Why do we instinctively think of magic when we hear this?
And why is everybody able to hum this melody, even if they've seen the movie just once?
and how do the hidden messages in the music make this scene,
the scene in which Hedwig takes flight,
the best scene in the first movie?
Let's talk about Harry Potter.
Let's see, in the Philosopher's Stone there are themes
for the "good ones", for the "evil ones", for friends
for family, for Voldemort, for Gryffindor, for everything!
And despite that, John Williams spends the first 13 minutes of the movie
presenting just the Themes of Magic,
so that you memorize them and understand them well
before moving on to anything else
We're going to analyze, almost scene by scene,
the Philosopher's Stone and the Chamber of Secrets
to unravel the musical secrets of this master piece
The movie begins with Harry's abandonement at the Dursley's
During the entire scene we hear just one theme
which we'll call the "Extraordinary Magic Theme"
*(it's not always played the same,
the notes in green sometimes change)*
It represents Magic understood as something fascinating, full of secrets and possibilities
We hear it for the first time with the initial titles
and when Dumbledore speaks for the first time
and when Hagrid lands.
In the first 11 minutes we hear it 11 times, 
so it gets into your head and you don't forget it
But when Magic becomes something a bit more spooky, creepy and scary
there's another version of this theme, different enough to be considered another theme entirely
It's the "Disquieting Magic" theme, 
Magic understood as something that makes you shiver
We'll hear it for the first time with the movie title
These two themes work as magic evokers for several reasons
First, because they are in a minor key
if they were in a major key, they'd sound too joyful
Extraordinary Magic theme in Major key
Disquieting Magic theme in Major key
But on top of that, they have uncommon notes in their melodies,
notes that are out of the scale and create dissonances
If it was strictly in A minor, the Extraordinary Magic theme would sound like this:
But with a couple of altered notes, it sounds like this:
And to all this we add the fact that the harmonies used are
the same harmonies we saw for Darth Vader in the Star Wars analysis
or for Sauron in the Lord of the Rings one
They are minor chords with no tonal relationship,
just put one after the other to give you the chills
This is, to build Magic up, he started with a minor mode, which already provides a darker tone
then he added those altered notes to the melody, which give the mysterious touch
and then he's made these specially spooky harmonies
But we still have the rhythm, the rhythm "saves" us
it's what makes everyhing a bit more jingly, and its what makes this theme such a balanced one
It turns the music into Magic, between curiosity and fear
The key of the rhythm is that the beats are subdivided into 3 sub-beats
So it feels a bit like a Waltz, and waltzes are not scary
These themes are often played on the celesta, which is an instrument that evokes forest fairies
In fact, it's the sound of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Tchaikovsky
That's the way John Williams achieves Magic
but besides that there's the matter of your relationship with the OST
because there is a reason why this OST sounds more childish (in the best of ways)
than what The Lord Of The Rings would, for example
And it's the continuous use of the Mickey Mousing technique
This is, the orchestra will play literal onomatopoeias of what's happening on screen
When Dumbledore turns the street lights off, each light gets its own movement from the orchestra
Or look at what happens when McGonagall transforms:
The music follows the transformation: As the cat rises to turn into a human, the music does the same
Or when Hermione makes the feather levitate:
And there are tens of examples like these
Mickey Mousing is typically used in cartoons
notice the descending sound here as one squirrel comes down:
And the two descending sounds as the two squirrels come down, one after the other:
Or the pizzicato as they walk stealthily
Mickey Mousing consists of music telling you the story in the least intellectual and most "in your face" possible way
The first example of Mickey Mousing is, as you could imagine, from Mickey Mouse
specifically from the short film "Steamboat Willie".
Notice how things bounce in the goat's belly to the rhythm of the music
Or how music punctuates Mickey's gestures, for example when he moves the goat's mouth like this
We'll have a look at the Mickey Mousings in Harry Potter
they gear this OST towards a younger audience, because that was the target of the first movies
The tone of the books and movies matures as Harry grows up and matures as well
But let's go back to the movie
In the next scene, we'll be presented with the third Magic theme
First we'll have a couple of Mickey Mousings, for example here, we hear a tragic chord suddenly rising
it almost represents the voice of the snake saying it was bred in captivity
Then listen to these strings that represent the spell casted by Harry to make the glass disappear
But it is when the snake escapes that we hear what we'll call the "LOL Magic theme"
which is Magic used for a comical, joking, "LOL" effect
And from this point, John Williams will play with the 3 types of magic during the entire movie
For example, the owls that bring letters are extraordinary
and so is the letter that Harry receives
Notice how the music is telling us that there's great power behind this letter,
because, although there's nothing going on in the scene
apart from the small zoom-ins of the letter and Harry's face,
the orchestra is giving it all, as if to say "There's magic in this letter!"
