Year 9 - Music
Representing characters through music
Film Music
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
This unit explores film music and how composers use music to enhance mood, atmosphere and storytelling. Pupils study common film music techniques and themes, and apply this knowledge by composing and performing music to accompany visual scenes, developing their composition and performance skills.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to explain how leitmotifs are used in film music and have created a simple leitmotif.
Key Notes
- Leitmotifs are musical ideas that represent ideas, characters or places.
- They were used in opera and became popular in films after the end of silent movies in the 1920s.
- Composers capture the important features of a character in a leitmotif to support the audience's understanding of them.
- They do this by choosing suitable keys, pitch and rhythms, including the use of strong rhythms for powerful characters.
- By changing a leitmotif, a composer can reflect changes in that character or in the plot.
Vocabulary To Learn
- leitmotif: a musical idea that represents a specific character, place or idea
- opera: an important genre of theatre and music through the 17th-19th century
- strong rhythms: rhythms which accent the strong beat (beat 1 in the bar) or mainly land on the beat; they are predictable and repetitive
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- A leitmotif and a film theme are the same thing.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
Leitmotifs are musical ideas that represent ideas, characters or places. They were used in opera and became popular in films after the end of silent movies in the 1920s.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'leitmotif'
a musical idea that represents a specific character, place or idea.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: A leitmotif and a film theme are the same thing. Correction: Not quite. Many films have themes that represent the overall mood, and can be heard throughout the film. The difference with a leitmotif is that it explicitly represents one thing - a character, place or an idea.
More Lessons In This Unit
Browse all guides in the Year 9 Music guide library.