Passacaglia: an Instrumental Sumeragi Subaru Fanmix
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meguro - brahms - chopin - coltrane - mitsuda - anderson - levay
metallica - higashino - penderecki - takemitsu - mccreary - bartók
Click on the cover to download, or follow the link at the end of the tracklisting.
Passacaglia -- an Instrumental Sumeragi Subaru Fanmix
passacaglia, n. -- a continuous variation form, principally of the Baroque. [Harvard Dictionary of Music and Musicians] The term derives from the Spanish "pasar", to walk, and "calle", street, and was translated into Italian for popular use. Variation in a passacaglia takes the form of an ostinato or ground bass line, over which the harmonic progressions, meter, and melodic style may change and develop, but the underlying presence of the passacaglia is usually ubiquitous. Historically, the musical form has been used to communicate stagnation, fixation, and obsession.
Passacaglia is my first fanmix. After I started the Shut Subaru Up! Challenge, I wondered what sort of thing I might have submitted to it if I could, by my own rules, participate...and then remembered that I've got a Masters in Music Composition and Theory and haven't done much with it since receiving it. I thought it might be interesting to construct a fanmix consisting entirely of music without lyrics, relying on abstract sound without precise narrative. To do so hits one of the themes of Tokyo Babylon and X/1999 that I enjoy exploring so much; communication, how it is and isn't perfect and is and isn't possible. And so I endeavored to get to the heart of Subaru armed with only a composer's instinct, as opposed to a writer's.
Among the other themes of Subaru's story that I most love to write about are intrinsically musical ones, games and tricks that composers have been playing for centuries; reflection and inversion, obsession and ostinato and track, emotional manipulation through denied release or cadence. I selected songs for Subaru that play these tricks as well, on both conscious and unconscious levels. Some are tonal, some are not; there's some really pretentious stuff in here, from all walks of the musical world, but I hope, at least, that it's poignant and effective, and that at least one track makes an impression on you.
Track 1: Meguro Shoji, SMT Digital Devil Saga 2 OST, "Karma"
Karma is scored for piano accompanied by a very subdued electronic orchestra. The mood of the piece is unrepentantly somber, a dirge in C-sharp minor and 4/4, "we who are about to die salute you". The musical game here is a descending ground bass, a lament which the urgent, striving melody cannot break away from, ultimately settling into a pattern of its own.
I can't help but associate this piece with Subaru walking to the Bridge, having accepted his fate long ago, and resolute in his desire to meet it at last.
Track 2: Johannes Brahms, Symphony No.4 in e minor Op.98, movement 4
The first track I selected for this fanmix, and the one that gave it its title. Brahms 4 (yeah, I know) is a modern passacaglia, obfuscating the ascending bassline with drastic changes in harmony and texture, but the constant iteration of the cycle often leaves the listener unsettled throughout. The mood is epic, urgent, plaintive in places, as if it can't decide if it wishes to to break free of its own rules.
This is how I hear 1991-1998, with the constant threat of Seishirou burning in Subaru's hands, and Subaru grappling with whether to pursue it or accept it.
Track 3: Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op.27 No.1
Ponderous, steady, with dark and yearning harmonies that swell out of a gentle framework...Chopin understands how to start a piece without telling us where it begins, where the melodies are growing out of. The irregular phrasing and rubato prevent the listener from getting lost in repetition in the beginning--and then when it builds, it builds unrepentantly, grows into something it could be, but spirals down and back to what it was.
I picture Subaru reflecting on his lost innocence here, trying to force what remains of it out of himself until he realizes that he doesn't need to or can't, not completely.
Track 4: John Coltrane, "Giant Steps"
A frantic jazz modulating-passacaglia, furious, and no, it's not just on here because I've used it in fic. Giant Steps is constructed on the ideas of ascent and descent and reflection, but no matter how elaborate the passage Coltrane plays is, it can't break away from its rule and winds up right where it started.
It's a fight scene, a chase scene, a paper-tearing-stone-to-shreds scene, a coats-flapping-in-the-wind-and-never-settling scene.
"You smoke, don't you."
