Identifying motif
Leitmotif used for characterization.
What it means
An identifying motif (German Erkennungsmotiv) is a musical idea that is assigned to a person, an object, a place, or a notion and sounds whenever these are meant. The term stands in close relation to the leitmotif; some accounts use the two with the same meaning, others understand by the identifying motif the plainer form that simply recurs and is recognized, whereas the leitmotif changes and develops in the course of the work.
Musical use
The simple form, in which a recurring idea announces a character or recalls a situation, is found in the opera of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is effective through the connection of sound and meaning: the listener learns the assignment and recognizes, when it reappears, what the music refers to, even if the character itself is not present.
In the opera of the later nineteenth century the procedure was developed into a comprehensive system. Motifs there are not merely repeated but transformed, combined, and placed in ever new contexts; the orchestra comments on the action, recalls, foreshadows, and shows connections that the characters themselves do not speak. For this stage the designation leitmotif is usual.
In film music the principle lives on on a large scale; characters, places, and moods often receive recognizable themes of their own there.
The identifying motif is to be distinguished from the idée fixe, a single recurring main idea in instrumental music that carries a notion through a whole work, and from the theme in the sense of the study of form, which need not have any extra-musical meaning.
The term is often used with the same meaning as leitmotif but designates more precisely a plainer form: a motif that recurs whenever a person or thing appears, without changing substantially. The leitmotif in Wagner's sense, by contrast, is worked out, transformed, and linked with others.
Performance practice
If a motif carries a meaning, shape it recognizably at every appearance — whatever the voice or register. Watch for changes: a transformed motif tells something about the progress of the plot. And, with opera music, read the text along; it explains why a motif appears at a particular place.