The Dies Irae Conundrum

So, the new year has begun, and thus has the official project!

Not knowing where to start in writing the music, I've chosen a few themes and characters of the movie to focus on and their possible leitmotifs (tunes associated with characters or ideas.)

And I'm already stuck with somewhat of an issue.

You see, the butcher Clapet will be easy enough to play off as the classic representative of Satan or Death itself. No problem. Have him played by a lustful, fat baritone, and the audience will know precisely what is going on. But when it comes to leitmotifs, there are so many ways to do that wrong.

I feel like, as a representative of the devil, it would be easy enough to have his leitmotif be a quote from the Dies Irae plainchant--it's enough of a tradition in the Classical world to do so. However, this is also the most hackneyed tradition there is! Rachmaninoff loved it, Berlioz has used his fair share of it, and it's even bled over into the Broadway scene--with my arch-nemesis Sweeney Todd, no less. The ever-so-famous Ballad of Sweeney Todd has the quote in the chorus: "Swing your razor wide, Sweeney, hold it to the sky!"

Clearly, this is the entirely wrong course of action if I want to distinguish myself from such a great musical rather than living in its shadow.

But the other day it occurred to me: I don't have to quote the plainchant. I can quote a different setting of it that those who have heard it will know, and those who haven't heard it will still feel the emotional impact.

And with my musical research showing that French cabaret music seems to have a fixation on rising and falling chromatic scales, I know just the setting to quote.

That's right. I'm going with Verdi's Requiem. Nobody's going to think Clapet is some fat clown with a knife. Oh, no. When you've got Verdi's Dies Irae punching the audience in the gut, he will scare the living daylights out of them. And that makes it just perfect.