The se­quence is the in­ner breath of the mo­tifs and, there­fore, the in­ner breath of the melody as well.

The se­quence is that force which, from within, sus­tains the as­pects of the motif in their di­ver­sity as the melody. When the motif ele­ments of the melody tend to fall apart – which would disrupt the de­scrip­tion of the motif’s life – the se­quence unites the waves of mu­sic even stronger.

As the motif sets out on its in­di­vid­ual path of life, it ex­pands into the melody, and this is due to the natu­ral for­ma­tive power of the se­quence which per­me­ates it from within with the har­mo­niz­ing quali­ties of joy.

The com­po­si­tional rules ac­cord­ing to which the se­quence guides the motif on its life-path in the melody are called the “se­quence-tech­nique.”

To the lis­tener the melody is his per­sonal jour­ney through the worlds of the mo­tifs; and the melody ap­pears to him as a more com­pre­hen­sive form of the motif, as the more mani­fold ex­pres­sion of the motif.

The melody, by na­ture, is not a sum of mo­tifs, rather it has grown en­tirely from a sin­gle motif, just as a tree grows from a sin­gle seed.

A sum of mo­tifs, there­fore, does not yet con­sti­tute a natu­rally grown melody but is com­pa­ra­ble to a tree that has been ar­ti­fi­cially as­sem­bled.