How to Transform a Leitmotif

on March 12th 1938 the Angelus took place launch list meaning connection or joining was determined Nazis used when they annexed Austria and brought it into the new Nazi regime during this time there's a well-known composer by the name of Eric Wolfgang Korngold who happened to be Jewish and had to flee Austria after the Nazis confiscated his house and threatened his family having already received work in America for a few feature films and with more work on the horizon Korngold left for Hollywood and cemented his role in film scoring history the first film that he worked on after fleeing Austria was perhaps the greatest work of his life the 1938 masterpiece The Adventures of Robin Hood so it's worth mentioning that Eric Korngold is one of the grandfather's of films going you know like whenever you think of a film score and you have like a particular sound in mind this was one of the guys who is responsible for that for example let's see if you could recognize with this piece of music inspired [Applause] [Music] anyway so when looking at these feature films corngold along with the other grandfather's of film scoring had to figure out how to put music into these films that would well to put it bluntly that would just actually make sense yes they could just go all out and write concert music that would blow all the academics away but you got to realize who your audience is the people who go to movies aren't also going to operas and concert halls and most don't have a super developed understanding of concert music at the same time this was all happening at a tail end of the Great Depression so you'd be lucky if the people in the audience for even fed so in his film Korngold tried to figure out a way to have the music be sophisticated but still make sense to a general audience and ironically he ended up using light motifs to help musically guide his audience I say ironically because light motifs were like a vogner thing and vogner was like a super racist and like would have been a Nazi if he was born like fifty years later you can kind of think of vogner's like the qui-gon jinn of the Nazi Party anyway so core goal figures that if they're reoccurring pieces of music throughout the film then core gold could help the audience better understand what's going on in the music while at the same time using that music to help the audience understand what's going on in the film so you have a perfect marriage between the narrative of the film and the soundtrack yay so check out what happens with the very beginning of the film you get a close-up of the title character and you hear his light motif [Music] [Applause] perfect we have established our characters like motif and we hear it repeated almost immediately afterwards when Robin Hood shoots the mace out of the bad guy's hand but then check out what happens in this scene when Robin Hood shows up to Prince John's castle with the deer that his friend illegally killed so aside from being a baller move the Robin Hood light motif is menacing instead of heroic Korngold slightly altered the light motif to the point where it's still familiar enough to recognize that it's Robin Hood but it's different enough to show us that Robin Hood is in a dangerous situation this technique of altering thematic material is called somatic transformation it's also known as thematic development somatic metamorphosis motivic development motivic transformation and in a few specific cases cyclic form but we're going to stick with the magic transformation for this video just for convenience sake and because I think it's the most accurate for what we're describing so on this film whenever Korngold establishes a light motif he'll thematically transform that light motif to fit whatever's going on on screen now this isn't exactly a new technique somatic transformation has been going on for centuries that can mozart today they had an entire genre of music called human variations that revolved around this concept [Music] Beethoven used it in science symphony [Music] and this idea of thematic transformation was what actually gave vogner all that power with his light motifs yes he used small pieces of thematic musical information to represent things that were going on in his operas but the real artistry of a light motif comes from how it's used so a great example is Siegfried light motif Siegfried one of the heroes involve four part opera called der Ring des Nibelungen and with Siegfried dies his light motif becomes a funeral march [Music] in some cases vogner would transform one light motif into another light motif one of the gods called era represents like nature and fate in the natural world and all that stuff so when all the gods in Valhalla are killed off at the end of the Opera it's a complicated story I'm not going to go there her light motif gets inverted or flipped upside down too musically show that so back to Robin Hood corngold knew all of our techniques and figured that that would be the best way to musically tell the story so whenever Robin Hood is doing something dangerous you get that dangerous version of Robin Hood's light motif in all kinds of different permutations you hear it so often in fact that by the end all you really need is a single cord to know where an arrow comes from it's not public in fact take a look at this so in robin hood's being a massive creeper and climbing into maid Marian's room you hear this [Music] [Applause] it took me a while to pick up on this but if you pay really close attention it's actually Robin Hood's