Leitmotif and Reprise

So I'm a big fan of leitmotif and reprise. My ideas about how leitmotif should work are fairly simplistic though - more akin to John Williams than Richard Wagner. In particular, I want my leitmotif's to be easilly recognizable, eminantly singable and familiar - in a word - catchy. I don't want people to need PhDs in music theory to be able to recognize every moment of leitmotif I use.

In STEALTHMAN, I intend on assigning themes to each of the characters and maybe to situations or places. These will be orchestral themes, vs. sung themes (but may be the main part sung on certain songs (the chorus or verse) though more likely will be the instrumental core of certain songs.) By doing this I hope to create a familiarity of emotion that I can use to strengthen ideas and scenes.

I intend to use reprise the same way. I don't view reprise in the same manner as some musicals - which would be just a restatement of the most dominant song, resung at the end of the musical. Yes, I might do just that in some places, if appropriate. But I feel reprise is one of the most powerful tools in a musical composer's arsenal, and consequently should be used extensively. I expect the last several scenes will be mostly developed using reprise. But not just reprise for reprise's sake. The intent is to use it as a powerful means of bringing home points or driving home thoughts and emotions. Reprise, when used correctly, can really bring a sense of warmth and familiarity and can carry a huge amount of emotional impact. Of course, if used incorrectly it can feel very cheap too.

Emotion is what it's all about. A strong musical conveys strong emotion. That's not to say it's always dramatic emotion. It can be comedy or light-heartedness as well. But I want my musical's emotion to be strong. The obvious prime difference in a musical as compared to a play is music (duh). And music is a medium for conveying emotion. It is capable of strengthening emotional moments. I find it interesting that a lot of people talk about hating musicals...the predominant reason given being that it's unrealistic and dumb to have people just randomly break into song. And yet, they love movies. I can't help but wonder if they would love the movies as much without the musical score. But is it realistic to have dramatic music underscore an intense situation? Of course not. I agree that some musicals and musical moments are cheesy and dumb. But so are some movie scores. A well done musical is strengthened by the music just like a good movie score strengthens the movie and helps to bring greater emotion to it.

Anyhow, I think it will work really well for me to present character themes for the blog because at this early stage of the musical's development, I'm mostly limited to orchestral work (unless I record myself singing in the living room - something I'm not hugely inclined to do too much because it's a lot of work without a lot of purpose behind it.) So over the next several posts I will introduce some ideas for character themes - which may or may not end up being what I actually use.