Hedwig's Theme

The piece opens almost alone: a bell-like celesta picks out a simple, slightly mysterious tune over softly pulsing strings. A solo woodwind, often oboe or flute, takes over the melody a few bars in, giving it a wistful, storybook quality rather than a triumphant one. The music settles into a gentle triple-time sway, closer to a slow waltz than a march, and a French horn answers the main phrase partway through. From there the orchestra gradually fills in: strings swell, brass join underneath, and the tune returns in a fuller, more heroic version at the piece's high point, with the whole orchestra carrying the melody together. After that climax the texture thins back out, and the piece closes the way it began, with the celesta alone picking out the opening notes, now sounding smaller and more intimate than the grand statement that just passed.

John Williams wrote this theme for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), his first score for the film series, and it quickly became the de facto theme for the entire eight-film saga even after other composers took over later installments. Williams has said he chose the celesta, a small keyboard instrument that sounds like tuned bells, because its sound felt appropriately magical and slightly otherworldly for the character. The theme now appears, in one form or another, in nearly every Harry Potter concert program, often serving as an opener or a unifying thread between other selections from the films.