Video game music is one of those elements of the medium that seems to really lodge itself in the mind. While I don't have much in the way of musical ability (I'm a decent singer, but music theory tends to go way over my head,) I find that music is maybe the best medium for conveying tone, mood, and emotion.
Of late, I've been listening to a ton of music from Final Fantasy. While he's stepped back to a sort of advisory position at Squaresoft by this point (I think actually quite a while ago) Nobuo Uematsu stands as one of the great video game composers, and is behind some of the most iconic pieces of video game music.
More and more, I've been fascinated by Dancing Mad, the piece that plays when you fight the final boss, Kefka, of Final Fantasy VI. (Here's a link to the original, SNES version.)
In true FF tradition, Kefka is introduced as a sort of odd henchman of the evil empire, a clownish mage who seems to delight in sadism and cruelty, doing things like poisoning an entire river and thus killing everyone who relies on it for water.
At around the halfway point of the game, the evil emperor has plotted to use three divine statues to gain ever more power and take over the world, but at this point, Kefka murders him and takes the power for himself, becoming a god and more or less destroying the world - the second half of the game has the party trying to find one another through the post-apocalyptic World of Ruin.
The final battle takes place in the Tower of Kefka, a massive spire from which Kefka tosses divine judgment in the form of destruction.
Kefka is a bit like the Joker - he's heavy on both the chaotic and the evil, and has a clown-like appearance that belies his power. And by this point in the game, he's truly ascended to become the one real god in the setting.
Thus, the assault against him as the final fight is sort of an act of righteous blasphemy, and the music and design of the fight reflects that.
The fight against Kefka has you ascending past a sort of bizarre steampunk/gothic sculpture, which begins at the bottom with a demon, then ascending to a group of tormented souls, then a pieta-like display of a reclined figure with a benign-looking matronly figure looking on, and then ascending past this sculpture to fight Kefka himself, who now has a set of angelic wings above a set of demonic wings, and is dressed in flowing robes that recall Michaelangelo's Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
The sculpture might be a reference to Dante's Divine Comedy, starting with the Inferno, followed by Purgatory and Heaven.
The music also shifts over the course of this fight. The first phase, with the demon sculpture, has a dark, ominous tone that seems to burn with hellfire. When things move up to the tormented soul, the pace picks up, and we get a kind of wailing midi-chorus, perhaps representing the wailing souls.
Things get a lot different when the heavenly third phase starts, with a fairly serene and calm piece playing over what I imagine is, in fact, an intense battle. This, I think, is the most ironic part of the music. The serene music seems to present Kefka as some sort of benevolent deity, even using his leitmotif in the background, but with a sort of positive feel to it (here I betray my lack of musical knowledge - it might just be that the leitmotif is played in a major key.) Again, I find this part of the music really interesting due to the irony, and almost a sense that our villain is trying to gaslight us into thinking that we're the wicked ones for rebelling against him. Indeed, one could imagine that if Kefka truly succeeds in remaking the world to his specifications, he might cement our heroes' reputation as hubristic fools who stood against the one true god, which gives that pseudo-benevolence in the music a really terrifying subtext.
However, when things progress beyond phase 3 in this quite complex and lengthy boss fight, and the party faces Kefka himself, even as he appears god-like in front of a golden sky, the music completely shifts in style and tone.
Up until now, the music has all been organ music that strongly ties it to a religious context - stuff you could imagine hearing in an old Catholic church (and, thanks to YouTube, you can! - to be fair, I don't know if that place is Catholic, but you get the gist.) However, once the true final phase of the final boss fight begins, things turn into pure progressive rock.
Uematsu is obviously a big fan of prog-rock, which was a subgenre born of musicians who wanted bring complexity and deep music theory to the composition of music using rock instruments. The subgenre was most prominent in the last 60s and early 70s, represented by bands like Jethro Tull, Yes, Pink Floyd, and Rush. To me, one of the most indicative instruments found in Prog Rock is the Hammond Organ, which is an electric organ that many prog rock bands used (I'll confess, Hammond might be too specific, it might just be electric/electronic organ - again, I'm no music expert.)
So as Kefka appears, that organ sort of carries things from the baroque, classical style of the first three phases into a chaotic, rock-driven final phase, and we drop the classical organ for a prog-rock electric organ sound.
And again, I think the music plays into the story - if the third movement of the Dancing Mad suite was meant to gaslight us into thinking that we were wrong to be challenging a righteous deity, the rebelliousness of the rock the breaks out in the final phase seems to represent the heroes' defiance of this false narrative, striking against the self-proclaimed god, while Kefka drops all pretense to just strike back as hard as he can.
Now, Dancing Mad is not the kind of music I'd just play in the background. Going with FF music, I'd pick something more like Those Who Fight or Those Who Fight Further (which also have a bunch of other names each) from Final Fantasy VII, which are both propulsive, exciting music that's more just about pure badassery than bringing an epic story to an even more epic conclusion. (One-Winged Angel, the final boss music for FFVII, is also revered, though I haven't given it as thorough a listen.) But I am just kind of in awe at the mastery with which this thing was composed.
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