Ernst Kurth

Ernst Kurth (1 June 1886, in Vienna – 2 August 1946, in Bern) was a Swiss music theorist of Austrian origin.

Kurth studied musicology with Guido Adler (a student of Bruckner and Hanslick) in Vienna, and earned his Ph.D. (1908) with a thesis about Christoph Willibald Gluck's operatic style.

In a relatively short publishing career of about 15 years, Kurth wrote four enormously influential works: Grundlagen des Linearen Kontrapunkts (Foundations of Linear Counterpoint), Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners "Tristan" (Romantic Harmony and its Crisis in Wagner's "Tristan"), Bruckner, and Musikpsychologie.

A developmental motif is one which gradually changes or grows, becoming a structural carrier of formal developments.

Unfortunately, only a small selection of excerpts from Kurth's writings was translated into English by Lee A.