Curious Tale Saturdays: Types of Character Music Themes in The Curious Score
Recently I spent a lot of time composing music, and for my article today I figured I’d talk about one of the aspects of my music-specifically, the types of different character music themes that I use.
It’s a little bit pretentious to talk about any given character having a theme when the theme isn’t fully scored and listenable. It’s a lot pretentious to talk about a character having several themes when none of these is listenable. I’m aware of that, but I still think this can be an interesting read. Simply keep in mind that most of the time the themes I’m talking about have not actually been notated yet, and even in my head (and on the piano, etc.) are in varying states of musical completion.
Types of Themes
I classify The Curious Score into three fundamental types of themes:
1. Event Themes, which I sometimes call Situational Themes, reinforce what’s happening in the narrative right now, or underscore elements thereof, or provide contrast or foreshadowing thereupon. They also convey story themes. These are my favorite type of musical theme to compose, because every one is necessarily unique. In my composing style, most of my themes are event themes.
2. Object Themes represent objects in the logical sense of the word, including locations, things, and characters. They contrast with event themes because their paradigm focuses on substance rather than development. Character Themes are a special subset of object themes. I should note that when it comes to “things” that have a theme (e.g., swords, medallions, clouds, organizations, sandship fleets), I tend to treat these things as characters and their music as character themes.
3. Lesser Themes do not contain a complete thematic idea and usually do not serve a story purpose. Their primary function is mechanical. They usually consist of leitmotifs arranged into transitional passages.
Leitmotifs
I’m not a fan of the leitmotif. It’s all the rage in popular symphonic music nowadays, but I consider it lazy compared to fully developed situational music. Nevertheless I find that I do call upon leitmotifs quite often in my work, inside larger thematic pieces of music, and of course what they’re doing there is what leitmotifs do so well: They convey an idea without requiring the music to spend much time on the development thereof. This allows me to compose themes that agilely invoke other themes. Specifically, my event themes are often filled with leitmotifs that allow me to invoke multiple object themes.
Except for a few bare-bones transitional themes, all of my object themes in The Curious Score, and many event themes, have core melodic elements, or sometimes rhythmic or even occasionally timbral elements, that can serve as leitmotifs.
Types of Character Themes
Now at last we come to the point of today’s article! Here is a thorough but by no means complete list of the types of character themes I have created:
Main Theme
The main theme represents the character’s core purpose in the story.
Afiach’s main theme, for instance-which I didn’t compose myself-evokes the poignance, fleetingness, and profundity of beauty in Relance, because ultimately that is why Afiach exists as a character.
Many characters who have a theme at all only have one theme, which by default (but not necessarily) is a main theme. For characters who have more than one theme, a main theme often isn’t among them.
When it comes to prominent characters who have multiple themes, typically I don’t compose main themes for them right off the bat. I like to prepare myself by developing other, less important themes first.
Major Theme
The major theme represents the character fulfilling their nature, not in the active sense of achievement but in the passive sense of inhabiting the psyche or environment in which they are fully themselves. It’s the music that plays when a character has what they want or is able to act as the person they are. I call it the “major” theme because it is usually written in a major scale or a scale with similarly “satisfying” sounds.
Here is a good place to note that themes can sometimes coincide. DeLatia’s major theme is also her main theme, for instance. This theme is powerful, with a lot of brass, but jaunty and vivacious rather than dramatic and imperious. That represents both DeLatia’s fulfillment of her nature but also her core purpose in the story: as a major power, but not an austere one. It fits her personality.
You can draw your own conclusions about what it means when two or more themes coincide, by inferring from the individual meanings. I don’t want to say too much about it because this is quite the vector for spoilers.
Minor Theme
The minor theme represents a character separated from, and often striving for, their nature, and is so named because it is typically written in minor.
Character conflict being integral to storytelling, most characters who have more than one theme have a minor theme.
Galavar’s minor theme is older than The Curious Tale itself; I wrote it as a kid, having no idea what it would eventually become. The melodic core of it is just five notes; for instance A-flat, G, F, E, F. A varied recitation of it occurs briefly in the piece I’ve been working on recently. In Galavar’s case, his minor theme conveys the sometimes insurmountable distances between his vision of an ideal world and the physical pursuit thereof.
Silence’s minor theme is a major source of other themes for her, and is currently the single most fruitful theme in The Curious Score, having inspired many themes, including themes not having to do with Silence herself.
