The degeneration of the leitmotiv is implicit in this ... it leads directly to cinema music where the sole function of the leitmotif is to announce heroes or situations so as to allow the audience to orient itself more easily.[12]

The Aqua Illumination LED Module was a seminal moment in reefkeeping LED lighting history, being the first to introduce a modular approach to LED fixtures. While the first Aqua Illumination LED had multi-channel control accessible via a built-in serial port, just like what used to be found on most computers, the Aqua Illumination LED Module featured a fully fledged controller.

Though perhaps not corresponding to the strict definition of leitmotif, several of Verdi's operas feature similar thematic tunes, often introduced in the overtures or preludes, and recurring to mark the presence of a character or to invoke a particular sentiment. In La forza del destino, the opening theme of the overture recurs whenever Leonora feels guilt or fear. In Il trovatore, the theme of the first aria by Azucena is repeated whenever she invokes the horror of how her mother was burnt alive and the devastating revenge she attempted then. In Don Carlos, there are at least three leitmotifs that recur regularly across the five acts: the first is associated with the poverty and suffering from war, the second is associated with prayers around the tomb of Carlos V, and the third is introduced as a duet between Don Carlo and the Marquis of Posa, thereafter accentuating sentiments of sincere friendship and loyalty.

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The AI Sol was a very successful LED aquarium light, so much so that for the next few years Aqua Illumination had to learn how to mass produce their product on a bigger scale than ever. AI Sol LEDs were backed-ordered for months at a time, and everybody had to get their hands on some. It would be a little while until we saw another new LED light from AI, with the AI Nano being the first LED light that AI developed specifically for smaller reef tanks.

The critic Theodor W. Adorno, in his book In Search of Wagner (written in the 1930s), expresses the opinion that the entire concept of the leitmotif is flawed. The motif cannot be both the bearer of expression and a musical "gesture", because that reduces emotional content to a mechanical process. He notes that "even in Wagner's own day the public made a crude link between the leitmotifs and the persons they characterised" because people's innate mental processes did not necessarily correspond with Wagner's subtle intentions or optimistic expectations. He continues:

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Richard Wagner is the earliest composer most specifically associated with the concept of leitmotif. His cycle of four operas, Der Ring des Nibelungen (the music for which was written between 1853 and 1869), uses hundreds of leitmotifs, often related to specific characters, things, or situations. While some of these leitmotifs occur in only one of the operas, many recur throughout the entire cycle.[6][7] Wagner had raised the issue of how music could best unite disparate elements of the plot of a music drama in his essay Opera and Drama (1851); the leitmotif technique corresponds to this ideal.[8]

By association, the word has also been used to mean any sort of recurring theme (whether or not subject to developmental transformation) in literature, or (metaphorically) the life of a fictional character or a real person. It is sometimes also used in discussion of other musical genres, such as instrumental pieces, cinema, and video game music, sometimes interchangeably with the more general category of theme.

The resulting lists of leitmotifs also attracted the ridicule of anti-Wagnerian critics and composers (such as Eduard Hanslick, Claude Debussy, and Igor Stravinsky). They identified the motif with Wagner's own approach to composing, mocking the impression of a musical "address book" or list of "cloakroom numbers" it created.

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As AI’s latest generation of HyperDrive Hydra LEDs start shipping around the world, we can’t wait to try them ourselves and to dream about what will come next. It’s quite impressive to imagine how powerful and capable today’s LED lights have become, and regardless of what brand or model you are using, Aqua Illumination deserve a big share of the credit for constantly pushing the envelope of what is possible with this now widespread technology.

Since Wagner, the use of leitmotifs has been taken up by many other composers. Richard Strauss used the device in many of his operas and several of his symphonic poems. Despite his sometimes acerbic comments on Wagner, Claude Debussy utilized leitmotifs in his opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902). Arnold Schoenberg used a complex set of leitmotifs in his choral work Gurre-Lieder (completed 1911). Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck (1914–1922) also utilizes leitmotifs.[1] The leitmotif was also a major feature of the opera The Immortal Hour by the English composer Rutland Boughton. His constantly recurrent, memorably tuneful leitmotifs contributed significantly to the widespread popularity of the opera. In Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (1936) each character or animal has its own leitmotif played on a particular instrument.