light motif button strings why strings that's because whenever you see maid bearing on screen she's accompanied by strings is that the only reason for liking him isn't that reason enough for royal Lord mr. Bane hagavi may ID not crush you milady so the music that plays when these two are together and being all lovey-dovey is literally the two musical identities that represent these characters coming together in fact whenever you see these two characters before this big love scene you can hear bits and pieces of what plays in the tower scene it's almost as if Korngold was trying to musically communicate that there's a budding relationship between these two characters well let me know if your again now in most of my videos I like to go through every single musical example and break down everything that a film or a video game or TV show might have every light motif every little musical reference every Easter egg but here here I just have to throw in the towel after seeing this film three times I found over fifty four independent instances of corn gold using or otherwise manipulating these light motifs in order to add to the narrative of Robin Hood like whenever Robin Hood fires a really important arrow in screen there's a heart bliss like here toward the beginning of the film you see this little text appeared that describes what's happening to King Richard and then in the end when King Richard actually appears on screen you hear it again right here and we see Little John whistling he's whistling summer is a-comin in which is one of the oldest pieces of music that we have for medieval England that doesn't directly come from a church and don't even get me started on the music that plays over the opening credits hand-rolled uses that music to represent the merry men you hear little pieces of it whenever they bring someone new into the fold like a swarm of bees you hear it repeated in a more serious tone whenever the merry men are preparing Flik in ambush or combat or something exactly how Robin Hood's light motif changes when he shows up at the castle [Music] and but like using that music over the opening credits almost brings the audience into the musical identity of the merry men as if the audience is now part of Robin Hood's gang and beyond all that some of the musical references are just so incredibly subtle like check this part out or a ton about King and Sovereign Richard the Lion hi I'm sweating to fight to the death against our oppressors did you hear a very slight reference to that same opening idea that corngold is using to represent the merry man I did or at least I think I did I mean I just felt like I did this is just one of those moments where I would be willing to set my piano on fire if it meant that I can get my hands on the score to this film so I could really figure out everything that went into this genius score if there's ever a situation where I have to write a dissertation I hope I get to write it about this film but I bring up the Adventures of Robin Hood because I want to highlight a problem that I don't think that I've been communicating properly so in Robin Hood the music moves with the narrative when Robin Hood is in danger you hear the music that represents Robin Hood but it might be minor or the orchestration might be more intense or it could be reharmonization this technique is called thematic transformation and it's critical to understanding how light motif works having a piece of music represents something in a story is only half the battle it's how you manipulate the music and move with the narrative that really demonstrates a light motifs power and this is in stark contrast to what we see a lot of time in film television and video games nowadays I don't know how it happened but now we have a lot of people saying that an entire piece of music is a theme and that themes all represent characters or places so now a theme is like a genre of music that represents something in a narrative instead of just being a complete musical idea like how we might use the term subject in a classical piece of music but these pieces of theme music almost never change and just repeat whenever they're called upon if you look at my video about music and Pixar films you can see what I'm talking about the music is for the most part just copied and pasted the music isn't really adding to the narrative of the film in these cases the music functions more like an object that could be set up and paid off if any of you know about Chekhov's gun you'll know what I'm talking about it's like you know there's scene in The Incredibles when mr. incredible wants a cape and Edna says no capes and then we see and are told about a bunch of heroes that go down because they don't have capes and at the end of the film's syndrom dies too you guessed it his cape set up pay off so you play a piece of music to set up a sense of togetherness and then you play that off later in the film when the characters are reunited and this is kind of becoming a real problem when the music genuinely becomes a part of the background to a story and is almost interchangeable with whatever the director might think sounds ok in that moment without actually having any ties to the narrative the music isn't necessarily adding to the narrative of your film which in turn is a big reason why so many people are having such a pathetic views towards the music that they listen to in video games television and film like take this scene from Naruto Mishka this track is called sadness and sorrow I wonder what it means I don't remember it