From the historical focus of chapter 1, I now turn to a theoretical perspective. Historical background and folk music appear when appropriate, but the emphasis is on analytical details. The three basic concepts of Janáček's theoretical and compositional thinking—atomism, stratification, and interpenetration—are fundamental considerations: atomism in the discussion of motives, stratification in the discussion of rhythm, and interpenetration in the discussion of form. This chapter has ten subdivisions that do not need to be read in sequence; the reader may choose various topics and return to others as they arise later in the book. The topics are:

• 1. Motives

• 2. Melody

• 3. Counterpoint

• 4. Scales and Collections

• 5. Tonality

• 6. Harmony

• 7. Rhythm and Phrasing

• 8. Form

• 9. Texture

• 10. Text/Music Relationships

Motives

A motive is an atomic structural unit that on its own lacks coherence and becomes meaningful only with repetition and development. Repetition distinguishes a motive from a musical figure, any small structural unit; we could say that repetition promotes a figure to the status of a motive. A motive may be melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, or even orchestrational, though most often it is a melodic/rhythmic construct. Unlike Janáček, I do not consider keys to be motives, but I will employ the categories of fixed pitch-class motive, sound motive, and interruption motive, all clarified below.

In this study a melodic/rhythmic motive is defined in two distinct but related ways. First, a motive is a recurring, ordered collection of two to six notes, an identifiable set of pitch intervals normally associated with specific pitch classes. It is also associated with a specific rhythm. A piece or a section of a piece normally employs one motive whose basic intervallic and rhythmic forms can be defined. I refer to this as the primary form. After its initial appearance, a motive returns in original and varied forms to provide a uni-fying element within a piece. Motivic intervals expand and contract to suit the underlying harmony, but also to create developmental growth and decay. Janáček states that variations arise from the depiction of changing emotional states; we will add that in general they are tied to the harmony. Emotion determines the approximate size of intervals, while harmony determines the specific pitches.