Well, to answer the premise of the question of the title - yes it can.

Okay cool, you can go now, bye.

12 tone music get’s a lot of bad press. At university, anytime Schoenberg’s name or the 12-tone system were mention there would be audible moans. I knew the music as being atmospheric, romantic, sometimes spiky, but overall I had played many of the short expressionistic and 12-tone piano pieces in high school with wonder.

If I am ever to come across someone who poo-poo’s 12 tone music (which is rare in the new music circles I generally move in) I would send them to Luigi Dallapicolla’s Il Prigioniero. This was a stunning work, that reminded me a lot of Berg’s opera’s in their ability to retain a lyrical and at times tonal feeling about the musical langue, but also this work is firmly in the lyrical Italian opera tradition.

Short and to the point, this work packs a huge emotional and political punch. The lyrical lines lend themselves to beautiful and mellifluous singing, something that at times is missing in the stage works of Schoenberg or Berg. It seems a shame that this work and Dallapicolla’s work in general isn’t more widely know. He is operating at a level on par with Berg, Webern and Schoenberg, and this operatic style could easily set alongside Berg in the major opera houses.

Shameless vertical integration plug - I have a new YouTube video coming out on Wednesday talking about why you should listen to Schoenberg’s music. In the video I argue that at the core of Schoenberg’s music is this clash of the desire to create something new and to continue the great German tradition. Sometimes the more progressive works overshadow his more lyrical works, or the lyrical aspects of the 12-tone works aren’t acknowledged (I would argue the Piano concerto is often overlooked as a work of lyrical music). It’s easier to dismiss the highly chromatic and often dissonant material as ugly or inhumane. I would argue you need to think of the social context of these work, the intention of the piece and needing to listen to them not via recordings but in a resonant, live acoustic and with an open appreciation to accept the unfamiliar.

Il Prigioniero doesn’t have the sort of feel of a musical pilgrimage that Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron and even Berg’s Lulu can sometimes feel like. The musical language and the world it inhabits is lyrical, lush, shimmering and appropriately dark and terrifying.

It’s a remarkable work of modernist music theatre and I would highly recommend it to opera and music lovers as an undiscovered gem, full of surprising and beautiful moments.

From Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/8y03yk/lets_talk_about_12_tone_serialism/