Track 5: Mitsuda Yasunori, Xenogears, "Melkaba", CREID variation
Powerful, inevitable; Mitsuda's instrumentation is in so many ways the perversion of heavenly music, taking flute and harp and choir and dehumanizing them into strictures and ostinato. The choir is tribally carnal, the flute bent and dissociated into a reed, and the harp is the rule that doesn't buckle even under pressure from drums and an electric bass. I think the words for Melkaba are "no one can hear you scream--is it because you don't want to be heard?"
The nature of this piece makes me think of the illusion of safety--one of the times in his life where he revisits something gentle and finds that it never was. It's also the Going Within track; I can see this filling his explanation of himself to Kamui, prying him out of the wreck in his head to a world that's really no better.
Track 6: Barry Anderson and Harrisson Birtwistle, The Mask of Orpheus, "the Last Passing Cloud"
I said there would be pretension in here. The instrumentation of the Passing Clouds is an electronically manipulated recording of four simple gestures on a harp. I place this one directly after Melkaba as a segue, but also because of the extent of the perversion and dissociation. The piece is unstable, unsteady, but locked into place and never changing.
Glass breaking; rain falling; smoke climbing skyward.
Also, if you're up for a serious acid trip, check out the libretto for the "opera" this is excerpted from. Pretension herein.
Track 7: Sylvester Levay, Elisabeth, "die Schatten werden länger", Takarazuka instrumental
The off-beat pulse of this piece takes the steady song-form and, well, sexes it up. There's no other way to say that. It threads the piece with competition, urgency, desire to reconcile without giving up power, and all of these things are at odds throughout. I find this song horrifically erotic, and that adverb is intentional, "horrifically".
Doesn't help that, in context, it's about a frightened young man being seduced by Death himself.
I'd say it gets the point across.
Track 8: Metallica, "Call of Ktulu"
So this is the spiritual successor of the Brahms, back in Track 2. The same treatment of variations on a theme, building and retexturing until it can't hold together any more and here, it does break out--only to fall into another pattern, and an even more destructive one. Madness leading to further madness, violence leading to further violence, and the carnal appearances and instrumentation belie its sophisticated structure.
This is the Sunshine 60, the loss of perception.
Track 9: Higashino Miki, Genso Suikoden II, "Reminiscence", arranged for Oshima Michiru and Kentaro Haneda
The lamenting ground bass from Track 1 returns, recontextualized here as something much less resigned, almost hopeful. The transitions between major and minor modes here, and the sensual interaction between the jazz flute and the piano, are just so powerful and tangled and organic. I love what Higashino does with rhythm and impure chords, how she saturates everything, makes even the consummation slightly off.
"Don't worry about me, Kamui. I got exactly what I wished for."
Track 10: Krzysztof Penderecki, "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"
Everyone has her own Rainbow Bridge song.
I use this instead.
Track 11: Takemitsu Toru, "Masque for Two Flutes", second incidental
Takemitsu is writing for mirrors here; the homophony between the flutes here is so pronounced that you can't tell which is which, how the counterpoint is working. Neither is ever always high nor always low, two fade to one and one slips into two. Of all the songs in this mix, this is the most unbound in terms of structure, without an ostinato to drive it or a framework imposed on it. I also wanted to frame the Threnody with flute tracks, to make it stand out.
From the way the flutes beg for each other at the end, and the way the counterpoint is inverted, retrograded...and from which persists when the other does not...well.
"Subaru-kun, I...you..."
Track 12: Bear McCreary, Battlestar Galactica, "Wayward Soldier"
The strings return, echoes of the clusters in the Threnody but almost consonant, now, persistant, mixing with the percussion that fills the world around him. There are echoes in this of Melkaba, of the Brahms, and in the bass we can hear the four-note lament figure that pervaded Track 1 and Track 9. Something is being built but not yet accepted.
A fledgeling Sakurazukamori is initiated, by the legacy of death that has established it, but not by his own admission or desire.
Track 13: Béla Bartók, Mikrokosmos book 4 No.101, "Diminished Fifth"
A diminished fifth or augmented fourth divides the octave in half.
We return to just piano instrumentation, but this is nothing like Track 1 or Track 3, though the mood is as somber as either. It winds around itself more like the flutes in Track 11, but doesn't sustain or resolve. It's a manipulation, a perversion, of how this fanmix began.
Download the mix at Megaupload!
Comments and criticism much appreciated--do please tell me which tracks did and didn't work for you.
