by John Sarkis

Created on: August 19, 2011

The best way to explain motivic development in music, is to use literature as an
example. The great composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and especially Richard Strauss, Mahler and Shostakovich, were some of the most exceptional when it came to impressive motivic development in music.

When your child is approximate 6 years old and starts to learn how to write (assuming they have already learned the alphabet), one of the first things they are taught is how to compose simple subject/predicate sentences (e.g., Jane is hungry - David went home). Ergo, now picture your child finishing college - he/she have decided to get a PH.D in English and are currently working on their thesis. They are now masters of the English language - they can analyze

sentence/paragraph structures by Locke, Hume, Proust, Joyce, Mann, Shakespeare and Tolstoy.... Well, music is no different when one takes this concept as an example. In fact, music shares many commonalities with literature, philosophy, math and science.

Two very famous compositions will be used in discussing motivic development in music: ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and the first/main theme from the first movement of ‘Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor’. ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ has 0 motivic development, it’s most likely strophic, which means it has no set musical form. Adam Smith says that primitives societies (whom he refers to as savages) will learn how to say nouns before they learn how to say anything else; likewise in music, primitive cultures and societies did not have a concept of musical form/structure in the beginning, hence the first compositions were mostly strophic songs with little to no set form (In music, a short uncomplicated melody in is known as a “Period”). Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 5’ shows great musical development.

Shortly after the main theme (the famous tune of the first movement),
development occurs (when a theme continues and is fully developed in different keys through the process of variation - this is known in music as “Sentences”) and goes on and on until, the second theme presents itself. In contrast to Mahler and Shostakovitch, Beethoven’s ‘Sentences’ are not that impressive; nevertheless, Beethoven’s ‘Sentences’ are outstanding when you compare them with

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