Stravinsky’s music in this opera is in the neoclassical style. He uses counterpoint a lot in this opera. This helped him later on to write serial music: music in which all 12 notes in an octave are equally important. Tom sings some words in the second act of The Rake’s Progress which suggest that Stravinsky is going to widen his compositional style in this way: “Vary the song, O London, change!/Disband your notes and let them range”.