Music of the Final Fantasy series
Final Fantasy is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and owned by Square Enix that includes video games, motion pictures, and other merchandise. The series began in 1987 as an eponymous role-playing video game developed by Square, spawning a video game series that became the central focus of the franchise. The music of the Final Fantasy series refers to the soundtracks of the Final Fantasy series of video games, as well as the surrounding medley of soundtrack, arranged, and compilation albums. The series' music ranges from very light background music to emotionally intense interweavings of character and situation leitmotifs.
The franchise includes a main series of numbered games as well as several spin-off series such as Crystal Chronicles and the Final Fantasy Tactics series. The primary composer of music for the main series was Nobuo Uematsu, who single-handedly composed the soundtracks for the first nine games, as well as directing the production of many of the albums. Music for the spin-off series and main series games beginning with Final Fantasy X was created by a variety of composers including Masashi Hamauzu, Naoshi Mizuta, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Kumi Tanioka, and Yoko Shimomura.
The majority of Final Fantasy games, including all of the main series games, have received a soundtrack album release. Many have also inspired orchestral, vocal, or piano arrangement albums. In addition to the regular albums, a number of compilation albums of tracks from multiple games have been produced both by Square Enix and outside groups. Music from the original soundtracks of the games has been arranged as sheet music for the piano and published by DOREMI Music Publishing, while sheet music from the piano albums have been published by Yamaha Music Media. The franchise's music has been performed numerous times in concert tours and other live performances such as the Orchestral Game Music Concerts, Symphonic Game Music Concerts, and the Play! A Video Game Symphony and Video Games Live concert tours, as well as forming the basis of specific Final Fantasy concerts such as the Dear Friends and Distant Worlds concert tours.
Themes
Although each game in the Final Fantasy series offers a variety of music, there are some frequently reused themes. Most of the games open with a piece called "Prelude", which is based on a short piece by Bach that has evolved from a simple, two-voice, arpeggiated theme in the early games to a complex melodic arrangement in recent installments. It has been described as being "as recognizable in gaming circles as the Super Mario Bros. theme or Sonic the Hedgehogs title screen pop". Coincidentally, seven years earlier in 1980, British rock musician Pete Townshend released "Let My Love Open the Door", a song whose opening strongly resembles the future Final Fantasy prelude. Battle victories in the first 10 installments of the series were accompanied by a victory fanfare; this theme has also become one of the most recognized pieces of music in the series. Chocobos and moogles, two mascots for the series, each have their own themes. The basic theme for chocobos is rearranged in a different musical style for each installment, and usually has a title ending in "de Chocobo", while moogles have a theme entitled "Moogle's Theme", which first appeared in Final Fantasy V. The chocobo inspired the spin-off Chocobo series, and many of the pieces from the soundtracks of that series are stylistically based on the main chocobo theme. A piece called "Prologue" or "Final Fantasy", originally featured in the first game, has appeared in some form in every game in the main series, with the exceptions of II, X, and XIII, originally appearing in the prologue of the games. It sometimes appears as a full arrangement and surfaces other times as a theme played during the finale track. Although leitmotifs are often used in the more character-driven installments, theme music is typically reserved for main characters and recurring plot elements.History
Main series
1987–2000: Uematsu era
When Nobuo Uematsu was working at a music rental shop in Tokyo, a woman working in the art department for Square, which would later become Square Enix, approached him about creating music for some of their titles in development, and he agreed. Uematsu considered it a side job and was skeptical it would become any sort of full-time position. He said it was a way to make some money on the side, while also keeping his part-time job at the music rental shop. Before joining Square, he composed music for television commercials. The first score he produced for Square was the soundtrack for the role-playing video game Cruise Chaser Blassty. While working at Square, he met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, who asked him if he wanted to compose music for some of his games, which Uematsu agreed to. Sakaguchi gave him a few instructions for the soundtrack of Final Fantasy, Uematsu's 16th score, such as the need for "battle" and "town" music, but left the remainder of the composing to Uematsu, aside from informing him of the specific technical limitations of the Famicom system. The game was released in 1987.After the success of Final Fantasy, Uematsu remained with the series to compose the soundtrack to Final Fantasy II. Although I and II were composed separately, music from the two games have only been released on albums together. These albums include a soundtrack album and two arranged albums. Final Fantasy III was released two years later and featured a soundtrack from Uematsu that has been lauded as one of the best soundtracks of any NES game. The soundtrack spawned two soundtrack albums, as well as a disc of vocal and orchestral arrangements.
