ABSTRACT
An interesting exercise for an instructor is to ask the members of a music analysis class to define the term “motive.” Traditionally, the term has referred to a short musical figure, often having a recognizable rhythmic pattern that is repeated and developed in the course of a musical composition. Motivic repetition and transformation are fundamental tools of Western art music, and our understanding of the music of a particular composer-let’s choose Beethoven as a prime example-depends in part on our recognition of this aspect of a composer’s technique and of how this is represented in a particular composition. But it is also important for you to understand that the term motive has quite a different meaning within the context of Schenkerian analysis. For Schenker, the concept of motive is linked to his notion of structural levels. Once an idea is repeated at a deeper level of structure, it is no longer associated with a particular rhythmic articulation. What defines it as a motivic repetition is the particular succession of pitches, or, in the case of a transposition of the original idea, a particular succession of scale degrees. In essence, then, “motive” in this context is really a succession of pitches that can appear at different structural levels, not just at the surface. But I want to make it clear that this conception does not deny the importance of our understanding of surface motivic manipulation any more than his ideas on structure and form deny the value of traditional formal analysis. They just deal with different aspects of musical organization.