But when Harry's uncle is alarmed, then we hear the LOL Magic theme
Because Vernon Dursley's battle of blocking Dumbledore's magic letters
with wooden boards is a comical situation
More owls arrive, more Extraordinary Magic
But when the Dursleys leave the house and face the scene, then they perceive it as Disquieting Magic
For now, as you see, John Williams dedicates the first scenes to talk just about Magic
He doesn't include anything else to avoid confusion 
This is thought to the very last detail
It’s only in this scene when he plays for the first time a non-magic theme, one that’s linked to Harry’s family
And it’s linked to the family by omission, I mean that in the scene there’s just Harry, alone and abandoned
The theme has two parts:
A soft, nostalgic melody built by steps
And then these extreme melodic intervals
These intervals remind us a little of the altered notes in the Magic themes
A diminished fifth interval
Then a chromatic one
And another leap
It could be a link with Magic, as a hint that Harry’s parents were magical
But to me it feels more like a sign that Harry’s family is deeply broken
It’s not normal that a theme that should be nice and familiar has intervals like those
It has these leaps
Something is broken there, something is wrong
In this scene we’ll hear several Magic themes, as Hagrid does his magic
The important thing comes at the end
When Harry has to make the *easy* decision of leaving the Dursleys
Do you see how clean the presentation of the themes is?
How, in this scene, we’re presented with the Family theme, and just the Family theme?
I find this really interesting, because it’s almost never like this!
If you’re the composer and you get the film, and the first scene has the evil guy in it,
You’ll have to play the theme of the evil guy, and start the movie like that, there’s nothing you can do about it!
But the thing is that the plot in the Philosopher’s Stone is very well ordered and organized
which isn’t true for the Chamber of Secrets, as we will see later
Here, we’ve first been presented with the Extraordinary Magic with Dumbledore and McGonagall
Then with the title we’ve heard the Disquieting Magic.
Then with the Dursleys the LOL Magic
Now we had an entire scene for the Family theme
And the thing that comes next is the Philosopher’s Stone theme
Which we’ll hear when Harry goes to Gringotts to withdraw some money and they see the stone
This theme consists simply of 3 notes, repeated over and over again.
In the first movie they represent the Philosopher's stone,
but in the second movie they'll be used to represent the Chamber of Secrets,
so we'll call the theme "Voldemort's tool theme"
It is that which Voldemort will use to get back his power
If the stone, then it's the stone,
but if it's absorbing Ginny's life energy in the Chamber of Secrets, then it's that
It's interesting that this theme is so simple, 
when all the other ones are just the opposite
It's almost obsessive
It's Voldemort's obsession to get back his power
Although we're not supposed to know that yet.
So far the only thing we know is that there is a mysterious package
that Hagrid has collected which has this theme
Actually, the first time music refers to evil, to he-who-must-not-be-named,
is when Ollivander tells us that Harry's wand is the sibling of Voldemort's wand
which is when we hear the first of Voldemort's themes
and then, as Hagrid tells him the details of the story, we hear the second Voldemort theme
Voldemort's themes are closely related to the Magic themes:
This is the Disqueting Magic
and this is Voldemort's theme I
This is the LOL Magic
and this again is Voldemort's theme I
the truth is that all of these themes are part the same theme family:
All in a minor key, all with more or less similar chromatic play, usually on the 5th degree of the scale
And that's precisely one of the details that make the music so strongly linked to the story
Voldemort, the evil part of Magic, is just one part of Magic, and you can't separate them after all
Harry couldn't be the chosen one to kill Voldemort if he didn't share many of Voldemort's traits
such as the fact that the Sorting Hat wants to put him in Slytherin as soon as they touch
JK Rowling doesn't get so far into metaphysics as, say, Ender's Game,
in which the only way to beat your enemy is to understand them,
and that really understanding your enemy means to love them,
but she does play with the trope of the hero not being that different from the villain
it's possible that aggressiveness and ambition corrupted Voldemort,
But without aggressiveness and ambition, nobody can beat him
Those qualities are not bad "per se", you can integrate them and use them methodically to build a better reality
They're only bad when they're not at your service. When it's you serving them.
having no aggressiveness and no ambition would be almost as bad as letting them control you,
It would mean being helpless in the face of the real tyrannies
You don't want to cut off your cat's nails. You want it to learn not to scratch you, but to still be able to hunt
The way John Williams has built the themes makes it so that
Voldemort's harmonies are like the other Magic harmonies
They're the typical minor key chords with no tonal relationship
And magic goes on, now we're on the Hogwarts express, and it's Extraordinary Magic
but when they see the castle at night then it's a bit Disquieting
Although Ron and Hermione have already appeared on the train, they haven't had any special musical treatment
They are anonymous to the music, as they are anonymous to Harry,
who doesn't even know whether he'll see them again when they leave the train
It's only during the Sorting Hat ceremony that Ron and Hermione get
a musical treatment that's different to Draco Malfoy's or Susan Bones'
When they appear, the Extraordinary Magic appears with them, but in different ways.
