Musical Motives: A Theory and Method for Analyzing Shape in Music

Book Description

All music fans harbor in their memories vivid fragments of their favorite works. The starting guitar solo of “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, the da-da-da-DUM gesture that opens Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the lush swelling chords of a beloved movie soundtrack: hearing the briefest snippet of any of these is enough to transport listeners into the piece’s sonic and emotional world. But what makes musical motives so powerful? In Musical Motives, author Brent Auerbach looks at the ways that motives ― the small-scale pitch and rhythm shapes that are ever-present in music ― unify musical compositions and shape our experiences of them.

Motives serve both to communicate basic musical meaning and to tie together sound space like the motifs in visual art. They present in all genres from classical and popular to jazz and world music, making them ideally suited for analysis. Musical Motives opens with a general introduction to these fundamental building blocks, then lays out a comprehensive theory and method to account for music’s structure and drama in motivic terms. Aimed at both amateur and expert audiences, the book offers a tiered approach that progresses from Basic to Complex Motivic Analysis. The methods are illustrated by small- and large-scale analyses of pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Chaminade, Verdi, Radiohead, and many more.

中文：

书名：音乐动机：音乐形体分析的理论与方法

所有的乐迷在他们的记忆中都有他们最喜欢的作品的生动片段。滚石乐队令人满意的吉他独奏，开启了贝多芬第五交响曲的华丽手势，一首心爱的电影配乐的郁郁葱葱的膨胀和弦：听到其中任何一段最简短的片段，就足以将听众带入这首曲子的声音和情感世界。但是，是什么让音乐动机如此强大呢？在……里面音乐动机，作者布伦特·奥尔巴赫研究了动机–音乐中一直存在的小规模音高和节奏形状–如何统一音乐作品并塑造我们对它们的体验。

动机既用于传达基本的音乐意义，又像视觉艺术中的主题一样将声音空间联系在一起。它们呈现在从古典和流行到爵士乐和世界音乐的所有流派中，使它们非常适合分析。音乐动机 首先是对这些基本构件的一般介绍，然后列出了一个全面的理论和方法来解释音乐的结构和动机方面的戏剧。针对业余和专家受众，这本书提供了一个分层的方法，从基本到复杂的动机分析。这些方法通过对莫扎特、贝多芬、亨德尔、夏米纳德、威尔第、电台司令等人作品的小规模和大规模分析来说明。