Chapter 2 demonstrates how the second and third Piano Pieces of Op. 11 form a cycle together with the first, in that they take up motives, harmonies, and processes that were introduced in the first piece, and use them to create narratives of conflict, elaboration, and solution – “musical ideas.” Op. 11’s processes include an expansion of pitch intervals within motives that generalizes into an expansion of pitch-class intervals within set classes, and an “explanatory” process that shows how unfamiliar pitch-interval collections can be reconciled to familiar motives through set-class identity with them. In Op. 11, No. 2, a conflict between set classes and motives similar to the one found in Op. 11, No. 1, is elaborated and resolved using the “explanatory” process, among other devices. In Op. 11, No. 3, the expanding and explanatory processes exist side by side in conflict, but rather than coming together in a solution, the expanding process simply crowds out the explanatory one, so that the “musical idea” is incomplete. My analysis of Op. 11, No. 3, pushes back against the common notion of the piece as “athematic,” in that it portrays the piece as a battle of motivic processes.

Chapter 4 approaches “Erwartung,” Op. 17, as a leitmotivic opera, in contrast to previous literature that emphasizes its “athematic” and “amotivic” qualities. The process within which the opera’s central motive transforms from <D, F, C#> (and its set-class 3-3) to <D, F, A, C#>, and finally into a quotation from Schoenberg’s Op. 6 song “Am Wegrand” portrays a two-step image of emergence – first of the dead body of the Woman’s lover, and then of the realization that he is dead, and she will live the rest of her life without him in “collective loneliness.” This process of motivic emergence is similar to the “cumulative settings” that J. Peter Burkholder proposed for the music of Charles Ives (but the elements that undergo this process in Schoenberg's music are much smaller). In addition, my analysis shows how families of set classes also serve leitmotivic functions: representing the lover’s body, the Woman’s fear, startling objects in the forest, and momentary feelings of reassurance. In this way, Erwartung can be understood as an inspiration for Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck.