Leitmotif / Real Life

• Believe it or not, but this was a common occurrence for actual people during the American Civil War. Composers from both sides of the war wrote and published many songs honoring individual politicians, generals, and victorious campaigns, including:
  • Birdseye and Alfred Lee's "U.S. Grant is the Man"◊ for Union General Ulysses S. Grant
  • Hermann L. Schreiner's "Gen. Lee's Grand March" for Confederate General Robert E. Lee
  • Charles Young's "Stonewall Jackson's Grand March" for Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson
  • Henry Clay Work's "Marching Through Georgia" for Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman, an unassuming man and a bit of a grump, eventually got so tired of hearing the song every time he appeared in public after the war, he came to heartily hate it.
• Every new U.S. President gets treated to Hail To The Chief.
  • Gerald Ford, however, preferred when possible to have the band play the fight song of his alma mater, the University of Michigan, "(Hail to) The Victors".
  • The Fleetwood Mac song "Don't Stop" has been Bill Clinton's leitmotif since he first used it in his 1992 presidential campaign.
  • The U.S. Vice President's equivalent is "Hail, Columbia".
• Every U.S. Military General and Admiral also gets a relatively simple series of ruffles and flourishes (which are played on drums and bugles, respectively), one of each per star (4 for a full General/Admiral, 3 for a Lieutenant General/Vice Admiral, etc.).
  • The President, incidentally, also gets four ruffles and flourishes...followed by "Hail to the Chief."
• Individual warships can have a "Ship's Song," usually either as an appropriated popular song with some symbolic connection to the ship, or lyrics set to the tune of another song. Sometimes, an original composition is created by composers or artists in honor of the ship.
  • Jeremy Woolstenhulme composed a "musical portrait" for the first USS Constitution, one of the original six sailing frigates of the U.S. Navy and the most famous of them all—"Old Ironsides, Champion of the Seas."
  • Europe's "The Final Countdown" was reportedly used as a leitmotif for the USS Nimitz, since it starred in the movie The Final Countdown.
  • The destroyer USS Gatling (DD-671) had a song set to the tune of "The Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech."
• Every US military service has it's own theme, which were almost all composed in the first half of the 20th century:
  • "Anchors Aweigh" is the Navy's song.
  • "The Marine's Hymn" is the Marine Corp's theme.
  • The Army song is "The Army Goes Rolling Along", which was adapted from the "U.S. Field Artillery March".
  • The Coast Guard's song is "Semper Paratus" (titled the same as their motto).
  • The Air Force song is officially entitled "The U.S. Air Force" but is more commonly known as "The Wild Blue Yonder".
  • The Space Force song is "Semper Supra". Before this was introduced, "The Invincible Eagle" was used as a placeholder.
• Westminster Quarters, best known as the chimes of Big Ben, is instantly associated with London; in recent years, it's also become increasingly associated with school buildings in Japanese media, as an electronic version of the chimes is very popular and in common use there.
• Close your eyes and imagine a wedding. See the bride walking down the aisle? Now, what do you hear?
  • Bridal Chorus (Here Comes The Bride): Richard Wagner's Bridal Chorus from the opera Lohengrin (Here comes the bride...) or Jeremiah Clarke The Prince of Denmark's March
  • Recessional: Felix Mendelssohn Wedding March from Op.61 suite of incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream
  • in Finland: Festival March of Sleeping Beauty by Erkki Melartin
  • in the Southern US: Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel
• Now that you're done with that, imagine a circus. There's a good chance that you might think of Entry of The Gladiators by Julius Fucik.
• American high school and college graduates begin their ceremonies with the Trio from Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 in D. (If you're used to thinking of just that rather short section as the whole of the march, take a moment and listen to it in its entirety. Despite the rather sedate and stuffy image of the use to which it's commonly put, the piece as a whole has a delightful bounce and verve.)
  • Kindergarten graduations also use this leitmotif.
• Don Rickles apparently gets La Virgen De La Macarena as a leitmotif.
  • Typically, comedians used to have leitmotifs when they entered a room. Most notably, Jack Benny had Love in Bloom, Bob Hope had Thanks for the Memory Johnny Carson had the theme to The Tonight Show, and, currently, George Lopez has War's Low Rider, which was the themes to his sitcom, comedy specials, and talk show.
• This is the entire point of national anthems, but taken up to eleven; it's not just a single person, or a single event, but entire countries.
• Service hymns, such as The Air Force Song or the Marines' Hymn can often be heard at parades or official functions.
• Despite being about the First Patriotic War, when Napoleon was driven out of Russia in a brutal winter campaign, and including leitmotifs from both God Save The Tsar and La Marseillaise, the 1812 Overture by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is still used to denote Independence Day in the United States. For added Irony-points, the version used is often the post-1917 version, which replaces the leitmotif from God Save The Tsar with one from Slavsya Rus, by Mikhail Glinka. This arrangement was one promoted by the Soviet Union, so as to avoid having to expose their citizenry to God Save The Tsar.
• Beethoven's 5th Symphony was appropriated as a leitmotif for the Western Allies in World War II for a number of reasons. The first bar matched the Morse Code for the letter V (dot-dot-dot-dash). V was for Victory, and the two fingered hand gesture popularized by Churchill. The Fifth's overall structure strongly (and intentionally) evokes dire adversity overcome through unstinting effort to achieve a resounding victory. Last, but not least, the propaganda value of Germany's greatest composer being used against Germany was lost on no one — especially the Nazis, who regarded Beethoven quite highly, albeit under their own rather twisted interpretation of his works and also did not like being reminded that the historical Beethoven had been a liberal and a democrat who believed in universal brotherhood and would probably not have been a big fan of the Nazis at all.
• And who can forget the iconic "Beep beep, bee-beep!" that an iRobot Roomba makes when it starts cleaning. It's iRobot's signature sign.
  • Or "Bee-beep, beep beep beep!"
• "Rule, Britannia!" for the Royal Navy and, by extension, the whole British war force.
• A bit of a strange one here but when "The March of the Knights" from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" is played on television, you can bet that the subject on television is usually engineering, especially large engines and other moving parts. This even happened on Soviet Radio before Prokofiev died. Reportedly, Prokofiev just smiled at the unexpected use of his music, and called it "A happy accident".
• A leitmotif perpetuated by Colombian media has made the traditional dance La Gata Golosa by the composer Fulgencio Garcia as synonymous to people, characters, and anything related to the city of Bogota, especially when the subject at hand dresses in a "cachaco" fashion◊, particularly referring to old-timey Bogota.
• Some hospitals play a few bars of "Happy Birthday To You" over the PA system whenever a new baby is born in their maternity ward or emergency room.