Many years earlier Adorno had convinced Krenek that music might be moving toward the condition of extemporaneous speech, developing its subject matter on a line through time as a thought is developed in speech. Forward movement was achieved by exploration, confrontation, interlocution, contradiction—perfect process for piecing together his interesting cells. Such an open form did not allow for patterns of theme and variation, and interest tended to be concentrated in discrete moments. But these moments could be woven into a loose network of contrast, similarity, and repetition of cellular bits—or, as Krenek liked to think of them, objects in space. What is significant here is that in relying on intuition rather than on arrays of numbers, Krenek was returning to the practice of his early days, and now, as then, his intuition was personal, sonorous, expressive, and emotional, even though he continued to use the stylistic features—wide intervals, abrupt dynamic shifts, percussive instrumentation—of his most mechanistic serial works.
Stewart, J. L. (1991). Ernst Krenek: The man and his music. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Perhaps this parallel idea I wrote about earlier is coming from similar sources? That would be surprising as I’m finding Rochberg and Adorno to have been likely opposed in intellectual and philosophical opinions on music. This is SO interesting!!