Process and Morphology in the Music of Mozart

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In earlier studies I have suggested that once a patterned process is begun it tends to be continued to a point of relative stability.1 As a result, patterned processes imply more or less specific modes of continuation and more or less probable points of closure or realization. In tonal music there are innumerable instances of such implicative processes: for example, triadic and changing-note melodies, bar forms and antecedent-consequent periods, harmonic sequences through the circle-of-fifths, fourth-species counterpoint relationships, anapest rhythmic groups, and so on. The realization of an implicative process may be either proximate or remote. Complex melodies, for instance, usually generate a number of alternative processes. Some of these alternatives will achieve relative stability before, or more often at, the point of closure. Realization is proximate. Other implicative processes will transcend closure: that is, they will be temporarily suspended and then resumed, reaching a point of relative stability after other alternative patterns have reached closure or after novel patterns (with their own implicative processes) have intervened. In such cases, realization is remote. Finally, there are cases in which realization does not occur at all.