even distribution of pitches as a -result-, not as a musical cause.)
I can accept if somebody doesn't like this music. But calling something like Weberns music random just shows me that the person has never seriously listened to this music.