Day Theme
The time of the day is a major (story) theme in The Curious Tale, and a fundamental basis for metaphor. Therein, daytime connotes worldly action. A character’s day theme represents that which is active and emanative from them. It is the beauty (and sometimes terror) of doing.
The day theme sometimes coincides with the major theme, although there are also cases where a character possesses both or only one.
Night Theme
A character’s night theme represents their internal qualities. It connotes contemplation and inner awe. It is the beauty (and sometimes terror) of being. At nighttime, when the sun is away, we have only our inner light to shine by. The night theme is therefore a special and intimate revelation of who a character is.
As day themes often coincide with major themes, so do night themes often coincide with minor ones. Likewise, night themes are one of the more popular character themes in my oeuvre. Most of the characters that you know by name, have a night theme (andor a minor theme).
My favorite night themes are the two night themes for Relance. (Yes, sometimes a character-or “character”-can not only have multiple themes, but multiple instances of a single type of theme.)
Morning Theme
If a character has a morning theme, which is uncommon, it represents who that person was before they become who they eventually are-before they become their “full” self.
Since composing it, I have come to think of the Ieik village theme as coinciding with the morning theme for Galavar. (This is a good time to note that coinciding themes can therefore also transcend a single character.) The Ieik theme has a harmonious simplicity to it, but it also strives to be more than it is, and that describes the adolescent Galavar very well.
Evening Theme / Culmination Theme
Evening themes are rare masterpieces reserved for special characters who serve the master plot of a Curious Tale story and contribute to a major story culmination of some kind. Evening themes are climactic.
I mentioned a moment ago that a character can have multiple instances of the same type of theme. This does not apply to certain themes, including the enter theme (see below) and of course the evening theme. (The question came up in Mate of Song: Should Afiach have an evening theme there? The answer was no; there can only be one.)
Enter Theme
Styled as a stage direction-“Enter Galavar,” etc.-these themes introduce a new character to the narrative.
Generally, only important characters get enter themes, but it can also happen when a relatively unimportant character has a large presence in a specific part of the story. As an example, Caizanpertine, from Mate of Song, has an enter theme.
Exit Theme
I’ve never actually written one of these, but the category exists logically and I can see myself doing one at some point. However, I tend to write exit music situationally, i.e., as an event theme rather than an object theme, invoking leitmotifs of existing character themes rather than creating a new one.
This is a good opportunity for me to say that it isn’t uncommon for some of a character’s various themes to be variations on a smaller number of core independent melodies.
Conclusion / Completion / Ending Theme
This theme represents either or both of two things: It could represent the conclusion of a character’s significance to the story, as contrasted with the evening theme above. Andor, it could represent the completion of a character’s development arc.
The conclusion theme differs from the exit theme in that the conclusion theme does not necessarily represent the character’s physical exit from the story.
Notably absent here is the “death” theme; in my style death themes are usually event themes, not object themes, and tend to invoke leitmotifs from a character’s other themes, and from the milieu.
Death Theme
But a few characters do have a dedicated death theme.
Love Theme
This is a popular type of character theme that ordinarily does not occur in my work. If I were to do a love theme, it would be an event theme, not a character theme. I have never written a character love theme to date and have no plans to do so. I mention it only because its absence may wrongly imply that it is a given.
Battle Theme
If a character has tense, violent, or otherwise pointed confrontations in the story, I’ll often try to write battle music for them.
Some characters have more than one battle theme. For instance, this clip is a short excerpt of an early version of the battle theme specifically for the fight between Silence and Galavar at the end of ATH Book I (and the beginning of The Great Galavar). I actually composed that piece many years ago, so it’s not an example of my current work, but I do think it’s exciting and I will eventually modernize it. It’s classified as a Silence battle theme and not a Galavar theme because Galavar is the point-of-view character. Silence is the one he’s fighting against, and she is also the instigator of the fight.
Battle themes tend to be pointedly energetic, unsurprisingly, though there are exceptions.
You might notice that a “battle” would seem to be an event, not an object, and you’d be right. Battle themes are one of a small handful of character theme types for which I make an exception-mainly due to convention, and also the utility. There are a few other types of character themes that at first glance would seem to belong under the event column, such as the enter theme. Due to the aforementioned reasons and also these themes’ strong association with their respective characters, I classify them as character themes instead.
And Many More!
There are many more types of character themes. A comprehensive list is currently impossible since there’s so much music yet to compose. Previously this article went on to list several more types, but during editing I decided that this is a good stopping point. You have an idea of what I’m getting at with all these themes, and you have some new insights-and even a small piece of music to enjoy.
