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.

The introductory chapter begins by offering a rebuttal to Ethan Haimo’s claim in Schoenberg's Transformation of Musical Language (Cambridge, 2006) that “atonal” is an inappropriate term for Schoenberg's middle-period music. It does so by presenting Schenkerian analyses of “Jesus bettelt,” Op. 2, No. 2, and the first Piano Piece, Op. 11, demonstrating that the traditional contrapuntal structures of tonal music are present in the first piece, though often harmonized with unusual chords, but are incomplete or non-existent in the second piece. The chapter then proceeds to show how features originally characteristic of tonal music, other than typical Schenkerian middlegrounds, play crucial roles in organizing Op. 11, No. 1 – traditional tonal form, as well as motivic and harmonic processes that manifest and elaborate the “musical idea,” a conflict-elaboration-solution narrative.