Post History

Ought laypeople be able to imagine a tone row's transformations in their head, without hearing or playing them?

I've been listening to the Second Viennese School for 5 years now, and I love their music. Yet whenever I listen to a tone row, especially a new one, I can't hear its transformations in my head. I must hear or play them repeatedly to memorize them. Thus I ask the question in the title out of curiosity.

[This Reddit comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/4cec5r/the_blind_spots_of_pierre_boulez/d1hyf5k/) alludes that some musicologists can hear them in their head? 

>I had a professor who sincerely believed people should be able to recognize a tone row in all it permutations in the same way one can recognize a scale. (And couldn't understand why we didn't or care to learn.)