Quote: Original post by Xyphyx
I don't believe any of those themes have any sort of musical prose that are completely similar (as this *might* be -i'm not sure- copyright infringment)
Even when all three pieces have the same composer? They do have a lot in common, especially Star Wars and Superman. It's an interesting challenge to hum the Star Wars theme and then try to hum the Superman theme. They are both in major keys, they both quickly return to the tonic several times (Mozart does this too), they repeat a sub-theme twice, they use similar orchestration...

Yeah, I would agree that there are definitely stylistic qualities indentifiable in John William's music, although I'm not sure how many rules he would have borrowed from first movement form. Sonata form is quite important when you want to create an extended form, developing the music in relation to your first thematic subject. You don't have to strictly follow these rules to make good music obviously, but they do help in writing quickly and writing material which is more homogeneous and less unbalanced (the development in an harmonic region related to the tonic for example).

Many thanks for all the responses. Never knew it was LeitMotif (Leitmotiv?) but aware that central themes are replayed in different keys and tempos during a film. The major/minor chord advice was the sort of thing I was thinking of. I half expected somebody to have created a website with different moods of music and explained what techniques were used to make that mood.

As posted recently, most are in agreement that there is no set of "music => mood" rules, just a set of cultural associations. Music you consider dramatic probably got that way because you saw it in tandem with dramatic scenes from a film or something. Someone listening to very similar orchestral music while cleaning the house on a Sunday morning may not consider it 'dramatic' at all.