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A Conclusion

As a final suggestion it should again be noted that the "play" or double edge of Stravinsky's invention is not as new or as exceptional as might at first be imagined. For if, in past tonal music, measures were routinely added or deleted at higher levels of metrical structure with expectations of periodicity, disruption, and readjustment, then it can be seen that in Stravinsky's case these same processes were merely shifted to different and more immediate structural levels. Thus, to take a famous example already cited, in the first movement of Mozart's G Minor Symphony thematic statements are introduced at m.1 and m.20, so that, at some point in these first twenty measures, the two-measure module is broken as the accents at this level shift from the odd- to the even-numbered measures.[45] And in the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3, the repeat of the entire exposition can be heard and understood as embodying a similar contradiction or reversal at the two-measure level, with the accents at the even-numbered measures shifting to the odd-numbered measures at some point during the exposition.[46]

To be sure, the invention with Stravinsky presumes a new concept of motivic repetition, of harmony and formal outline. Yet the relationship here is important, because it points again to underlying assumptions of conventional dance periodicity. So, too, the radical-conservative dichotomy in perception shifts to another level of metrical structure.


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