A final irony: The piece I’ve been working on lately is an event theme, not a character theme. =]
But it prominently features a leitmotif from the character Esmeul.
It’s a little bit pretentious to talk about any given character having a theme when the theme isn’t fully scored and listenable. It’s a lot pretentious to talk about a character having several themes when none of these is listenable. I’m aware of that, but I still think this can be an interesting read. Simply keep in mind that most of the time the themes I’m talking about have not actually been notated yet, and even in my head (and on the piano, etc.) are in varying states of musical completion.
Types of Themes
I classify The Curious Score into three fundamental types of themes:
1. Event Themes, which I sometimes call Situational Themes, reinforce what’s happening in the narrative right now, or underscore elements thereof, or provide contrast or foreshadowing thereupon. They also convey story themes. These are my favorite type of musical theme to compose, because every one is necessarily unique. In my composing style, most of my themes are event themes.
2. Object Themes represent objects in the logical sense of the word, including locations, things, and characters. They contrast with event themes because their paradigm focuses on substance rather than development. Character Themes are a special subset of object themes. I should note that when it comes to “things” that have a theme (e.g., swords, medallions, clouds, organizations, sandship fleets), I tend to treat these things as characters and their music as character themes.
3. Lesser Themes do not contain a complete thematic idea and usually do not serve a story purpose. Their primary function is mechanical. They usually consist of leitmotifs arranged into transitional passages.
Leitmotifs
I’m not a fan of the leitmotif. It’s all the rage in popular symphonic music nowadays, but I consider it lazy compared to fully developed situational music. Nevertheless I find that I do call upon leitmotifs quite often in my work, inside larger thematic pieces of music, and of course what they’re doing there is what leitmotifs do so well: They convey an idea without requiring the music to spend much time on the development thereof. This allows me to compose themes that agilely invoke other themes. Specifically, my event themes are often filled with leitmotifs that allow me to invoke multiple object themes.
Except for a few bare-bones transitional themes, all of my object themes in The Curious Score, and many event themes, have core melodic elements, or sometimes rhythmic or even occasionally timbral elements, that can serve as leitmotifs.
Types of Character Themes
Now at last we come to the point of today’s article! Here is a thorough but by no means complete list of the types of character themes I have created:
Main Theme
The main theme represents the character’s core purpose in the story.
Afiach’s main theme, for instance-which I didn’t compose myself-evokes the poignance, fleetingness, and profundity of beauty in Relance, because ultimately that is why Afiach exists as a character.
Many characters who have a theme at all only have one theme, which by default (but not necessarily) is a main theme. For characters who have more than one theme, a main theme often isn’t among them.
When it comes to prominent characters who have multiple themes, typically I don’t compose main themes for them right off the bat. I like to prepare myself by developing other, less important themes first.
Major Theme
The major theme represents the character fulfilling their nature, not in the active sense of achievement but in the passive sense of inhabiting the psyche or environment in which they are fully themselves. It’s the music that plays when a character has what they want or is able to act as the person they are. I call it the “major” theme because it is usually written in a major scale or a scale with similarly “satisfying” sounds.
Here is a good place to note that themes can sometimes coincide. DeLatia’s major theme is also her main theme, for instance. This theme is powerful, with a lot of brass, but jaunty and vivacious rather than dramatic and imperious. That represents both DeLatia’s fulfillment of her nature but also her core purpose in the story: as a major power, but not an austere one. It fits her personality.
You can draw your own conclusions about what it means when two or more themes coincide, by inferring from the individual meanings. I don’t want to say too much about it because this is quite the vector for spoilers.
Minor Theme
The minor theme represents a character separated from, and often striving for, their nature, and is so named because it is typically written in minor.
Character conflict being integral to storytelling, most characters who have more than one theme have a minor theme.
Galavar’s minor theme is older than The Curious Tale itself; I wrote it as a kid, having no idea what it would eventually become. The melodic core of it is just five notes; for instance A-flat, G, F, E, F. A varied recitation of it occurs briefly in the piece I’ve been working on recently. In Galavar’s case, his minor theme conveys the sometimes insurmountable distances between his vision of an ideal world and the physical pursuit thereof.
Silence’s minor theme is a major source of other themes for her, and is currently the single most fruitful theme in The Curious Score, having inspired many themes, including themes not having to do with Silence herself.
Day Theme
The time of the day is a major (story) theme in The Curious Tale, and a fundamental basis for metaphor. Therein, daytime connotes worldly action. A character’s day theme represents that which is active and emanative from them. It is the beauty (and sometimes terror) of doing.
