The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis
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This analogy owes its origin to Edward T. Cone, whose short book Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: Norton, 1968) remains a valuable resource for performers and a pleasurable reading experience. Cone discusses the ball-throwing analogy on pages 26-27:

If I throw a ball and you catch it, the completed action must consist of three parts: the throw, the transit, and the catch. There are, so to speak, two fixed points: the initiation of the energy and the goal toward which it is directed; the time and distance between them are spanned by the moving ball. In the same way, the typical musical phrase consists of an initial downbeat . . . a period of motion . . . . and a point of arrival marked by a cadential downbeat.
Part of Cone's challenge to performers is simply to raise questions for thought. For example, he begins Chapter 2 (p. 32) with these questions: "Sooner or later every discussion of the problems of musical performance seems to raise the question of the ideal interpretation: is there such a thing? Does one perfect performance of a composition subsist as the ideal toward which every actual one should aspire?" He later concludes (p. 34): "Every valid interpretation . . . represents, not an approximation of some ideal, but a choice: which of the relationships implicit in this piece are to be emphasized, to be made explicit?"