Hope/Home of Wisdom and the Arts

Track 4-19: Hope

In the initial order for this piece, all that director [Keisuke] Miyauchi wrote was: “Hope: Brightness. Tiny glimpse of hope.” (That said, the other event themes also had nothing but a phrase plus an incredibly brief description, the idea being to take that as a starting point and get imagining.)

Obviously, I had to express hope in this track, but that alone was far too broad in scope—what kind of hope should be represented isn’t clear, right? So, while keeping the idea of “hope” at the forefront, I decided that what was important for this piece was to focus on the “tiny glimpse of hope” part of the order.

As a result, the piece begins as if enveloped in thin morning mists, which are soon pierced by a ray of light. What lies ahead is unclear at first, but as the mists gradually clear, a fragment of hope slowly, slowly appears before the travelers, briefly bringing them joy before quietly vanishing again, like a wave rolling out.

That, I remember, was the kind of scene I imagined during the compositional process. The trumpet, strings, and horn seem to sing in praise of that tiny fragment of hope, and I had the musicians play as gently and softly as they could.

If all of this comes through in the music, I’d be very happy.

Now that I think about it, the title of this piece hasn’t changed since that initial order. I compose each track hewing quite closely to the title in the order, so they do end up being adopted as official names at a fairly high rate, haha!

Track 4-20: Home of Wisdom and the Arts (Day/Night)

This track, incidentally, was listed on the order as “Mountain Town B: Library.” I remember receiving this description along with some video of the Montwise library and using that as my inspiration as I composed.

As the title indicates, the library houses the treasury of wisdom and knowledge handed down by generation after generation of Solistia’s people, so I worked to express both a solemn feel and a sense of profundity evoking that history.

The way the harpsichord tones accent the mild atmosphere created largely by the string ensemble is one musical point of note. The harpsichord is strongly associated with baroque court music, and this makes it useful as a clear and iconic instrument for conveying a sense of solemn stateliness.

Translation: Matt Treyvaud