Wagner’s Leitmotif and how it has influenced film music [FREE]

Leitmotif is much shorter, like a simple chord that resolves on another, or increases its dissonance, as 'The Tristan Chord, which is inserted in a small sequence of bars, so even before 'Tristan' appears on the scene, the composer 'Richard Wagner' already announces to the audience who would appear.
All that comes from the evolution of the Classical Sonata, when we have two contrasting motifs, the first one being presented is quite softer, soon thereafter may come another totally different or an aggressive motive, when the first motif within the theme disappears, it will only appear at the end of the sonata, and this time along with the contrasting motif, and the thing becomes difficult for the composer, who has to put all together, one against the other.
The therm comes from sonata motive with the prefix (lead), it means: "leading motif", "guiding motif" or "'conductive motive".
The inventor of the Leitmotif was not Wagner as exposed on this literature and he not even employed this word. Since Leitmotif is a 'short, constantly recurring musical phrase', this idea was already been used in the 17th century by Monteverdi in his L'Orfeo. Later, composers Grétry, Gluck and Mehul.

13 years before 1843, when Wagner used it for the first time, this musical fixed idea of a recurrent motif also named "idée fixe" was coined by 'Hector Berlioz' in his 'Fantastical Symphony', then 3 years later 'Liszt' made a piano transcription of this work, whose played to Wagner, who must not have been able to sleep against so many new ideas, including the "idée fixe" in music.
Years later, Liszt's used the Leitmotif in his 'Sonata in B minor', Liszt.,

Important, Wagner was Liszt's best friend and married with Liszt's daughter Cosima. So Wagner had plenty of time with Liszt, he was fascinated by his innovative ideas, Wagner commented with Liszt that his greatest frustration was not knowing how to play the piano, so he would never be able to concise compose for that instrument.
It was from these conversations that Wagner lends the idea of the Leitmotif to his Operas, Wagner, when he was 27-28 years old in 1840, used the leitmotiv for the first time in the opera 'The Flying Dutchman', 'Der fliegende Holländer', debuted in 1843, and that he will use to the extreme in all his operas. Only in 1848, that he began to write his masterpiece 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' with full use of Leitmotiv, for characters, scenes and situations.

The best example of Leitmotif, is in the movie 'Jaws', when even before the appearance of the shark, the only two notes leads the audience to what's coming. The motive being the shark itself, when the brilliant 'John Williams' inserts this little two notes Leitmotiv within the theme of music,

The same 'John Williams' understood that the Leitmotif in 'Star Wars' are small interactions that will synchronize scenes of the diverse characters, but such Leitmotifs, nor are they present in many of the music themes. Although, 'The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)' contains within the musical theme the two repetitive Leitmotifs in the same theme, one at the beginning notes that falls a major third, and another in the melody in minor tonality that evolves into variations that will form the whole theme.

The perfect classic Leitmotiv to describe a scene is in film 'Psycho - Shower Scene'

The biggest and best example of Leitmotif throughout the film is in 'Lord Of The Rings' by Composer 'Howard Shore' who throughout the trilogy creates a leitmotif for each persona, just like Wagner did. By the way, 'Lord Of The Rings' It's like it was version 2.0 of Wagner's 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', we could play that it's the same thing.

Another point about Leitmotif, it does not matter the orchestration, whether it is a harp with a clarinet, a violin with a tympanum, since the leitmotif to work, it only needs any sound, if we make the same rhytmic sequence of two notes, do not matter if we use a violin with flute or cello with oboe, there's no rule for that, it's obvious that when we switch to different orchestrations, it helps even more to identify the character.

When he quotes: "the sliding trombone can be heard the door closes, mickey-mousing the action".
I say, this is not Leitmotif, it is pure and simple sound effects, as it is seen in all cartoons, the musical instruments also do lots of effects, as when a jumping spring has the that boing-boing sound or when a trombone rise up to make the sound of the elephant's trunk, this is just 'Sound Effects', never was or will be Leitmotif.

Today there are many composers, that only use the entire orchestra to make amazing rich noises.
That is, "Wagner", knew to take advantage of this fascinating idea.