This is a really interesting and unusual score. I discovered that that first cue is largely made up of differing forms of octatonic sets which modulate to the two differing transpositional sets. He also mixes different scale forms (see Bartok violin sonata 1 and 2). It’s not atonal in this sense but rather 12 tone which is not quite the same thing and falls under the term Polymodal Chromaticism. This means combining different scale forms and the modes that can be drawn from them.
JW’s chromatic technique is not unique and I think lends itself more to Bartok’s use of pitch organisation then any strict serial approaches. The Dies Irae pattern recurs in a number of JW’s scores of course as does other familiar chromatic patterns. Some of the melodic directions or motifs are repeated and developed (changed) as you’d expect…
