  The pulsation equations for spherically symmetric black hole and soliton
solutions are brought into a standard form. The formulae apply to a large class
of field theoretical matter models and can easily be worked out for specific
examples. The close relation to the energy principle in terms of the second
variation of the Schwarzschild mass is also established. The use of the general
expressions is illustrated for the Einstein-Yang-Mills and the Einstein-Skyrme
system.
