The mu­si­cal motif ex­pres­ses a trait of the hu­man char­ac­ter. The change of the motif dur­ing the com­po­si­tion dis­plays the free play of that qual­ity in the mani­fold field of hu­man char­ac­ter­is­tics; but also, the change of the motif de­scribes how a trait of the hu­man char­ac­ter is be­ing freed from the world of limi­ta­tions.

The skil­ful mu­si­cal-com­po­si­tional han­dling of the motif cor­re­sponds to the skil­ful han­dling of our hu­man quali­ties, and can be com­pared to the dex­ter­ity of a juggler who holds the ele­ments only briefly in his hands, and re­leases them again as quickly as pos­si­ble, which al­lows him to bring more and more ele­ments un­der his con­trol and to mas­ter his play more and more com­pre­hen­sively.

Here the free power over the ele­ments in motion domi­nates, as op­posed to the rigid pos­ses­sion of non-mov­ing parts; and this anal­ogy sig­ni­fies the play­ful ease by which the mas­tery over our in­ner-hu­man forces is ex­er­cised in the ap­plied motif-tech­nique.

In the world of mo­tifs of a clas­si­cal com­po­si­tion the free mas­tery over our lively in­ner-hu­man forces over­comes the lim­it­ing rigidity of our char­ac­ter. Thus, the play­ful ele­ment of life raises the beauty of crea­tive ex­pres­sion into the light of the world of mu­sic.

There­fore the com­poser uses the mu­si­cal motif to dis­play a more and more com­pre­hen­sive per­sonal mas­tery over the many facets of our char­ac­ter.

The mu­si­cal mo­tifs are mani­fold, as mani­fold as the traits of our char­ac­ter; and the ex­pres­sion of the mu­si­cal mo­tifs may be as subtle as the subtle gradua­tions of the fea­tures of our char­ac­ter.