Understanding the Leitmotif

Max Steiner, one of the great composers of the Golden Age of Hollywood, stated that ‘every character should have a theme’. He was talking, of course, about the leitmotif. But what IS a leitmotif?
Arnold Whitall, in Grove Music Online, summarises it well. He states that ““In its primary sense, a theme, or other coherent musical idea, clearly defined so as to retain its identity if modified on subsequent appearances, whose purpose is to represent or symbolize a person, object, place, idea, state of mind, supernatural force or any other ingredient in a dramatic work.”
We can immediately identify an example for some of the filmic elements that the leitmotif represents or symbolises. For a person, we have Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, for an object, we have The One Ring from The Lord of the Rings, for a state of mind, we have the klaxon sounds from Kill Bill whenever Uma Therman's character becomes angry, and finally, for supernatural force, we have The Force, from Star Wars.
Let’s rewind for a moment. The leitmotif predates film, and we have to head back to the 19th century to examine arguably the most significant influence on the leitmotivic style of film composition: Richard Wagner. The Romantic German composer stated himself that ““The recurrence of melodic elements [creates the principle behind a] unified artistic form which stretches not merely over restricted parts of the drama but over the whole drama, linking it together”
Wagner championed the use of the leitmotif in his epic music dramas, especially the four part Ring Cycle, where he employed well over a hundred. Here’s an example of three of Wagner’s leitmotifs from the Ring Cycle, showing his diverse range of styles and mood that he encapsulated within the short musical cues. Here is the Nature leitmotif, which is a simplistic rising arpeggio.
Secondly, a Romantic love leitmotif, with dissonance and suspensions adding a sense of yearning and longing to the music. Finally, a heroic leitmotif for the character Siegfried, consisting of a fanfare-esque French horn melody.
Such was Wagner’s impressive use and championing of the leitmotif system of composition, that Max Steiner exclaimed that ‘If Wagner had lived in this century (meaning the 20th century), he would have been the world’s number one film composer”. This claim is widely disputed though, as the prospect of egotist Richard Wagner being told what to do by a film director does not sound too likely.
An early example of the use of leitmotivic scoring in film was Fritz Lang’s M from 1931. It has been described as a ‘wonderfully strange hybrid’ combining silent-film technique, a voice-over narration, and off-screen sound to heighten suspense. It is pre-existing music which is used as a leitmotif in M, with Edvard Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King being used to represent a murderer. Interestingly, this is a rare example of a diegetic leitmotif. The murderer whistles Grieg’s music. The leitmotif is heard IN the film world, not in the underscore like in most examples.
The leitmotif is crucial to the narrative, as it helps to identify and catch the murderer. In the following clips, you will see the murderer buying a balloon from a blind street vendor, to give to a little girl that he later kills. He whistles the leitmotif, which the blind balloon seller hears.
Later in the film, as everyone closes is on the murderer, the blind balloon seller hears the same whistling, and immediately links the music to the murder of the little girl. Therefore, the murderer was effectively caught by his own leitmotif!
One of the most powerful uses of the leitmotif is its transformative potential. In M, the whistling largely remained the same throughout the film, but when a leitmotif is altered or adapted to suit a particular circumstance, it really becomes an effective film music device.
John Williams, in the Star Wars series, provides us with a wonderful example of the transformative power of the leitmotif with the Imperial March, and this will be explored in more detail in another video. Likewise, the Harry Potter series takes a series of leitmotifs and develops them in line with character development.
Sticking with John Williams, there are certain films where the use of a leitmotif is crucial to the film’s plot itself. One example of this is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which uses a five note leitmotif diegetically as a communication tool between scientists and an alien spaceship.
Finally, if you thought a five note leitmotif was short, one of the most famous leitmotifs in Hollywood history is from Jaws, again scored by the great John Williams.
Whilst not the only way to write film music, the leitmotif has proven again and again that it is an effective and efficient way of musically representing a wide range of characters, objects, and locations in film, and is a tool that composers return to on a regular basis.

Видео Understanding the Leitmotif канала The Musicologist