Hermione is nervous, she's muggle-born and she probably feels
like she doesn't really belong in this world, like an impostor
Maybe that's why she's trying all the time to show that she knows everything, that she's the best
she's scared that the Sorting Hat, instead of putting her in one of the houses, may just send her back home
So her version of Magic is tentative and nervous
Ron on the other hand is much calmer, he's not constantly and pathologically afraid of being expelled
to him, Hogwarts is like home, all his family is here
So his version of the Extraordinary Magic theme is clinking and funny like him,
and maybe even a bit noble-medieval, which matches his character as he's willing to make sacrifices in the end
and it's here, when they sort Ron, that we hear for the first time Gryffindor's march,
which is one of my favorite Harry Potter themes, and even of all of John Williams's themes
As you see, it's an ascending march, noble and powerful.
So far Williams has carefully presented the themes one by one so we assimilate them,
So now he knows that he has to mark the Gryffindor March on us until we get it,
So he uses every opportunity to play it up to three more consecutive times:
one when Harry is sorted
and twice on their way to Gryffindor's tower
But now (and as I said, this is because the plot is very well orgnized)
Williams gets a chance to remind us of one theme that we heard before we got to Hogwarts,
which is the Family theme
with Harry looking out the window, probably melancholic
and with this, all the movie themes have been presented, except two,
which are the Quidditch theme, because they haven't played Quidditch yet,
and the Friendship theme, because harry hasn't made any real friends yet
But this night in the plot represents the end of the movie's introduction
The next morning classes begin, and everything begins.
So far it's been 50 minutes of establishing the world from scratch
Each scene is meticulously designed to introduce several pieces of information,
because there was A LOT to explain:
that there's magic, that magic is taught in schools, that Harry is an orphan, that he's abused,
that his parents were killed by a very powerful wizzard, that that wizzard is now dead and wants to come back,
that there's a spooky Philosopher's stone moving around, that the staircase to the 3rd floor has something strange,
that there are 4 houses, that Gryffindor are the "good guys" and Slytherin are the "bad guys", that Magic is made with wands...
You didn't necessarily know these things!
That wizzards hide the existence of magic from muggles, that non-magic people are called muggles!
Thousands of things! And thanks to how well the information is organized,
by minute 50 you can sit back and say "OK! I've understood everything so far,
now the movie can finally begin, the plot, everything!"
Because all the details of how the wizzarding world works seem obvious now, since they're part of
the collective imaginarium, but when it wasn't so, there was a high risk of confussion
that's why every scene has like 3 parallel meanings, for example the dialogue with the snake serves to establish
1. the fact that Harry can do magic (talk to the snake),
2. that Harry has a link with what will later represent Slytherin and Voldemort, of whom the snake is symbol
and 3. that Harry was also bred in captivity like the snake, and that's why he identifies with it
This scene could have included just two of these three things:
talking to a snake that wasn't particularly isolated,
Talking to some isolated animal that wasn't a snake,
or a floating scene in which he identifies with an isolated snake but they don't get to talk
Another example is the visit to Ollivander's, which establishes that magic is done with wands,
that it was Voldemort who made Harry's scar,
and that Harry and Voldemort share traits because they have sibling wands
Or when Hermione tells Ron his nose is dirty, which establishes with just one phrase that Hermione
is kind of a nuissance and Ron comes from a poor family. Everything has a double or triple meaning,
it seems obvious that the information is so organized and condensed, but it's not that easy to achieve
in the Chamber of Secrets they didn't do it that well at all
and this is what allows Williams to present every theme with no ambiguities,
in an ordered manner so they stay in your head
with entire scenes designed to develop each theme and repeat them
I don't know how much you remember from my analysis of The Lord of the Rings,
but in the first scene we were already hearing
the Lothlorien theme, several of Sauron's themes,
the theme of Men's Greed and the theme of the History of the Ring
it was a mess. A wonderful mess, ok, but a mess all the same
Let's finish this video here, we've already presented all the information and now it would be time to
explain why this is the best scene of the entire movie,
how the OST anticipates a lot of stuff about Voldemort and Snape,
and what is the crucial difference between the Quidditch matches of the 1st and 2nd movies
But we'll see all of that in the second part of this analysis, which I'll leave on the description,
and I'll also leave it as a pinned comment, and you also have it in your hearts.
Go see it, Subscribe if you haven't yet, and I'll see you in a couple of days
See you soon!
Actually there aren't enough notes in here to play the Magic themes fully
because Williams insists in adding altered notes and this is just diatonic..
