Yasunori Mitsuda, the modern Prophet of Joy

My short story with a legendary composer whom I struggled to understand for a long time.
Until, that is, the 14-minute finale of the Xenogears 20th annniversary concert…

From MP3 Rock to Live Game Music

I’ve been immersed in game music since my childhood, but until 2014, I was a passive enjoyer. Aside from the actual experience of enjoying a game’s music while playing it, I spent a lot more time listening to Queen or Pink Floyd.

Anime music, through my all-time favourite Kara no Kyoukai (the Garden of Sinners), had made its way to my phone, and as a piano player, Final Fantasy X “Zanarkand” vastly contributed to reviving my love for the instrument (more on that another day, maybe).

Then, in 2014, I started attending VGM concerts. In December that year, my father randomly got me the last seat for the Earthbound Papas concert in Paris – yes, *these* Earthbound Papas, the direct successors of the half-disbanded Black Mages, with Nobuo Uematsu himself leading the project.

Look at this crazy bunch of geniuses!
Credits: Earthbound Papas

It was a fantastic occasion, and yet, my knowledge of the Final Fantasy corpus was lacklustre, to say the least. When they started playing Dancing Mad, I had “a vague feeling I knew the song”. Thinking about it today, I can’t help but blush. Perhaps even more *bang your head on the wall* cringe is that I had never heard about Maybe I’m a Lion and the Black Mages version, which is now my very favourite TBM song.

What I do know, though, is that after 10 minutes of the audience shouting the Victory Fanfare to summon an encore, the band came back and played that incredible song for what felt like 20 minutes, with Okamiya performing 7 solos or so while lying on his back.

Holy Trinities, past and present

In 2015, I attended another concert in Paris; the Press Start - Symphony of Games. While the concert itself was not out of this world, three invaluable guests were present that day. Three composers I now associate as the three prophets of game music: Nobuo Uematsu, of course, Yoko Shimomura, and Yasunori Mitsuda*.

This holy trinity is undoubtedly held at the pinnacle of the VGM world, as they’ve been active since the early Square days, each of them involved in projects whose legacy will never falter: Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Mana… and many more afterwards.

*Yes, I am aware of the existence of Koji Kondo, Motoi Sakuraba, Yuzo Koshiro, Kenji Ito, and a lot of other composers who also belong to the Pantheon of video game music.

Yasunori Mitsuda - Yoko Shimomura - Nobuo Uematsu
(In third position, the pretty cool JP/FR translator involved in almost all VGM concerts in France, but whose name I forgot…)
Credits : Kayane

Funnily enough, they’ve sometimes been compared to another Holy Trinity, that of classical music. Uematsu would be Mozart, Shimomura would be Beethoven, and Mitsuda would be Bach. 

I’m not sure how convinced I am by this comparison, but it will serve me well.

Some years ago, I came across an interview of famous French writer Jean d’Ormesson, who was invited on a classical music radio.
He professed his love for good old Johann Sebastian, and said he considered Bach to be a “poet of Joy”. I shall not elaborate on my personal, complicated relationship with Bach, but I understand what he meant.

Now, more recently, I came across two works that brought me much closer to Mitsuda, whom I already revered for the Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross soundtracks (the Chrono fantasy in the Symphonic Fantasies album is… fantastic), as well as the Xenoblade series. 

The first one is Symphonic Memories, a two-CD album featuring music from FFXV, FFVIII, Octopath Traveler, and Xenogears, mostly in the form of “suites” – roughly 15mn arrangements featuring numerous tracks from the elected game. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s sort of a medley, but expertly crafted, and pieces are often beautifully intertwined. I haven’t played Xenogears, and I had more or less never heard anything about its music, save its famous and unusual final boss theme; but The “Slayer of God” suite hit me hard, and I was craving for more. And boy, did I find more. 

Celebrating the Beginning and the End

After some quick research, I found out about the 20th anniversary concert album (please buy it here, or get it “somehow”). 

Despite having no attachment to the game, and little prior knowledge of its music, I dove deep into this album. The whole experience was wonderful, but one moment stood out in particular: the 14mn finale “Bartholomew and Lahan”.

This piece concludes the album in pure Mitsuda’s style, with beautiful, soaring melodies, and an undeniable Celtic vibe through instrumentation and rhythm. Dancing around with a contained melancholy, this lengthy arrangement sounds like the perfect fit to end the concert on a high, hopeful note, while celebrating everyone’s love for a game released two decades earlier – an eternity in gaming years.

The culmination of this communion arises with the Lahan village theme’s final section.

The shock of the first listening has gradually faded away, but I’m still moved to tears every single time. This vamp is undoubtedly one of the most gorgeous things I have ever heard, and its deceiving simplicity is also a tribute to Mitsuda’s heavenly abilities as a composer. As we keep looping over this simple bVI-bVII-III-bVI-bVII-i progression, and the violin engraves the melody in our souls, the maestro introduces the various members of the performing squad, each of them adding a little spice to the ongoing vamp with their respective instrument.

The piece eventually drops the overwhelming melancholy and ends in a truly celebratory fashion, concluding these two hours of pure joy… well, almost. We also get the final thanks from Mitsuda-sensei, choking on his words, as he, too, feels overwhelmed. 

Look at this beautiful man.
Credits: RPGFan (?)

Whatever Yasunori Mitsuda, the whole band, team, and audience felt and shared during this concert, is what I’m striving for as a composer. To move and be moved in such a deep way is, I think, the pinnacle of creating music, and perhaps creating in general.

The Xenogears concert finale feels, to me, the utmost representation of joy. And I choose this word on purpose. Happiness, bliss, delight… They refer to different concepts, but none, I think, as liberating as pure joy. And yet, we usually feel the need to add a hint of melancholy to the mix.

D’Ormesson called Bach a poet of joy; I think it is fair to call Mitsuda a prophet of joy.

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Thanks for sticking around. This was an incredibly self-centered piece, but if even one person gets their hands on the recording and enjoy it, I think it was more than OK to indulge in this tale.

Catch you later!