-
meguro - brahms - chopin - coltrane - mitsuda - anderson - levay
metallica - higashino - penderecki - takemitsu - mccreary - bartók
Click on the cover to download, or follow the link at the end of the tracklisting.
Passacaglia -- an Instrumental Sumeragi Subaru Fanmix
passacaglia, n. -- a continuous variation form, principally of the Baroque. [Harvard Dictionary of Music and Musicians] The term derives from the Spanish "pasar", to walk, and "calle", street, and was translated into Italian for popular use. Variation in a passacaglia takes the form of an ostinato or ground bass line, over which the harmonic progressions, meter, and melodic style may change and develop, but the underlying presence of the passacaglia is usually ubiquitous. Historically, the musical form has been used to communicate stagnation, fixation, and obsession.
Passacaglia is my first fanmix. After I started the Shut Subaru Up! Challenge, I wondered what sort of thing I might have submitted to it if I could, by my own rules, participate...and then remembered that I've got a Masters in Music Composition and Theory and haven't done much with it since receiving it. I thought it might be interesting to construct a fanmix consisting entirely of music without lyrics, relying on abstract sound without precise narrative. To do so hits one of the themes of Tokyo Babylon and X/1999 that I enjoy exploring so much; communication, how it is and isn't perfect and is and isn't possible. And so I endeavored to get to the heart of Subaru armed with only a composer's instinct, as opposed to a writer's.
Among the other themes of Subaru's story that I most love to write about are intrinsically musical ones, games and tricks that composers have been playing for centuries; reflection and inversion, obsession and ostinato and track, emotional manipulation through denied release or cadence. I selected songs for Subaru that play these tricks as well, on both conscious and unconscious levels. Some are tonal, some are not; there's some really pretentious stuff in here, from all walks of the musical world, but I hope, at least, that it's poignant and effective, and that at least one track makes an impression on you.
Track 1: Meguro Shoji, SMT Digital Devil Saga 2 OST, "Karma"
Karma is scored for piano accompanied by a very subdued electronic orchestra. The mood of the piece is unrepentantly somber, a dirge in C-sharp minor and 4/4, "we who are about to die salute you". The musical game here is a descending ground bass, a lament which the urgent, striving melody cannot break away from, ultimately settling into a pattern of its own.
I can't help but associate this piece with Subaru walking to the Bridge, having accepted his fate long ago, and resolute in his desire to meet it at last.
Track 2: Johannes Brahms, Symphony No.4 in e minor Op.98, movement 4
The first track I selected for this fanmix, and the one that gave it its title. Brahms 4 (yeah, I know) is a modern passacaglia, obfuscating the ascending bassline with drastic changes in harmony and texture, but the constant iteration of the cycle often leaves the listener unsettled throughout. The mood is epic, urgent, plaintive in places, as if it can't decide if it wishes to to break free of its own rules.
This is how I hear 1991-1998, with the constant threat of Seishirou burning in Subaru's hands, and Subaru grappling with whether to pursue it or accept it.
Track 3: Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op.27 No.1
Ponderous, steady, with dark and yearning harmonies that swell out of a gentle framework...Chopin understands how to start a piece without telling us where it begins, where the melodies are growing out of. The irregular phrasing and rubato prevent the listener from getting lost in repetition in the beginning--and then when it builds, it builds unrepentantly, grows into something it could be, but spirals down and back to what it was.
I picture Subaru reflecting on his lost innocence here, trying to force what remains of it out of himself until he realizes that he doesn't need to or can't, not completely.
Track 4: John Coltrane, "Giant Steps"
A frantic jazz modulating-passacaglia, furious, and no, it's not just on here because I've used it in fic. Giant Steps is constructed on the ideas of ascent and descent and reflection, but no matter how elaborate the passage Coltrane plays is, it can't break away from its rule and winds up right where it started.
It's a fight scene, a chase scene, a paper-tearing-stone-to-shreds scene, a coats-flapping-in-the-wind-and-never-settling scene.
"You smoke, don't you."