The day theme sometimes coincides with the major theme, although there are also cases where a character possesses both or only one.
Night Theme
A character’s night theme represents their internal qualities. It connotes contemplation and inner awe. It is the beauty (and sometimes terror) of being. At nighttime, when the sun is away, we have only our inner light to shine by. The night theme is therefore a special and intimate revelation of who a character is.
As day themes often coincide with major themes, so do night themes often coincide with minor ones. Likewise, night themes are one of the more popular character themes in my oeuvre. Most of the characters that you know by name, have a night theme (andor a minor theme).
My favorite night themes are the two night themes for Relance. (Yes, sometimes a character-or “character”-can not only have multiple themes, but multiple instances of a single type of theme.)
Morning Theme
If a character has a morning theme, which is uncommon, it represents who that person was before they become who they eventually are-before they become their “full” self.
Since composing it, I have come to think of the Ieik village theme as coinciding with the morning theme for Galavar. (This is a good time to note that coinciding themes can therefore also transcend a single character.) The Ieik theme has a harmonious simplicity to it, but it also strives to be more than it is, and that describes the adolescent Galavar very well.
Evening Theme / Culmination Theme
Evening themes are rare masterpieces reserved for special characters who serve the master plot of a Curious Tale story and contribute to a major story culmination of some kind. Evening themes are climactic.
I mentioned a moment ago that a character can have multiple instances of the same type of theme. This does not apply to certain themes, including the enter theme (see below) and of course the evening theme. (The question came up in Mate of Song: Should Afiach have an evening theme there? The answer was no; there can only be one.)
Enter Theme
Styled as a stage direction-“Enter Galavar,” etc.-these themes introduce a new character to the narrative.
Generally, only important characters get enter themes, but it can also happen when a relatively unimportant character has a large presence in a specific part of the story. As an example, Caizanpertine, from Mate of Song, has an enter theme.
Exit Theme
I’ve never actually written one of these, but the category exists logically and I can see myself doing one at some point. However, I tend to write exit music situationally, i.e., as an event theme rather than an object theme, invoking leitmotifs of existing character themes rather than creating a new one.
This is a good opportunity for me to say that it isn’t uncommon for some of a character’s various themes to be variations on a smaller number of core independent melodies.
Conclusion / Completion / Ending Theme
This theme represents either or both of two things: It could represent the conclusion of a character’s significance to the story, as contrasted with the evening theme above. Andor, it could represent the completion of a character’s development arc.
The conclusion theme differs from the exit theme in that the conclusion theme does not necessarily represent the character’s physical exit from the story.
Notably absent here is the “death” theme; in my style death themes are usually event themes, not object themes, and tend to invoke leitmotifs from a character’s other themes, and from the milieu.
Death Theme
But a few characters do have a dedicated death theme.
Love Theme
This is a popular type of character theme that ordinarily does not occur in my work. If I were to do a love theme, it would be an event theme, not a character theme. I have never written a character love theme to date and have no plans to do so. I mention it only because its absence may wrongly imply that it is a given.
Battle Theme
If a character has tense, violent, or otherwise pointed confrontations in the story, I’ll often try to write battle music for them.
Some characters have more than one battle theme. For instance, this clip is a short excerpt of an early version of the battle theme specifically for the fight between Silence and Galavar at the end of ATH Book I (and the beginning of The Great Galavar). I actually composed that piece many years ago, so it’s not an example of my current work, but I do think it’s exciting and I will eventually modernize it. It’s classified as a Silence battle theme and not a Galavar theme because Galavar is the point-of-view character. Silence is the one he’s fighting against, and she is also the instigator of the fight.
Battle themes tend to be pointedly energetic, unsurprisingly, though there are exceptions.
You might notice that a “battle” would seem to be an event, not an object, and you’d be right. Battle themes are one of a small handful of character theme types for which I make an exception-mainly due to convention, and also the utility. There are a few other types of character themes that at first glance would seem to belong under the event column, such as the enter theme. Due to the aforementioned reasons and also these themes’ strong association with their respective characters, I classify them as character themes instead.
And Many More!
There are many more types of character themes. A comprehensive list is currently impossible since there’s so much music yet to compose. Previously this article went on to list several more types, but during editing I decided that this is a good stopping point. You have an idea of what I’m getting at with all these themes, and you have some new insights-and even a small piece of music to enjoy.
A final irony: The piece I’ve been working on lately is an event theme, not a character theme. =]
But it prominently features a leitmotif from the character Esmeul.