Motives and Chords
The characters in Elektra are famously characterized in the music through leitmotifs or chords including the Elektra chord. Klytaemnestra, in contrast to Agamemnon's clearly diatonic minor triad motif, is characterized by a bitonal six note collection most often represented as a pair of two minor chords a tritone apart, typically on B and F, rather than simultaneously.
Agamemnon is depicted through a triadic motive:
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Famous quotes containing the words motives and/or chords:
“There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)