First used during the Romantic Era, the term "program music" describes music that tells a story or sets a scene. Many film scores employ this same device to describe and enhance emotional or cinematic moments.
Romantic Era music relied heavily on reoccurring themes or leitmotifs to describe characters, places or ideas in music. When movie characters have certain theme music or melodies, the composer is employing a leitmotif.
When Romantic Era composers use the entire chromatic scale, or half-tone series, to increase the emotional intensity of music, they were using chromaticism. Many composers such as César Frank, who composed the film scores for “Double Indemnity,” used chromaticism.
This term describes a repeated musical theme that repeats at the end of a music score to create a complete musical cycle. Composer Maurice Jarre used cyclic form in film scores, including “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago.”
The size and sound of orchestras changed during the Romantic Era. Instead of smaller groupings like quartets, Romantic Era composers increased the sizes of orchestras, creating a full symphonic sound. Modern film composers like John Williams used full orchestrations for film scores like “Star Wars” and “Schindler’s List.”