Figure (music)

In Beethoven's Fifth Symphony a four-note figure becomes the most important motif  Play (help·info) of the work, extended melodically and harmonically to provide the main theme of the first movement.

A musical figure is the shortest idea in music, a short succession of notes, often recurring. It may have melodic pitch, harmonic progression and rhythmic (duration). The 1964 Grove's Dictionary defines the figure as "the exact counterpart of the German 'motiv' and the French 'motif'": it produces a "single complete and distinct impression". To Scruton (1997: 61), however, "A figure is distinguished from a motif in that a figure is background while a motif is foreground: "A figure resembles a moulding in architecture: it is 'open at both ends', so as to be endlessly repeatable. In hearing a phrase as a figure, rather than a motif, we are at the same time placing it in the background, even if it is...strong and melodious."

A phrase originally presented or heard as a motif may become a figure which accompanies another melody, such as in the second movement of Claude Debussy's String Quartet. Perhaps it is best to view a figure as a motif when it has special importance in a piece.

Minimalist and developmental music may be constructed entirely from figures. Roger Scruton (1997: 63) describes music by Philip Glass such as Akhnaten as "nothing but figures...endless daisy-chains". A basic figure is known as a riff in American popular music.

Sources

• Scruton, Roger (1997). The Aesthetics of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-816638-9.
• Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1990). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music (Musicologie générale et sémiologue, 1987). Translated by Carolyn Abbate (1990). ISBN 0-691-02714-5.
• (1964). Grove's Dictionary. cited in Scruton, Roger (1997).