Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel, Bam here, you've heard it during Star Wars, The Shining even Home alone. For decades, clever composers have woven elements of a particular medieval dirge into film soundtracks to convey a sense of dread and general doom where the script calls for it no widely as the Day
of Wrath. The original Latin title for this piece is ds Era, which can also translate to such sunny concepts as Judgment Day, the end of the world, and death in general. The piece features a mere handful of notes. Here's the basic tune. It was originally composed back in the thirteenth century by a Franciscan monk named Thomas of Solano. Little did he know that one day his piece would be revered, repurposed, and otherwise showcased in many of the
biggest films to hit Hollywood. Hardly what we would call a complex musical work by today's standards, the piece doubles as a requiem chant and features some pretty sobering Latin lyrics translated into English. The first two lines read day of Wrath, the Day that will dissolve the world into burning coals. Here's a sample. Yes Yes, Mozart and Verity are just two of the composers who wrote original requiems
based on ds era. The hymn's first big movie exposure was in Citizen Kane, but the musical motif once you Know what to look For is ubiquitous. It's prominently featured in the opening strains of The Shining and a variation on it is included in the ultra famous Jaws theme. Very appropriately, we might add the shark is death and doom manifested. It's in Star Wars when Luke Skywalker faces the loss of his aunt and uncle, and it's used throughout the Lord of the Ring series to build a
sense of foreboding. Occasionally, composers go with a winking approach when incorporating the dirge into a soundtrack. In the stop motion animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas, an entire song Making Christmas is based around the sequence. In Making, and in the nineties blockbuster hit Home Alone, our young hero Kevin is regaled with the urban legend of old Man Marley,
the rumored South Bend shovel slayer. When Kevin lays his Eyes on the Guy, composer John Williams cues up a well placed strain of ds eerie to get the point across Kevin is terrified and his imagination is running away with him. But ds erae isn't only effective in films. The University of Georgia, for example, uses it to intimidate their opponents into accepting the impending doom that the song implies.
It's a staple at u g A football games and is frequently played for the crowd by the Georgia Redcoat Marching Band m. Today's episode was written by Elia Hoyt and produced by Tyler Clang, with musical cues provided by
David W. Collins. For more from David, including a full and may I say fabulous episode about ds era as popular music's word for death, check out his podcast The Soundtrack Show, available wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, for lots more on this and other topics that spell doom, visit our home planet how Stuff Works dot com