Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Clock Town, The Final Day

Fear is creeping in

There are only 24 hours left and the weight of the world rests upon Link’s shoulders. The moon is now so close to the town that extraneous elements have begun to take root within the Terminian troupe.

Most of the town has presumably evacuated, so this soundtrack is now totally left without anyone to play the countermelodies originally played by the piccolo. Only the hero Link with his ocarina, a formidable dulcimer player that managed to find courage to stay and an harmonica that could be thought of as perhaps played by one of the bombers kids—they don’t even flee on the final hours, proving that they are indeed the real deal— is all that is left from the mini orchestra that received us on the title screen.

The guards of Clock Town and public servants were ultimately ordered to stay and the only thing that they can do is exhort everyone else to evacuate immediately. On the other hand, the carnival committee is indeed committed to go with the festivities even if it is the last one.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1 / Section 2

Time Signature: 4/4

Tempo: 150

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: D Ionian/Major; D Chromatic

These strings we hear here clearly don’t belong to the troupe of musicians, they are strictly mental; a representation that the town has finally reached its terminal state, palpitating in fear and slowly falling into desperation. Koji Kondo practically places an entirely new cue looming, like the moon, over the Clock Town music. by themselves, these strings are the sound Kondo uses for characters preparing for battle and to face imminent danger, since he used this same figure for the ‘Map’ cue in the video game Star Fox 64. You can hear the strings here to compare the two themes. On Clock Town, they are doing perfect fifths (plus a tritone to signal the start of the descent into ruin and another that ends the piece) mostly descending in chromatic steps.

Clock Town Day 3 strings only:

It really is a separate song

Star Fox 64 – Destination Map:

Prepare for battling your fears

This is most likely a coincidence in lieu of the fact that anybody can think of low strings playing chromatically as a sign of forebodingness. Nonetheless, an asteroid is falling down to earth, we would certainly benefit from the team of space animals giving us a hand here.

The harmonica that used to fulfill the role that the dulcimer is playing here, has now taken the lead melody on Section 2.

However, these strings when contrasted with the usually happy Clock Town tune and timbres, encompass nothing but the quality of The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask itself: uncanniness. The strings are not solely responsible for contributing to the apocalyptic atmosphere though, the now ultra fast tempo (125 in day 2 to 150 here), the lack of musicians and countermelodies, the fact that there isn’t any time left for the peaceful Section 3 of the previous iterations, and the reality that the doomsday clock usual count to three as represented by the three diminished chords that used to end the piece has basically reached zero, all point out to the fact that time, the entity so precious to the land of Termina, has finally decided to abandon everyone.