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Renaissance & 20th century

So many questions and comments.....I'll respond to the one most likely to result in more clarity.
"Could you share what you think is so Palestrina-like in Schoenberg's music?"

Composers in the Renaissance wrote complex melodic polyphony. Paired voices in imitation was a common device, whereby two voices imitated each other singing one melodic idea, and another pair concurrently imitated each other with a second melodic idea. The emphasis was on the horizontal or melodic relationship of the voices; the resulting vertical 'chords' were controlled to a degree, but not ordered.
This is in contrast to music of the common practice period, where tonal harmony was achieved through the ordering of chords.

In the Renaissance, incidental vertical (harmonic) dissonance could occur as a result of the exact melodic imitation, and was accepted. It is even possible that the practice of musica ficta resulted in a shifting chromaticism throughout a performance. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_ficta
This was examined by Lowinsky in his "The Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet".

Imitation in the music of Lassus and Palestrina could be direct or by inversion, or even by retrograde inversion. The first song in Lassus' "Cantiones Duarum Vocum" opens with the lower voice singing D C# D, imitated by the upper voice singing A Bb A, the melodic inversion. In song #2, the first three notes are imitated directly, the next four are imitated in retrograde inversion, both backwards and upside down.
These techniques resulted in works of magnificent melodic unity.

Schoenberg went back to these principles of musical organization. His tone rows were also used in inversion, retrograde and retrograde inversion. Schoenberg sometimes composed with symmetrical rows which resulted in, for example, the retrograde being the same as the inversion, all for the sake of musical unity. The melodic relationship of the voices took precedence over the vertical, but that too was controlled by ear, as in the Renaissance. His student, Webern, had written his thesis on the music of Heinrich Isaac, and specifically referenced the Netherlandish Renaissance composers in a series of lectures he gave on the new music.

I have gone into such detail to avoid the accusation of being fond of the music but uncertain about the notes.

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