Track 5: Mitsuda Yasunori, Xenogears, "Melkaba", CREID variation
Powerful, inevitable; Mitsuda's instrumentation is in so many ways the perversion of heavenly music, taking flute and harp and choir and dehumanizing them into strictures and ostinato. The choir is tribally carnal, the flute bent and dissociated into a reed, and the harp is the rule that doesn't buckle even under pressure from drums and an electric bass. I think the words for Melkaba are "no one can hear you scream--is it because you don't want to be heard?"
The nature of this piece makes me think of the illusion of safety--one of the times in his life where he revisits something gentle and finds that it never was. It's also the Going Within track; I can see this filling his explanation of himself to Kamui, prying him out of the wreck in his head to a world that's really no better.
Track 6: Barry Anderson and Harrisson Birtwistle, The Mask of Orpheus, "the Last Passing Cloud"
I said there would be pretension in here. The instrumentation of the Passing Clouds is an electronically manipulated recording of four simple gestures on a harp. I place this one directly after Melkaba as a segue, but also because of the extent of the perversion and dissociation. The piece is unstable, unsteady, but locked into place and never changing.
Glass breaking; rain falling; smoke climbing skyward.
Also, if you're up for a serious acid trip, check out the libretto for the "opera" this is excerpted from. Pretension herein.
Track 7: Sylvester Levay, Elisabeth, "die Schatten werden länger", Takarazuka instrumental
The off-beat pulse of this piece takes the steady song-form and, well, sexes it up. There's no other way to say that. It threads the piece with competition, urgency, desire to reconcile without giving up power, and all of these things are at odds throughout. I find this song horrifically erotic, and that adverb is intentional, "horrifically".
Doesn't help that, in context, it's about a frightened young man being seduced by Death himself.
I'd say it gets the point across.
Track 8: Metallica, "Call of Ktulu"
So this is the spiritual successor of the Brahms, back in Track 2. The same treatment of variations on a theme, building and retexturing until it can't hold together any more and here, it does break out--only to fall into another pattern, and an even more destructive one. Madness leading to further madness, violence leading to further violence, and the carnal appearances and instrumentation belie its sophisticated structure.
This is the Sunshine 60, the loss of perception.
Track 9: Higashino Miki, Genso Suikoden II, "Reminiscence", arranged for Oshima Michiru and Kentaro Haneda
The lamenting ground bass from Track 1 returns, recontextualized here as something much less resigned, almost hopeful. The transitions between major and minor modes here, and the sensual interaction between the jazz flute and the piano, are just so powerful and tangled and organic. I love what Higashino does with rhythm and impure chords, how she saturates everything, makes even the consummation slightly off.
"Don't worry about me, Kamui. I got exactly what I wished for."
Track 10: Krzysztof Penderecki, "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"
Everyone has her own Rainbow Bridge song.
I use this instead.
Track 11: Takemitsu Toru, "Masque for Two Flutes", second incidental
Takemitsu is writing for mirrors here; the homophony between the flutes here is so pronounced that you can't tell which is which, how the counterpoint is working. Neither is ever always high nor always low, two fade to one and one slips into two. Of all the songs in this mix, this is the most unbound in terms of structure, without an ostinato to drive it or a framework imposed on it. I also wanted to frame the Threnody with flute tracks, to make it stand out.
From the way the flutes beg for each other at the end, and the way the counterpoint is inverted, retrograded...and from which persists when the other does not...well.
"Subaru-kun, I...you..."
Track 12: Bear McCreary, Battlestar Galactica, "Wayward Soldier"
The strings return, echoes of the clusters in the Threnody but almost consonant, now, persistant, mixing with the percussion that fills the world around him. There are echoes in this of Melkaba, of the Brahms, and in the bass we can hear the four-note lament figure that pervaded Track 1 and Track 9. Something is being built but not yet accepted.
A fledgeling Sakurazukamori is initiated, by the legacy of death that has established it, but not by his own admission or desire.
Track 13: Béla Bartók, Mikrokosmos book 4 No.101, "Diminished Fifth"
A diminished fifth or augmented fourth divides the octave in half.
We return to just piano instrumentation, but this is nothing like Track 1 or Track 3, though the mood is as somber as either. It winds around itself more like the flutes in Track 11, but doesn't sustain or resolve. It's a manipulation, a perversion, of how this fanmix began.
Download the mix at Megaupload!
Comments and criticism much appreciated--do please tell me which tracks did and didn't work for you.
-