Motivic Pattern Extraction in Symbolic Domain - Intelligent Music Information Systems: Tools and Methodologies - page 247

Figure 7. Heterogeneous motivic description of Ode to Joy, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The 13-
note motive is exactly repeated, except the modification of a unison (diat = 0) into a decreasing second
interval (diat = -1) between the 10 th and 11 th notes of each occurrence.

The heterogeneous pattern representation may
offer an answer to this question, through a decou-
pling of the choice of musical dimensions and the
construction of patterns. A full understanding of the
perceptive properties of motivic patterns requires
a chronological view of the construction of these
structures, in terms of an incremental concatenation
of successive intervals. The dependency of such
constructions upon long- and short-term memory
may be understood in this incremental approach.
More precisely, the initiation of a new occurrence
of a pattern requires, as previously, a matching
in long-term memory along interval dimensions.
However, in this framework, it may be suggested
that the further extensions of a discovered new
occurrence do not require such a demanding
computational effort. Indeed, once the first in-

seems cognitively implausible because of the
large size of its content, the resulting combinatory
explosion of possible results, and the insufficient
specificity of the query (cf. Dowling & Harwood,
1986). However, this restriction leads to paradoxes
(Dowling & Fujitani, 1971; Dowling & Harwood,
1986): if gross contour has no impact on long-term
memory, how could the different occurrences of
the familiar four-note theme throughout the first
movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (Figure
5) actually be detected? One suggested explana-
tion is that the numerous repetitions of the motive
enable a memorization of the contour pattern in
long-term memory. Yet, could not this motive be
detected, due to its intrinsic construction, even
when repeated only a couple of times throughout
the piece (such as in Figure 8)?

Figure 8. The famous four-note pattern at the beginning of the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony is considered here as a concatenation of two unison intervals and a decreasing contour, in
a uniform quaver rhythm. Any new instance of this pattern, such as the instance far later at bar 59 is
detected following a two-step process: The specific description of the first two intervals triggers the
matching, whereas the extension of the matching can follow a less specific contour description.