Proportional Exchange in Stravinsky's Early Serial Music

Abstract

Igor Stravinsky's profound respect for Anton Webern's work manifests itself in his early serial music.' The tone row that appears in the Pas-de-Deux movement of Agon (mm. 452-62 and mm. 495-519), for example, is quite similar to the one in Webern's Variations for Orchestra Op. 30 in that their intervallic patterns and symmetrical partitions are almost identical.2 A twelve-tone technique used in the third movement of Canticum Sacrum (mm. 148-53, mm. 169-73, and mm. 178-83) resembles that in Webern's Quartet, Op. 22: two different rows are assigned to two contrapuntal melodic lines, and partitions of the rows switch between these two lines.