Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Dragon Boss Battle

A more heated fight

Because a king merits his own theme.

After 40 tracks we have arrived just to the second boss of the game—the soundtracks from previous Zelda games would have been finished a long time ago by this point (no wonder, Kondo would not continue to score the series all by himself after this game). That this particular track exists also points us to the fact that maybe the original ambitions were even higher.

Only the mighty power of volcanoes and fire get their own exclusive boss battle themes that will be used only two times. This time Kondo has gone over the top for the battle by throwing everything but the kitchen sink onto this boiling track. There are more sections than in the first one; both male and female choirs, full orchestral percussion, woodwinds, strings plus piano and marimba are featured here alongside the loud brass section. Is this a final boss or what!? The piece also features ostinatos, heavy percussion and rhythmic dislocation as part of the standard battle language.

The first two dungeons having their own boss music give the impression that the plan was originally for each boss to have its own track, but it was possibly scraped due to time or memory limitations. At the end, this track ended up being used for the lava bosses of the game exclusively.

The cinematic sense of Ocarina of Time is also exemplified in the way that it creates suspense with its boss battles, fading to black when you enter their lairs and then creating more suspense by making the camera take the point of view of some of the bosses before their gargantuan appearance is shown; this is when the fanfare alarm sounds right on cue.

Music Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1 / Section 2 / Section 3 / Section 4 / Section 5

Time Signature: 4/4 (25/8)

Tempo: 148 (ritardando at the beginning to 100)

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: B Diminished, Db Diminished, B Chromatic

If for the Mini Boss cue the perfect fourths were the main characters, here the tritones take center stage to show that this is a more desperate battle and that this is a more demonic monster as opposed to a warrior. The main ostinato played by timpani, piano and tuba is directly based on this interval and the opening interval of the melody is also this demonic diminished fifth, with the first note F# being the tritone note of the C based accompaniment; you are right in hell.

The piece opens with that Frankenstein of dissonances, the alarming diminished major seventh chords, composed of the malevolent tritone, minor second and perfect fourth at the same time; the whole gang of bad guys. In the remaining of the piece, different instruments take turns to emphasize various ostinatos (the contrabass male singers must have quite the extraordinary abilities). Like the other battle cues except for the standard battle which is all about suspense this is the alarming signal that your body needs the adrenaline rush right now to fight.

The cue has a proper second intro right after the alarm fanfare that establishes the accompaniment and generates more anticipation before the horn melody kicks in. The harmony is based around back and forth tritone chords separated by the bridge in a different time signature. We could say the “verses”of this song are when it goes from C(b5) to D(b5) and the “chorus” is from Eb5 to D(b5). The first melody is a question-answer block in which the answer is just the same question transposed from F# to G#. The chorus melody is also based around this parallel movement principle.

The piece continues the Kondo tradition of rhythm displacement for combat music, Section 3 features a dislocation of rhythm that could be counted in groups of 3s and 2s: like 3 3 2 3 with 3 3 3 2 3. This makes accents fall all over the place, as if you are receiving attacks from various angles or boulders and lava are raining down. It is all about enhancing that sense of chaos.

The ambiguous harmony seems to be based around two transposed diminished scales, alternating between B and Db (on the other hand, it can be seen as using the two octatonic scales that are produced by B). The ascending and descending scales that play as alarms through the track are transposed to fit each chord.

After the bridge the main progression returns and infernal choirs play descending notes falling into the abyss. The principle of just transposing a single melodic phrase continues. Last section is a reprise of the chorus—that is why it is called a chorus—now with male choirs. It does not need to be said that like other battle cues, the chromatic notes play a prominent roles in making these melodies apt for the dissonance of clashing against monsters.

The track could have been scored to the Volvagia fight since the cutscene and rhythms of the battle fit well with the timings of the cue.

For some inexplicable reason, the song was changed on the soundtrack release of Ocarina of Time by removing the choirs and replacing them with instruments:

Here brass replace the gals and the guys seem to be played by some woodwinds, making the track less infernal