In its atomisation of the material and its agglomeration of the motivic cells through multiple connections, it isolates its musical parameters (mode of attack, rhythm, texture, register, and agogics) and employs them in a structural though unsystematic manner that foreshadows the integral serialism of the 1950s.

[8] Characteristic of these pieces is a lack of motivic repetition or development and a rejection of traditional notions of balance and cadential, goal-oriented movement, supposedly deferring the musical discourse to a kind of stream-of-consciousness, or subjective, emotional expression.

In likening these developments to contemporary styles in visual art (Schoenberg was himself a painter), notably Kandinsky's, with whom he had contact, the composer tellingly describes painting "without architecture ... an ever-changing, unbroken succession of colours, rhythms and moods".

[9] The violence and suddenness of this emancipation from tradition was influenced by turbulent events in Schoenberg's life at the time: his wife Mathilde had recently eloped with the painter Richard Gerstl (who committed suicide when Mathilde returned to her husband), and in the professional sphere, his work was increasingly being met with hostility or incomprehension, as at the premiere of the Second String Quartet in 1908.

However, Schoenberg at this time saw no contradiction in pursuing more seemingly traditional projects, such as the orchestration of his hyper-Wagnerian Gurre-Lieder (completed in 1911).