Sophie, Week #1 - Why Leitmotifs are Super Cool: Building Identity Through the Language of Music

When I first saw the theme for this quarter’s blog submissions, I was actually super happy! You may be thinking that I’m nuts for being excited about an assignment, but I was. I knew that I would have the chance to talk about one of my favorite things in the whole world—leitmotifs! You’ve heard the word “motif” before, a repeated idea or symbol throughout a work of literature that helps to develop a broader theme. Leitmotifs are sort of like that, but instead of a repeated written idea, they’re repeated musical phrases used to represent different things. Here, I'll discuss how they can be an invaluable technique for developing a character’s identity within a musical.

I’ll give some examples from one of my favorite musicals, Sondheim’s Into the Woods. In my opinion, the easiest leitmotif to grasp is something I think of as “The Royal Fanfare.” Basically, every time the princes come on stage, you hear a trumpet fanfare.


Sounds pretty simple right? The princes enter; the fanfare plays. However, Sondheim takes it a step further, in that almost every time something related to the royal family is happening, the notes that occur in the fanfare can be heard somewhere in the musical score. Even before the audience hears the trumpet fanfare for the first time, Cinderella sings about wishing to go to the royal festival. When she sings, “I wish to go to the festival,” she is singing those same notes! You can hear it here, if my custom embedded link ends up working properly.

Sometimes these things can be so subtle—I only realized this one on my most recent listen to the soundtrack! By the repetition of these notes, Sondheim has built an identity for the royal family that is able to be echoed through other characters in such a unique way. 

At this point, you may still not be impressed by what I’m telling you. In response to that, I offer you another super cool thing about leitmotifs! Once you understand a character’s leitmotif—their musical identity—you can predict parts of a story before they happen! I’ll give another Sondheim example, this time from Sweeney Todd. Sondheim uses “The Dies Irae,” which is generally understood as the musical representation of death. It can be heard in so many film scores, and you’ve probably heard it before.


Now, the clever thing that Sondheim does is within all but one of the characters’ leitmotifs, the “Dies Irae” is hidden in some way. This foreshadows their eventual death or murder of another person. The one whose leitmotif is missing the “Dies Irae” is Anthony, the only character that neither dies nor kills someone! That’s a huge part of his identity that was able to be shown through music alone.

I hope that I’ve been able to give everyone a new perspective on how identity can be represented! If anyone is interested in learning more, I will go on and on if given the chance!



(Photo credit to J.W Yablonsky - Substack)




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