Leitmotive and developmental scoring

Hollywood in the 1930’s and 40’s.
The firmly established mode of structuring a filmscore was through the use of the Leitmotive-technique (*. Composers in those times were Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold a.o.
To show how much of a belief Leitmotivic scoring meant, Steiner stated: "Every character should have a motive."

A little later in the late forties a similar technique is used by David Raksin by using a single motive, or actually a ‘theme’ for the whole movie. The most famous example of a motion picture based on a single theme is the film Laura from 1944, where Raksin’s motive is still haunting after you finished watching the movie. Today John Williams still often makes use of a single, very recognizable theme, which is used quite statically and is not developed too much (ET, Schindler’s List), a way that re-confirms the bias about the fact that filmmusic is one-dimensional and shouldn’t be too complex in order to play its accompanying role underneath the picture without getting onto the foreground. Still, it has to be said, Williams' music is everything but unrecognizable backgroundmusic.

A thechnique that is quite opposite of the Leitmotive-technique is the one of the Developmental score. It is best compared to the single-cell technique applied by Beethoven in his 5th symphony for example. Here only one motive is used and developed into a whole symphony.
Dutch composer Willem Pijper made in the 1930’s the germ-cell technique to his fad. In this technique, only a small amount of cellular units are used. In contrast with the Leitmotive score, where each motive remains more or less unchanged to remain recognizable in the variety-soup of its many motives, the developmental score allows its material to infinite expansion and development.
In general the developmental technique of filmscoring appealed more to composer Bernard Herrmann than the Leitmotive score with its repetitive character. For Citizen Kane he uses both techniques.

(* Leitmotive, commonly used by Wagner in his epic musicdrama's- leading motive originates from Berlioz' Idée Fixe.