Final Fantasy IV was the first game in the series to be released for the Super Famicom, and the resultant changes in the sound technology resulted in a composition process that Uematsu noted was "excruciating". Uematsu has stated that, beginning with this soundtrack, he started to move away from the idea that the soundtrack had to be solely an orchestral score. In addition to the soundtrack album, the music of IV was arranged and released in the style of Celtic music, performed by Máire Breatnach. It also sparked the release of an album of piano arrangements, something which would be repeated for every subsequent main-series game to date.
Having now gained experience with the Super Famicom sound chip, Uematsu felt that the sound quality of the soundtrack for the next game in the series, Final Fantasy V, was much better than that of IV. He named this as the primary reason that the soundtrack album was two CDs long, a first for the series. Like IV, the discography of Final Fantasy V included an arranged and a piano album in addition to the main soundtrack album.
In 1994, Square released Final Fantasy VI, the last for the Super Famicom, and the accompanying soundtrack has been considered one of the greatest video game soundtracks ever composed. The game's discography also includes orchestral and piano arrangement CDs, as well as EPs of unreleased tracks and character themes. The soundtrack included the first attempt in the Final Fantasy series to include a vocal track, "Aria di Mezzo Carattere", which has been described as "one of Uematsu's greatest achievements". This track features an unintelligible synthesized "voice" that harmonizes with the melody, as technical limitations for the SPC700 sound format chip prevented the use of an actual vocal track. The first actual vocals in a piece appeared in Final Fantasy VII.
Beginning with Final Fantasy VII, the series moved platforms to the PlayStation. While the media capabilities of the PlayStation allowed for CD quality music, Uematsu opted instead to use Sequence format. The soundtrack album ran a record four discs, and Uematsu has stated that the move into the "PlayStation era", which allowed video game composers to use sounds recorded in the studio rather than from synthesizers, had "definitely been the biggest change" to video game music. VII was the first game in the series to include a track with digitized vocals, "One-Winged Angel", which has been described as Uematsu's "most recognizable contribution" to the music of the series. The piece, described as "a fanfare to impending doom", is said to not "follow any normal genre rules" and has been termed "possibly the most innovative idea in the series' musical history". The lyrics of the piece, a Latin choral track which plays at the climax of the game, were taken from the medieval poetry on which Carl Orff based his Carmina Burana, specifically the songs "Estuans Interius", "O Fortuna", "Veni, Veni, Venias" and "Ave Formosissima". There was a plan to use a "famous vocalist" for the ending piece as a "theme song" for the game, but the idea was dropped due to time constraints and thematic concerns. The idea of a theme song would be resurrected in the following installment of the series. In 2006, IGN ranked VIIs music the best Final Fantasy soundtrack to date and cited the "gripping" character tracks and "One-Winged Angel" in particular as contributing factors. The discography of the original game only includes soundtrack, best of, and piano albums. However, beginning in 2005 Square Enix produced a collection of media centered on the game and world of Final Fantasy VII entitled the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. This collection has produced five additional soundtrack albums, each for a different game or animation.
The soundtrack of Final Fantasy VIII, unlike that of VI and VII, did not include character themes, as Uematsu felt they would not be effective. In response to a question by IGN stating that the music of VIII was very dark and perhaps influenced by the plot of the game, Uematsu said that "the atmosphere of music varies depending on story line, of course, but it's also my intention to put various types of music into one game". Although the idea had not been used in the previous game, he thought a ballad would closely relate to the theme and characters of VIII, and composed "Eyes on Me", performed by Faye Wong. The song was released as a single, while Square produced soundtrack, orchestral, and piano albums for the game's music.
The music of Final Fantasy IX was based around a theme of Renaissance music, and was heavily inspired by previous Final Fantasy games, incorporating themes and motifs from earlier soundtracks. Uematsu felt previous games VII and VIII had a mood of realism, but that Final Fantasy IX was more of a fantasy, so "a serious piece as well as silly, fun pieces could fit in". Uematsu has claimed several times that the music of IX is his favorite work, as well as the one he is most proud of. Like Final Fantasy VIII, IX included a vocal theme, "Melodies of Life", which was sung by Emiko Shiratori. The game's discography includes albums of the original soundtrack, a selection of the best tracks, a piano arrangement album, an album of unreleased tracks, and a single of "Melodies of Life".