What is it that we find so interesting and attractive in Janáček's music? Is it its energy? Its drama? Its portrayal of human emotions? Its imagination? Its quirkiness? Of course, it is all of these, but there is something more fundamental, less apparent, yet essential: a deep motivic and structural unity animated by highly individual rhythmic designs. Motives recur throughout pieces more often than with other composers, serving melodic, harmonic, and structural functions, but they do not project the simple metric structures of much classical music; instead, they display more of the changing rhythm, contour, and tension levels of speech or of other ideas and images. They become the carriers of the energy and drama, making the music distinctive and memorable, colorful and exciting, but also idiosyncratic, esoteric, sometimes haunting. This study looks at this distinctive unity through a series of analyses to trace its development and examine its structural details. It attempts to answer basic questions about Janáček's music in order to reveal some of its appeal: What are the structural elements that give it shape and provide its unique qualities? What are the details that build the structures? What gives the music interest and creates its character? This study also considers how the profound concept of a music–life connection expressed in the quotation above translates to the compositional process and the actual notes on a page. The book progresses from Janáček's earliest works to the latest to trace the development of the structural features and looks at the elements that give his compositions unity and personality.

Janáček believed that a connection between music and life is encapsulated in motives: although they are the minute structural elements of musical compositions, they are also found in nature and everyday life situations. They may be derived from scales, but also from speech and other naturalsounds; their manipulation and transformation mark the progression of musical events, but also life events.