Introduction

This blog is an investigation into the use of compositional techniques in three selected pieces by Nobuo Uematsu: Aerith's Theme, Final Fantasy VII Main Theme, and One Winged Angel to determine how the composer portrays a person, a place or an event within the music.

Nobuo Uematsu, a Japanese composer, did his first published compositions with the small video game company Square back in 1985 for a video game with little success called Genesis. For the next few years, their video games continued to have moderate success and financial troubles plagued the company with potential bankruptcy. Then, as a last ditch effort made by the company, they made a game that would either make or break the company, and aptly named it Final Fantasy. Luckily, the video game was a huge success and it catapulted the company, along with the team that worked on it, into fame and reversed their previous fortunes. Ever since then, Nobuo has been a legendary composer, composing for Final Fantasy's one through nine and most recently, fourteen. He's also written music for Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssy, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, as well as several motion pictures that generally tie into his video game compositions.

His musical style is very distinct from other composers, having a very clear, repeated melody over classically influenced harmonies that don't go to the extremes of the Romantic Era,

but uses dramatic dynamics, creative instrumentation, and diverse textures in the Romantic style. In his writing method, he writes the melody first, which explains his melody heavy song writing. The particular game of Final Fantasy VII is one of the finest examples of Nobuo Uematsu's implementation of his writing technique: it ranges across multple styles and moods of music from western style fiddle music, to music based on Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. Some of these pieces include Aerith's Theme, which portrays the character of Aerith, Final Fantasy VII Main Theme which represents the world in which the game is played, and One Winged Angel, representing the dramatic final clash between the protagonist and the antagonist.