Definition
A Leitmotif (“leading motif”) is a short musical motif associated with a character, an object, a place, an idea or an emotion, which returns and transforms over the course of a work to recall its meaning. The concept exists before Wagner (recurring motifs in Weber, Der Freischütz, 1821; Berlioz's idée fixe in the Symphonie fantastique, 1830), but it is Richard Wagner who makes it the constructive principle of the entire score. Wagner spoke of “fundamental themes” (Grundthemen); the term Leitmotif was popularized by his commentators, in particular by the thematic guides of Hans von Wolzogen (from 1876).
The music drama
In the essays The Artwork of the Future (1849) and Opera and Drama (1851) Wagner proposes the music drama as a Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”): music, poetry, staging and gesture united. Formal consequences:
- End of closed numbers: no separate arias and recitatives, but a continuous flow of scenes (the “endless melody”).
- The orchestra tells the story: like the chorus of Greek tragedy, it comments, anticipates, remembers through the Leitmotifs, even when the words say something else.
- Large forms: each act is organized in broad tonal periods; scholars (Alfred Lorenz, later more recent critics) have looked for forms such as the Barform (AAB) and the ABA arch on an enormous scale.
Main works: Tristan und Isolde (first performance 1865), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung; first complete performance at Bayreuth in 1876), Parsifal (1882).
How Leitmotifs work (examples from the Ring)
- The Rhine / nature: the Prelude to Das Rheingold is built on a single Eb major chord for about 136 bars, with arpeggios that multiply: the birth of the world.
- Valhalla: solemn brass chorale (Wagner tubas and trombones) in Db major.
- The sword: ascending C major arpeggio on the trumpet.
- The ring: sinuous figure that outlines stacked chords of thirds.
- Transformations: a motif can change mode, harmony, rhythm and orchestration: the ring motif transforms into Valhalla, indicating that the god's power is tied to the stolen gold. Transformations create relationships of meaning between different ideas.
Tristan and harmony
In the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde the opening cello motif and the Tristan chord (F–B–D♯–G♯) that follows it become the symbol of a desire that does not resolve: cadences are avoided for hours, until the resolution in B major in the final “Liebestod.” Bernstein discusses it both in “What Is Melody?” and in The Unanswered Question (see the entries on the Tristan chord and on Bernstein).
How to analyze an opera with Leitmotifs
- Use a thematic guide (the motif tables are published in many editions) and note the main motifs with a name and a musical cell.
- Listening with the score, mark each appearance: in which instrument, in what key, with what transformation.
- Compare with the text: does the motif confirm, contradict or anticipate what the character says?
- Map the large tonal plans of the scenes.
The legacy: film, video games, series
The Leitmotif is the language of film music: John Williams (Star Wars: the Force, Darth Vader with the Imperial March, Leia), Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings, dozens of motifs for peoples and places), Hans Zimmer, video game soundtracks (character themes that return in variants). Even a concept album with a recurring motif (a riff, a vocal phrase, a sound) that returns transformed applies the same principle.
Exercise for a producer
Create three motifs of 1–2 bars for three “characters” (a hero: ascending fifth in the major; an antagonist: semitone and tritone in the minor; a place: slow arpeggio in Lydian). Write a 32-bar scene in which the motifs alternate and one of them transforms (the hero in the minor when he loses, the antagonist in the major when he wins).
Related
Composing to picture: leitmotifs and themes, The Tristan chord and Wagnerian chromaticism, Motif and motivic development, Motivic analysis, Ballade and free Romantic form, Bernstein: The Unanswered Question.