Theme vs. Leitmotif

so I don't know when people started confusing these two but a theme and a light motif are not the same thing the people tend to think that it's just music that represents something in a story which isn't really true in order to understand light motif is specifically you first have to kind of go over the difference between a theme and just a regular motif okay so music the theme is the primary melodic subject of your piece and that's what a lot of music academics will call their theme a subject but theme and subject are almost always interchangeable unless you're talking about a few but let's not cross into that unholy territory okay so that's a theme that's the main subject the primary piece of melodic information within a piece of music your main melody your theme okay and your theme can just stay abstract it doesn't have to represent anything in the story but it can if the composer wants it to a really great example of a main theme is Superman so this is the full musical idea that represents Superman in the Superman film alright easy that's a theme so it's a motif well a motif is the smallest piece of music that can still contain thematic information it's a very small gesture that composers can use to develop their piece of music so a really great example of the motif is this from Beethoven five okay so Beethoven used this motif and developed it into this beam for his fifth symphony and that's a motif okay so light motif or a leading motif is a motif that specifically represents something like a character or an event or an emotion or some other noun within a narrative a light motif has to represent something concrete within the story otherwise it's just a regular motif see light budgets are created by this asset called Richard Wagner it was this really anti-semitic total dick hole that had a really unique idea about how to synchronize music for the stage so vogner on top of being a dick was this major control freak he wrote his own libretto he wrote his own story he wrote its own characters his own music everything that he could and everything that he couldn't do for himself he micromanaged the out of because he wanted all of his operas to be like this perfect image of what he had envisioned in his head see the vogner believed in this concept called gazhams kunst work which is total art work in German and believed in a complete unification of drama and music so instead of just having the music accompany what was going on on stage vogner wrote the script into his music using light motifs they were basically musical road signs that told the listener what was going on on stage so is there a specific character on stage play that characters like motif is there a love potion on stage play the love potion light motif did someone just get cursed play the curse light motif did someone just die you get the idea so when you look at these vogner scores you can see all these musical labels telling you exactly what's going on on stage without actually having to look at the script so in short both a theme and a light motif can musically represent something in a film or a television show or a video game or really anything within a narrative the big difference really is effectively the length and completeness of the musical idea and you can have both a theme and a light motif coming from the same piece of music so like you know how the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time you'd have to input those first six or so notes to trigger one of the magical pieces of music well those first few trigger notes would make up the primary motif of the theme so the entire piece is called the song of time and within the game that is the musical theme that represents time but write a down right a down would be more like the light motif of time or another great example of theme versus light motif again from the Zelda series is how in a Twilight Princess when you're fighting the possess Zelda you hear a motif from Zelda's Lullaby so in that instance Zelda's Lullaby is the musical theme that represents Zelda and in the Twilight Princess boss fight they're taking the primary motif of that theme and using it to musically represent Zelda making that specific motif a light motif so like with that you could technically call the coin sound effect from the original Super Mario game for the NES a light motif it's two notes so realizing that long enough to be a theme or a musical idea on its own but it plays every single time you get a coin in essence musically representing the fact that Mario just collected a coin but the problem with calling the coin sound effect the light motif is that you're stripping the light motif of its greatest strength versatility so all great light motifs change as the narrative changes maybe a character's light motif is at a lower instrument to represent how that character might be scared to that specific moment or maybe another characters light motif harmonizes with another characters light motif to symbolize a relationship between the two characters or something like that so it would have been cooler in the Mario example would be if they had liked the coins sound effect change ever so slightly in order to harmonize the theme of the background of whatever level you were on as a means of kind of reflecting that although the coins might stay the same you're acquiring them in a different location which is exactly what they did in Super Mario Galaxy whenever a coin appears on screen in this game the sound that plays along with that coin appearing harmonizes with the soundtrack in the background and again the greatest strength of a light motif is its flexibility just look back at that possess Zelda example the light motif isn't getting taken directly from the source note for note it's playing in a variety of instruments it gets frantically moving strings in order to make it sound more disjointed intense but that's all pretty much it a theme or subject is a complete musical idea and although it can it doesn't have to represent something in a narrative it can just be an abstract musical idea on its own and a motif is a fragment of a musical idea the smallest musical unit that can still possess some sort of thematic identity but if a motif represents something specific in a narrative then that motif becomes a light motif thanks for watching you

Channel: Sideways

Views: 120,365

Rating: 4.9406171 out of 5

Keywords: Wagner, Music, Music Theory, Leitmotif, Theme, Theme vs. Leitmotif, Motif, Music Education, Mario, Super Mario, Super Mario Galaxy, Legend, Zelda, Legend of Zelda, Ocarina, Time, Ocarina of Time, Twilight, Princess, Twilight Princess, Song of Time, Zelda's Lullaby

Id: qVlsIhbQ2qM

Length: 5min 40sec (340 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/stereopaper]

sideways is the man. his content is insightful and his voice is top notch!