Motifs also figured occasionally in purely instrumental music of the Romantic period. The related idea of a musical idée fixe (i.e. the object of fixation — a term borrowed from medicine and also found in literary works of the period) was employed by Hector Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique (1830).[4] This purely instrumental, programmatic work (subtitled Episode in the Life of an Artist ... in Five Sections) features a recurring melody representing the object of the artist's obsessive affection and depicting his presence in various real and imagined situations.[4]

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A leitmotif or Leitmotiv[1] (/ˌlaɪtmoʊˈtiːf/) is a "short, recurring musical phrase"[2] associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of idée fixe or motto-theme.[2] The spelling leitmotif is a partial anglicization of the German Leitmotiv (IPA: [ˈlaɪtmoˌtiːf] ⓘ), literally meaning "leading motif", or "guiding motif". A musical motif has been defined as a "short musical idea ... melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic, or all three",[1] a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition: "the smallest structural unit possessing thematic identity".[3]

In particular, such a motif should be "clearly identified so as to retain its identity if modified on subsequent appearances" whether such modification be in terms of rhythm, harmony, orchestration or accompaniment. It may also be "combined with other leitmotifs to suggest a new dramatic condition" or development.[1] The technique is notably associated with the operas of Richard Wagner, and most especially his Der Ring des Nibelungen, although he was not its originator and did not employ the word in connection with his work.

Some controversy surrounded the use of the word in Wagner's own circle: Wagner never authorised the use of the word leitmotiv, using words such as Grundthema (basic idea), or simply Motiv. His preferred name for the technique was Hauptmotiv (principal motif), which he first used in 1877;[2] the only time he used the word Leitmotiv, he referred to "so-called Leitmotivs".

By this time Aqua Illumination had settled into its role as the dominant maker of high-tech controllable LED aquarium lights with a rapid pace of new product developments over the next few years. The AI Vega was followed by the AI Hydra, then the AI Hydra 52 and smaller Hydra 26 which paired up with the AI Director, putting even more LED features and control into the cloud, and the rest is recent history.

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At the time the promise of the longevity of light emitting diodes was still a glimmer in our eyes, and we took it on faith that the LEDs would last as long as they do. The AI Sol was the first really successful aquarium LED light on the market, becoming a workhorse controllable LED light the world over. Shortly after the AI SOL, AI introduced the Sol Blue featuring a tricolor pattern of two shades of blue to one color of white, setting the precedent for blue-heavy light color from LED lights that would come to be the new standard spectrum for nearly all LED lights made for the reef aquarium.

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Naturally, to understand where AI is going, we wanted to be reminded of where they’ve been, and so we rummaged the AI factory offices to round up one example of every LED fixture that Aqua Illumination has ever made and brought to market (not including the Flare LED). Nowadays it’s easy to take for granted how feature rich and high performance the current generation of AI Hydra 26 & 52 HD LEDs have become. But if we take a long view at what the aquarium hobby started with, it’s easy to see how aggressively AI has led the charge to make LED lights that are veritably, space-age.

With only a single model of LED light available, it was not necessary to come up with a different product name to differentiate it, and the ‘AI’ acronym for the company name hadn’t yet come into common usage. The Aqua Illumination LED was quite literally the second such controllable LED aquarium light offered to the hobby, and it was brighter, thinner, and much more affordable than the PFO Solaris that has since faded away into history.

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Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.

Although usually a short melody, it can also be a chord progression or even a simple rhythm. Leitmotifs can help to bind a work together into a coherent whole, and also enable the composer to relate a story without the use of words, or to add an extra level to an already present story.

