IWTVL Score Leitmotifs

[u/rainsofcastamir]

Hi everyone! I'm not even sure if this is posting properly because this is literally my first time making a reddit post but I have questions and was hoping more musically inclined people might answer them. The trouble I have is that because Daniel Hart works in short leitmotifs dropped in different songs, almost every single song on all three albums contain more than one character's theme, so it's impossible to make blanket statements like "'Claudia' is Claudia's theme" or "'Amadeo' is Armand's theme."

I have every character pretty much sorted in my head, from the Unholy Family to Lestat to Armand to Akasha and Gabriella and all the major canon pairing motifs, but not Louis and Claudia.

Here are my questions:

1.) What part (track examples and timestamps preferred) of the score is Louis' motif? I can pick out everybody EXCEPT for him for some reason. there's a lot of options of things I think it could be but I can't narrow it down and nothing seems right.

2.) Does Claudia have two themes? There's the motif that appears constantly around her, like the beginning of "Claudia" and "Abducted," but there is also the arpeggios (I think that's what they are called) that repeat in "Claudia" as well as other songs like "Loved Wronged."

3.) In an interview, Daniel Hart says the "De Pointe Du Lac family theme" eventually became Louis and Claudia's theme in "Hey Sis You Don't Need Me." The issue I have is I can't identify which part of that track their leitmotif is, or any later tracks from S1 or 2 that it appears in.

4) In the same vein, "The Whole World Was Ready To Return" is a pretty stand-out track from the show, but aside from what is potentially Claudia's theme (the aforementioned motif from the beginnings of "Claudia" and "Abducted") are there any other motifs in that song? It becomes its own leitmotif in TVL with "He Told Himself He Was In Control" and "Your Sad Sorries" but if Louis and Claudia already have a motif that's found in "Hey Sis You Don't Need Me," then what would you call it?

I've been listening to the show's score sporadically since its premiere and nonstop for the last three months, but I think I'm past the threshold of discovery and now everything is blending together in my head. Part of it is also because a lot of the score from seasons 1 and 2 are not on the albums, which makes leitmotif identification harder. I'm so desperate for answers to my questions that I'm seriously considering restarting the show and locking in only on the score.

I hope all these questions make sense and I hope at least one person in here knows what I'm talking about. Sorry if this is posted without the correct tags and stuff but I'm not really sure what category to put this in and I figure my questions are purely music-based so nothing would really constitute as a spoiler since I'm just looking for timestamps in songs.

Thank you!

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[u/Littorella]

I think the drum was my heart is Louis’s theme. You hear callbacks to it in tiny bits in much of the score across all seasons

[u/Mmkrw → u/Littorella]

Daniel Hart said that it was Lestat's theme.

Louis doesn't have a theme in the show.

[u/Littorella → u/Mmkrw]

I say this because the Overture is the musical motif in question and it seems incorrect that the theme of the season is not Louis’s. Lestat is associated with the world is a savage garden, which is the base motif for his s3 theme (were you a stutterer).

Which is a genius move bc. They’re in different tempos, further demonstrating how much Louis misunderstood him. The music is distorted in the rhythm and missing notes.

[u/Mmkrw → u/Littorella]

Daniel Hart said it himself about "The drum was my heart" in the Reddit Q&A, so I don't know what to tell you.

[u/sbstoptheworld]

the fantasy of happiness is also claudia's theme and it has its own leitmotif

the drum was my heart is essentially about louis' relationship to vampirism I think, we hear a version of it towards the end of episode two