Leonard B. Meyer - Style and music (1989)

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In 'pure' instrumental music, the strategies chosen by composers to create unity were responsive to the tenets of Romanticism... Even in the absence of an explicit program, motivic continuity created a kind of narrative coherence. Like the chief character in a novel, the 'fortunes' of the main motive—its development, variation, and encounters with other 'protagonists'—served as a source of constancy throughout the unfolding of the musical process.

Leonard B. Meyer