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The smallest recognizable musical idea — a short rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic figure that can generate larger structures through development.
A good motif is brief (2–5 notes), distinctive, and developable. It should have a clear rhythmic profile and melodic shape. The best motifs (Beethoven's "da-da-da-DUM") can generate entire movements through fragmentation, sequence, augmentation, and inversion.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 — the four-note motif (three short notes and one long) generates virtually all the thematic material in the first movement.
Motif is one of 1760 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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