I strive for :

           complete liberation from all forms
from all symbols
of cohesion
and logic.
     Thus :
Away with "motivic working out."
Away with harmony as cement or bricks of a building.
     Harmony is expression
     and nothing else.
     .  .  .
          My music must be
          brief.
     Concise !  In two notes :  not built, but 'expressed' ! !
          And the results I wish for :
          no stylized and sterile protracted emotion.
          People are not like that :
          It is impossible for a person to have only one sensation at a
          time.
               One has thousands simultaneously.  And these thousands
     can no more readily be added together than an apple and a pear.
     They go their own ways.
               And this variegation, this multifariousness, this illogicality
     which our senses demonstrate, the illogicality presented by
     their interactions, set forth by some mounting rush of blood,
     by some reaction of the senses or the nerves, this I should
     like to have in my music.

~ Schoenberg letter to Busoni, 1909

[written shortly after the completion of

the op.11 piano pieces and

the Five Pieces for Orchestra, op.16]