Now for the time you've all been waiting for!!
Today's post is about "Mysterious Thing" from Final Fantasy Legend II which was the bane of my childhood. I love looking through game music and trying to understand the compositional logic behind pieces, but this one just did not click back then. I must have listened to this minute long piece for over a hundred hours, and I figured our what the notes were, but never got why he chose them.
To this day, it still strikes me as one of the most biblically important pieces of music ever written.
In the game, the first time you hear this song is after Asura's men procure shrinking potions to invade the Sage, Ki's, body to steal magical relics from inside of her, and... wow, this sounds really weird out of context.
Anyway, you suck up to a former giant and learn where the giants kept their stash of micron potions. You use the potion to temporarily shrink yourself and fight your way through Asura's men and her body's natural defense mechanisms and take the relics before they get to them.
Once you defeat the cell guarding the final relic, you grab it and leave which permanently strips the sage of her magical capabilities, but also saves her life from her pursuers.
Honestly, put me back. There are few woman's bodies I'd rather be in with that music tbh
Anyway, with the obligatory humor out of the way,
take a good listen to the original, or my arrangement, or preferably both.
Original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiV71VIUaAQ
My Arrangement:
https://youtu.be/ZbIOX7a7LW4
Here is the thing that makes this piece of music so hard to analyze. The beginning obviously implies a I-bVI vamp, but the I chord is actually a vi65 chord which makes the vamp vi65-bVI which is like nonsense.
My argument for the latter progression comes down to a philosophical one. vi65 and I (like the I chord; not me specifically) share tonic function and "Do" as a bass note. A resolution from a dominant chord to vi65 is like a weak deceptice cadence. The thing that seems deceptive about it is that it implies motion to the relative minor, but not very well because "Do" is still in the bass in a vi65.
In Uematsu's voicing, he outlines the major I chord in one voice, adds "La" in the middle voice, and plays the melody in the top voice. If you remove the middle voice, the progression is undoubtedly I-bVI, but the addition of "La" weakens the intensity of the picardy third. This is because it makes the harmony a first inversion minor 7 chord rather than a root position major triad. The result is a less pure and more modally relaxed chord that isn't as overtly bright as a picardy third. When I thought about what we would call a chord that does this, I realized that we can just name it vi65 and it would be appropriate enough. It literally is a vi65, and so I think that roman numeral is simply the most reasonable for the situation.
If you want to call it a Iadd6, you can, but my compositional intuition is vertical, so I cannot justify that reading to myself. The second you call it an add6, it feels like an unimportant note, especially considering that add6 is actually the root of the chord.
Sadly, the last 8 measures are not any easier to analyze. In fact, it is even more of a mess when you try to look at it theoretically.
It begins with the G major passing chord being recontextualized as I, but you have to treat these 8 measures like they are in G minor and not G major. However, the G major chord did not originally have tonic function, so that means this gesture is a simultaneity (which is what you call a chord that serves a different function on the back end than it does on the front. Only major and minor chords have the ability to be simultaneities because they have the ability to be tonic, predominant, or dominant chords.
From I in G minor, he moves to IV/VI (which is bII). Then he does a (ii7-V7-I7)/VI.
Once he lands on VI, it sounds like it repeats for a bit, but the IV/VI gets recontextualized as VI/iv (which is also bII) and he does a (VI-VII-I)/iv which creates a cadence with a picardy third on C major.
From I in C, he immediately returns to the A major with the added sixth from the beginning.
C major has been given tonic function from the VI-VII-I unless you want to argue that we never left G minor which would give it predominant function. The reason I cannot encourage the predominant reading is that it is the strongest authentic cadence in the piece. Either way, the movement from the cadence in C to A6 or F#m7/A (or whatever you want to call it) is a prolongation of tonic function. He lands on C major, which is a bright tonic function chord, and essentially moves to A major, which is an even brighter tonic function chord.
To recap, in the last 4 measures, Uematsu picardy thirded with a VI-VII-I in C minor (which is iv) and then went to naturalVI of that key (C minor), which is the parallel of the relative minor of C major, which is the parallel of C minor, which is iv of G minor, which was reached by a simultaneity... got it? Listen to my arrangement. It will make more sense in context.
You're welcome.
Good evening,
Evan Davis
All chord charts and diagrams created and owned by me. If you would like to use any of my figures, contact me at evandavispiano@gmail.com for permission.
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