What Makes Themes Memorable?

One of the many jobs of a composer is to make the music for their film memorable. But what can composers do to make their music memorable? Well, I decided to look at some examples of really memorable themes and try to find patterns. This may prove to be more challenging than I'd like, but I'll take a stab at it anyways.

The first step is to find some examples of memorable music, which might be the easiest part of this. I went to a friend of mine and played some film music for him without telling him the movie and asked him if he knew what it was from. All of the scores were ones that I, as a film score nerd, would probably know. I then looked at the examples of ones that he recognized, especially the "obvious" ones and saw the patterns in them. Here's what I could come up with.

Repetition
This one is kind of obvious. The music that was repeated a lot in the movie it was in tended to be easier to recognize. The really fast recognitions were pieces like Hedwig's Theme or the theme from Finding Nemo, both of which are hear often throughout their themes.. On the other hand, the really slow realisations were pieces like Rey's Theme from Star Wars, Time from Inception, and Your Father Would Be Proud from Rogue One. This, however, does not appear to be a constant factor.

Uniqueness
The music that wasn't very similar to many other movies were the easiest to be recognized. I noticed that music by John Williams was easily mistaken with other pieces, specifically other scores by him as well. For example, my friend thought music from Hook was from Harry Potter, and music from E.T. was confused with music from Harry Potter as well. On the other hand, Hans Zimmer's music was never confused with anything else. Again, this never really seemed like it was true for all music.

Fast Build
Pieces that didn't take a long time to get to the real juice of the song were also easy to recognize. The really big one was Hedwig's Theme. John Williams wastes literally no time to start the song, opening with the iconic notes as played by a celesta. This piece took less than one second to be recognized by our volunteer. Other music that has a fast build, like Monster's Inc., was easy to be recognized. Still, this third factor didn't help in making all of the pieces more recognizable.

John Williams scoring Harry Potter, the most easily recognized score. Courtesy of Wikia

In general, it seems like repetition, uniqueness, and a fast build all help in making themes more memorable. However, some pieces with all of these things were still not easily recognized. So then, what does make a theme memorable? Something... Unexplainable, especially by me. The only underlying factor that I've found in every single piece is that it certainly helps to have a musical ear. As a musician, I find that it's much easier for me to recognize scores than it is for a "normal" person.

Either way, I can't find any "formula" for a memorable theme. I'll soon be reviewing some of the scores that I found were particularly memorable, especially the ones found on my list of top five film scores. Until then, keep listening to more film scores.

Leitmotifs in Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Rings. Courtesy of Roger Ebert

In a previous post I explained the differences between leitmotifs, motifs, and themes in music, specifically film scores. Throughout this post, I’ll be talking about one of my favorite film scores and all of its leitmotifs. This score, of course, is The Lords of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, directed by Peter Jackson with music composed and conducted by Howard Shore. I won’t actually be reviewing the music in this post, or any other post for that matter. Honestly I’m probably too biased about it to review it fairly. Let’s just leave it at the fact that’s a great score, and totally deserving of all of its awards. I’ll just be focusing on the smaller aspects of the music.

The score was nominated for won an academy award for best original score in 2002, despite other outstanding scores by John Williams (x2), Randy Newman, and James Horner being nominated. Utilizing all aspects of an orchestra available to him, Howard Shore created several leitmotifs and called on them all several times throughout the film to compliment the already great film.

Throughout the entire film, Shore only uses a handful of different main leitmotifs, but has so many variations on each it honestly feels like there are more. I’ll briefly go a few of those in (roughly) the order that the appear before delving deeper.

The Lothlorian Theme

The very first thing we hear, even before we see anything on the screen. It can be considered Galadriel’s theme as well, and is often heard as a choir singing. It’s offsetting and foreign, much like what it represents. It’s not heard as often as many other themes, but still a big deal.

The Ring Theme

Perhaps the most unsettling leitmotif on this short list, The Ring Theme represents, of course, the one ring. It’s almost as minimalist as the famous motif from Jaws, using just a handful of different notes.

The Shire Theme

The Shire Theme is certainly a much lighter and happier piece of music, representing the Shire, Hobbits, and sometimes just the connection the the Hobbits in the Fellowship have to each other and their home.

The Fellowship Theme

This theme has the most variations and is called up very often. Shore is able to use this theme in several different situations and with many different feels and sounds, making it just a little bit different every time. It represents the Fellowship of the Ring and everything they want, need, and stand for. As we see this theme collapse, so does the Fellowship.

Even though I would kind of like to, I won’t be able to talk about every single measure of the score, but there are a moments in the music I’d like to highlight. By the way, if you’re not familiar with the movie, this next bit is going to be very confusing.

• In the first five minutes of movie, we hear four different leitmotifs: the Lothlorien Theme, the Ring theme, the Shire theme, and the Fellowship theme. Many composers (myself being one of them) wouldn’t be able to smoothly make these transitions, but Howard Shore doesn’t have three Oscars for nothing and makes the changes seem easy. This doesn’t necessarily represent anything special in the story, but I do think it’s rather impressive.

• Later on the movie, as Frodo and Sam are leaving the Shire, they stop by where they’ve never gone before, and we hear the Shire theme. Then, as they cross the threshold, the music changes to a humble variation of the Fellowship theme, signalling that the journey has officially started.
• We hear the Fellowship theme many times throughout the movie, but the last time we hear it in its entirety is as the Fellowship runs through the mines of Moria. During this portion, it’s faster, stronger, and is accompanied by percussion, creating a very clear sense of urgency. The Fellowship is being pushed one last time before it breaks, never to reform again. Shortly after we hear this quick piece of music, the ¾ time signature of the Fellowship theme is overcome by the 5/4 time signature of the orc music.
• Further on into the film, we see the Fellowship theme scramble to find it’s footing, but is never able to, appearing only in fragments or as a weak variation.

Unfortunately, this is all the time that I have in this post, despite all the other things I could talk about. Next time you watch this incredible movie, pay attention to every time you notice one of the themes.