Cue of the Week: "I"

Second to last in the Anthem series, this cue is the fullest development of the story's main musical theme. Over the course of the audiobook, I had the theme grow as the character did; so whereas the melody is just a faint suggestion in the opening chapter, not even reaching its full interval height, here it appears in full form and orchestration. I try to avoid overintellectualizing my music, but in this case a parallel between the growth and self-actualization of the protagonist and his six-note musical leitmotif made perfect sense.

The music accompanies a five-and-a-half-minute speech from start to finish, which is a very unusual amount of underscore for an audiobook chapter. (Also not the kind of thing you write overnight!) The music's shifts in tone tend to follow the contour of the narration, but I strived to give it a musical structure that would make sense even out of context. The chapter clearly called for music of heroic character, but at the same time I wanted more of a sense of premonition than an overt celebration - a feeling of impending rather than already-accomplished triumph, with just a touch of righteous anger.

Anthem chapter 9: "I"

Cue of the Week: The Reunion

The production on this cue shows some signs of age; the mid-90's orchestral sample libraries that were used to render the music don't match the realism of what's available today. Nonetheless, I'm very fond of the musical content, which is the final and fullest statement of the romantic theme we've heard throughout the Anthem score. In this scene, the two outcast lovers reunite in a forest, having escaped the slavery of their home city.

The Reunion

Cue of the Week: The Forest

After last week's dark ordeal, I feel I owe you guys something lighter in spirit. Happily, the next selection from the Anthem series offers exactly this.

The Forest

In this cue we have a recasting of the central theme into a more playful, dancelike form. If you were to play connect-the-notes with the melody, you'd find it has the same contour as the more stately and (pardon the expression) anthemic version that appeared in earlier cues. But the meter, tempo, and instrumentation have all changed. This is a common technique composers use to provide both unity and variety within a score.

Cue of the Week: The Interrogation

The next cue in the Anthem series. This cue features the music for the story's bad guys, the members of a despotic authoritarian conuncil. In the story, the council imposes a code of societal stagnation and emotional denial. Correspondingly, I gave them a theme with very little motion - a chromatic ascending line which creeps upwards in tiny increments, only to eventually descend. This kind of intellectual relationship between music and story is a technique that can be abused, but in this case I thought it worked artistically as well as symbolically.

Generally I wanted the music to be muted and disquieting. Exotic percussion was employed to give the council a kind of alien quality, and the male voices are meant to give a sense of monastic austerity. The persistent cello intervals are played without vibrato, so they sound static and expressionless.

The Interrogation

Listener mail

I received the following email inquiry last week, whose answer I thought I'd share with everyone:

I am very interested in knowing more about the overture to the soundtrack for Empire Earth II. The lyrics sound Latin, and I'm wondering if you let me know what the chorus is saying, or where I might be able to find the translation.

The lyrics are indeed in Latin, written by yours truly. Very early on I hit upon the idea of using a chorus for this game's score, in order to give it an sense of epic scope and intensity. Latin was an obvious choice of language because of its universality (and I suspect the producers would have taken a dim view of a war chant in Esperanto). I didn't want to write random words, as is sometimes done. But what text would be suitable? And was it going to be a problem that I didn't know any Latin?

I came up with the idea of an ode sung from the prospective of the countless warriors whom the player will send to gory death. Those knights, marines, grenade-hurlers and so on are doing all the dirty work. Why not let them take the mic?

De profundis, de patriis
Nos vocantem te audimus
Dirige nos contra mundum
Morituri te salutant
Contra mundum, nosmet iube
Morituri te salutant

Approximately translated:

From the depths, from our homelands
We hear you call us
Direct us against the world
Those who are about to die salute you
Against the world, we obey you
Those who are about to die salute you

Since the soldiers in the game exhibit unswerving loyalty despite their grim prospects, the old addage from the Roman gladiatorial tradition seemed particularly appropriate. Latin help was provided by a few internet resources, and some fellow bloggers who were Latin enthusiasts.

The easiest place to hear the chorus sing these lyrics is in the game's menu music. I'll be featuring the EE2 score in upcoming weeks in this blog.

I'm always happy to answer questions like this. Keep 'em coming!