THE COMMUNICATIVE FORCE OF WAGNERS LEITMOTIVS - COMPLEMENTARY RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THEIR CONNOTATIONS AND DENOTATIONS

Wagner's leitmotifs were intentionally constructed as compact, discret e musical units charged with extramusical meaning. Should they be cons idered merely as arbitrary signifiers, whose signifieds are discovered only through the dramatic context of their appearance? The research r eported here rejects this possibility, demonstrating experimentally th at the leitmotifs bear inherent meaning. It is this meaning that grant s them their communicative potential and provides a basis for the spec ific message given them in the setting of the specific musical work. A selection of nine representative leitmotifs from Wagner's Ring cycle was played to subjects during the course of a two-part experiment. The first part, which was designed on the basis of the semantic different ial technique, yielded several significant factors that defined an inc lusive connotative space. The second part of the experiment was design ed and evaluated according to the ''semantic integral'' method, which was developed for the purpose of adding a denotative dimension, using titles given to the leitmotifs by the subjects. The results substantia ted the existence of complementary relations between the connotative a nd denotative aspects of the leitmotifs. Findings of this sort should assist in explaining how the leitmotifs function within the dramatic c ontext. The methods applied, as well as the findings arrived at, discl ose, we believe, essential characteristics of the semantic structure o f music in general.