Motif

Motif, in Western music, a short melodic or rhythmic segment of a theme that repeats throughout a composition. Also known as a motive, a motif may contain as few as two notes. Although a motif is often repeated in a slightly varied or elaborated way, it carries a recognizable form throughout the composition.

Much music of the baroque style, which lasted from the end of the 1500s until about 1750, consists of compositions created from a few motifs. In baroque music, modulation, or the changing from one key to another, is often constructed from a motif. Music that is characterized by the use of many motifs—for example, the Symphony No. 5 by early 19th-century German composer Ludwig van Beethoven—is referred to as motivic. Nineteenth-century German composer Richard Wagner applied the term leitmotiv (German for “leading motive”) to a recurring theme that identifies various characters, places, events, and situations throughout his operas, particularly in his opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring).