Husa, "Music for Prague 1968" toccata

This is one of the more modern conceptions of music which aims to showcase motive and color rather than fitting a traditional form.

This movement begins with a rhythmic 6/8 unison chord throughout the orchestra, but from there the movement has little formal organization. The next several minutes consists of several contrasting motives that weave in and out of one another, ranging from a woodwind motive that is rhythmically jagged and has several very large leaps to a brass motive that consists of long tones that are very dissonant and emphasize a lot of close relationships like seconds. The point of the this is to sound erratic and crazy because it references the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968 after several months of increasing liberalism. Despite this, the song does have some sort of predictability. After hearing a motive the first time, the listener knows when this motive will finish up and structural divisions are easily determined by great variations in instrumentation from single instruments to the whole group. After all this, the instruments slowly start building from the woodwinds to the brass in an 6/8 unison chord like the beginning which the movement ends on.

This piece shows the whole range of possibilities of music that can be created from a limited number of motives using the full timbres of the instruments.