Themes, motifs, and leitmotifs

Before you begin composing, we need to come up with some parameters to compose around. Themes, motifs, and leitmotifs are tools for coming up with musical ideas. They can help us to understand the meaning of scenes and define the qualities we want our music to have.

If you've taken a writing or film critiquing course, you may already be familiar with the terms themes, motifs, and leitmotifs. However, there could be many interpretations of these terms depending on who is teaching, and these terms are usually not used in a musical context. In the context of our discussion, we'll define these terms as follows:

Motif

A motif is a fragmentary musical idea that cannot represent something concrete in a narrative. It's a group or phrase of notes that convey an idea. It's the smallest amount of music you can make meaningful. As you replay this group of notes at different points throughout the narrative, the motif will come to mean different things. The important part is that you keep coming back to this musical idea throughout the story. If you keep expanding this musical idea and extending it, it can evolve into a musical theme.

As an example of a motif, in the 1960 film Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, when the shower murder scene occurs, we hear the screeching of violins. It's a high-pitch, clashing, dissonant sound that is unpleasant and jarring. This sound becomes associated with the sound of murder.

Theme

A theme is a complete musical idea that can represent something concrete in a narrative,but it doesn't have to. It's a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of the composition
is based. When you hear a musical theme, you know the song is referring to a specific story.

Whenever you watch a TV show, the show has a theme song. The song becomes associated with the show. The theme is often thought of as a sound that sums up the idea of the show.

In many live theater operas and stage shows, a live band plays music before the show begins. At this point, they'll play several musical themes for the show. It's often a mashup compilation of several musical pieces played throughout.

How do motifs compare to themes?

Motifs are small ideas that develop into a bigger theme. Motifs are the recurrent image, idea, or symbol that develops or explains a theme, whereas a theme is a central idea or message. A motif does not represent anything on its own. It's a small, short musical idea. The meaning of the motif depends on the visual that accompanies it. A theme is more used for a summary collection of visuals.

Leitmotif

A leitmotif is a fragmentary musical idea that must represent something concrete in a narrative.

The composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner is often credited with coming up with the idea of leitmotifs. He created operas and wanted everything in the opera to have meaning behind it. Every costume, every action, all the characters on the stage: they had to each have their own individual meaning.

We can assign different characters, actions, places, and events their own musical idea.

There's a great example of a leitmotif in the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg. If you haven't seen it yet, the following will be a spoiler. If you haven't already seen the movie, you may want to watch it and then come back.

In the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, humans and aliens try to communicate with each other but don't understand each other. The method of communication they end up using is a 5-note musical phrase. The 5-note melody is repeated constantly throughout the movie with different sounds and instruments, but you don't quite understand why until much later on. In the story's climax, we discover that the music is how humans and aliens can talk to each other. In this film example, the 5-note musical phrase is a leitmotif. It has a specific concrete meaning, and that meaning is the word hello.

How to use motifs, themes, and leitmotifs

When you're looking through your video footage and trying to figure out what music needs to be composed, one approach is to come up with a list of all the central characters, places, events, and other noteworthy items important to the plot. Then, try to come up with music motifs and leitmotifs that reflect those items. Once you've come up with the initial motifs and leitmotifs, you can expand on the idea until you have a full song.

Let's discuss an example. In the films Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi, directed by George Lucas, every time you see the character Darth Vader, there's a specific song that plays. This song is The Imperial March, more commonly known as Darth Vader's theme. You associate the sound with Darth Vader throughout the film. Darth Vader's theme is so tied together with the character, it's hard to imagine that at one point there was no music. We just take it for granted that that music plays at the same time as the character appears.

Imagine we'd never heard the music to be used for Darth Vader. Let's think about the music for Darth Vader's theme and try to reverse engineer how composer John Williams might have come up with the music.

Pretend you were watching Star Wars on mute and saw Darth Vader on video for the first time. What information do you have to work with when trying to come up with musical ideas?

By looking at scenes where Darth Vader appears, we learn a few things. Vader is the villain of the movie. He's bad, strong, powerful, and commands an army. When he walks into a room, he commands the attention of everyone around him. He's always wearing black full-body armor. If you unmute and listen, when he speaks, he has a deep masculine voice that sounds menacing.

All we've done is look at the physical appearance of the character and we already have a lot of information to start coming up with music. John Williams chose to make Vader's theme in the style of a march. If we want to reinforce the physical appearance of the character as being some form of military commander, then music in the rhythm of a military march is a logical choice. If we want to articulate the idea of power, then we'll likely want to use instruments that can support that feeling. John Williams ended up using lots of low bass string notes, lots of percussion, and big brass instruments.

Thinking about leitmotifs can help you to choose what sounds and instruments you might want to use. You can look at the characters, places, events, or other significant items and see what meaning they have. Then, try to figure out what sounds go well to convey that meaning.

We've learned about motifs, themes, and leitmotifs and how they can be used to come up with musical ideas. Next, let's learn about scales.