ABSTRACT
The organic character of, say, Stravinsky’s neoclassical works cannot be proved one way or the other. Indeed, only very weakly can a distinction be drawn along these lines, can the concept of developing variation be used to distinguish the music of the earlier and more familiar sources from this present Symphony and other excluded repertories such as the neoclassical; only very weakly can the claim of a distinct critical tradition be made, in other words, confined as this has been to the “homophonic” music of Schoenberg’s particular choice. In acknowledging neoclassicism, analysis must deal with ideas which are often partial in themselves or which can only be applied partially. For the interaction between the octatonic Collection I and the diatonic C-scale in the Symphony figures as one of many interactions involving the octatonic and diatonic sets, while Motive A together with its subsequent transformations is but one of many tritone polarities that emerge from such interactions.