The AI Nano featured a new LED cluster array, with the first onboard LED controls through the form of capacitive buttons. The development of the AI Nano was AI’s first foray into an LED cluster that deviated from their previous triple-LED cluster, and it paved the way for the over-the-top AI Vega. The AI Vega LED featured wireless controls, 20 LEDs, each with independently controllable intensities, and a program for users to order their own clusters of Powerpucks that they could completely customize.

The AI Prime was the first light that Aqua Illumination to feature ‘AI-FI’ as a way for the light to connect directly to the cloud, circumventing the need for an intermediate like the Director all together. Finally, this week Aqua Illumination started shipping the AI Hydra 26 HD and Hydra 52 HD ‘HyperDrive’ which intelligently redistributes power from the LEDs you’re not using, to the ones you are using.

The word gained currency with the overly literal interpretations of Wagner's music by Hans von Wolzogen, who in 1876 published a Leitfaden (guide or manual) to the Ring. In it he claimed to have isolated and named all of the recurring motifs in the cycle (the motif of "Servitude", the "Spear" or "Treaty" motif, etc.), often leading to absurdities or contradictions with Wagner's actual practice.[9] Some of the motifs he identified began to appear in the published musical scores of the operas, arousing Wagner's annoyance; his wife Cosima Wagner quoted him as saying "People will think all this nonsense is done at my request!".[10] In fact Wagner himself never publicly named any of his leitmotifs, preferring to emphasize their flexibility of association, role in the musical form, and emotional effect. The practice of naming leitmotifs nevertheless continued, featuring in the work of prominent Wagnerian critics Ernest Newman, Deryck Cooke and Robert Donington.[5]

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The newfound power, controllability and versatility of the AI Vega required the development of a brand new controller, one with wireless communication, a color screen and a simple graphical user interface. The AI Controller opened up the door to really fine grained control of LED spectrum, photoperiod, and advanced features like weather simulation and acclimation modes.

Aqua Illumination is the oldest aquarium company around today that has always been specifically dedicated to designing and building LED reef aquarium lights. This week we travelled to Aqua Illumination headquarters to spend some time with the crew, wrap our head around the new AIFI, myAI and HyperDrive features of the new Hydra 26 HD and Hydra 52 HD LEDs.

The use of characteristic, short, recurring motifs in orchestral music can be traced back to the early seventeenth century, such as L'Orfeo by Monteverdi. In French opera of the late eighteenth century (such as the works of Gluck, Grétry and Méhul), "reminiscence motif" can be identified, which may recur at a significant juncture in the plot to establish an association with earlier events. Their use, however, is not extensive or systematic. The power of the technique was exploited early in the nineteenth century by composers of Romantic opera, such as Carl Maria von Weber, where recurring themes or ideas were sometimes used in association with specific characters (e.g. Samiel in Der Freischütz is coupled with the chord of a diminished seventh).[2] The first use of the word leitmotif in print was by the critic Friedrich Wilhelm Jähns in describing Weber's work, although this was not until 1871.[1]

After the introduction of the Aqua Illumination LED Module, AI launched the AI Sol and a new controller, both of which took advantage of the rapid pace of progress in electronic and LED components. The AI Sol and new controller were much more streamlined than the Module LED that came before it, and the Sol was the first to use super bright Cree XPG LEDs.

Aqua Illumination started making LED lights like so many other companies, as a start up, working out of basement, and hand assembling nearly all of their light’s components. Our first face to face encounter with Aqua Illumination occurred at Reefapalooza 2007, where the fledgling AI was demonstrating their “Aqua Illumination LED”.

However, later commentators have defended Wagner's use of the leitmotif. According to Pierre Boulez, "Wagner's was the first music in which forms never return literally, are never repeated. As the music progresses, it carries all the thematic elements with it, linking them in new ways, placing them in different relations to each other, showing them in unfamiliar lights and giving them unexpected meanings." Boulez adds: "Leitmotivs are in fact anything but the traffic signals to which they have been mistakenly compared, for they have a double virtue – both poetic and dramatic, as well as formal. They are essential to the structure of both music and drama as well as to the different characters and situations. Their evolution is a kind of 'time-weave', an integrating of past and present; and they also imply dramatic progression."[11]