ever changing but then again I only made it about 40 episodes in and it just repeats whenever the director is trying to get his audience to cry but that isn't always a bad thing like first off it is infinitely cheaper to just have one piece of music that you can throw around like if you have 4,000 episodes in your series maybe hiring a full-time composer and having that person write custom music for every episode can get a little pricey another reason you might want your music to just be an object in the background is when you're dealing with a population that isn't super musically literate and can't really process too much information at once like children if you're going to make a family movie it's important that the kids get what's going on which is why Pixar's keeping it simple being able to save money and help your target demographic understand what's going on all at the same time is a literal win/win like close your eyes I'm going to leave the screen blank but sincerely close your eyes and tell me what you think when you hear this music [Music] it's spongebob and patrick just messing around right you don't have to be paying close attention to the story or anything SpongeBob and Patrick are about to do something stupid and make you laugh just sit back and enjoy but none of this should come at the expense of utilizing music as a narrative device in other media and in recent years the idea that music can be an element of your narrative has become increasingly if not frightening ly rare but you didn't come to my channel for depressing Great Barrier Reef rhetoric you came to hear about some kick-ass musical ideas and for that we're gonna have to consult with Nintendo's own Jedi Master you know he's a Jedi Master because he did an amazing job and you don't even know about it believe it or not there is only one musical idea for every single level of super mario world there are six different variations but they're all based on the same theme [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] by having every level be a different variation on that same theme you get the idea that although all of these areas might have their own style they're all contained in the same world haha but in recent years I don't think I've seen a better example of what I've been talking about than in shovel knight' ok that was important I'm going to play it again [Music] those three notes are shovel Knights light motif it also shows up and steal by shovel which plays whenever you're inputting your name you can also hear it referenced in the opening cinematic [Music] in that same cinematic you hear this when you start seeing what happened to shield night [Music] [Applause] this is shield nights light motif and you hear reoccurrence starlit wilds which is the track you here whenever shovelknight sitting at his campfire thinking about why is going off on his adventure [Music] [Music] so oh gee I wonder if you'd hear both these light emojis at the same time if ever there is a moment in the game we saw both of these characters on screen working together [Music] and then in plague of shadows when you play as plague night and then you go back to the Exploratorium and you fight against shovel knight you hear this [Music] because that shovel night's light motif but what really blew me away was when I played the specter of torment story in this story you play a specter Knight and visit all the same areas as both shovel knight and plague Knight except that the level design has been altered to sit Specter Knights unique play style so jake kauffman the composer to the shovel knight series decided to alter each levels music in order to reflect the change in level design [Music] you [Music] you could just say it's a remix but the important part to remember here is that it's a remix for a reason he didn't do it just because he felt like it he did it to musically communicate the different perspective of the same world as expressed in the altered level design so is this a case of thematic transformation or theme in variations is this technically cyclic form are these like motifs or themes or is this all just thematic material and when we use the term theme doing meme the main idea of a piece of music like how an art music world we might use the term subject or doing mean theme in more contemporary sense where it's an entire piece of music that might represent one character a place honestly I don't know and I don't care because that doesn't matter what matters is that the music isn't an object to be thrown around it's organic it lives and breeds within the world of the narrative so the next time you're playing a game or watching a television show or a movie and you hear a piece of music get repeated without changing ask yourself how is this music telling me a story that's it for me for now guys if you have any musical questions be sure to follow me on Twitch and Twitter so I can answer all your questions live and if you really liked what I did consider contributing to my patreon page but that's it for now thanks for watching

Channel: Sideways

Views: 309,402

Keywords: Robin, Hood, How Robin Hood Transformed, Leitmotif, Theme, Transform, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Korngold, Film, Score, Music, Theory, Shovel Knight, Kaufman, Mario, Kondo, Thematic, Development, Cyclic, Form, Usage, Transformation, Maid, Marian, Love, Suite, Adventures, Robin Hood, Shovel, Knight, Video Game Music, Video Game, Television, TV, Video Essay, VGM

Id: itMJ-fUPXqE

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2017