Richard Wagner, romantic period composer. In an Opera known mostly as The Ring Cycle, Wagner uses what are called leitmotifs. What are leitmotifs? They are short musical themes that represent a certain person, idea. or object. In The Ring Cycle, Wagner takes the leitmotifs of various characters and emotions and pieces them together to create a network of these motifs. In certain situations a Summer leitmotif might be combined with a Tree leitmotif to set the placement of a scene.

During presentations of this 18-hour opera, the audiences were handed little program books that showed what leitmotifs were currently playing. This helped the audience understand the feelings, ideas, and settings the story was in.

So what does this all mean? Well most of you clever folk might have already noticed the correlation.

That's right.. Richard Wagner, the first Object-Oriented composer