Leitmotivic Strategies in Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy Soundtracks

Abstract

This article discusses Nobuo Uematsu’s leitmotivic soundtracks to the 16-bit Final Fantasy role-playing games. I identify five distinct techniques within these soundtracks whereby a game’s main theme is musically connected to a single character theme: eponymous omission, motivic networking, thematic hybridization, associative troping, and the double main theme. I argue that these different techniques demonstrate how a character’s individual journey reflects the story’s underlying literary theme, which is itself represented by the musical main theme. I conduct topical, motivic, formal, and semiotic analyses of the soundtracks to FFIV–VI and discuss how their character themes, though mostly non-transformative, engage in a larger leitmotivic network of inter-related thematic families that interact with their main themes in dramatically meaningful ways. This analysis demonstrates subtle ways in which leitmotivic scoring can heighten one’s narratological understanding of a story, and may be useful for those seeking to arrange video game soundtracks into programmatic music that tells or retells a game’s story.