Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Enraged Moon

Forced destruction

“I… I shall consume. Consume… Consume everything..”

This is not how you are supposed to use the gongs from the Chinese opera! Yet this is not a concern for Koji Kondo, who will chase his musical idea wherever it takes him; if he wants to use his gongs in a melodic role, creating a brand new unnerving sound that still manages to be grounded in the sound palette he designed for the character of Majora, he will do it.

The chains are broken and with one last impulse from the evil mask the moon is at its most dangerous, not even the four giants being able to resist much longer. Even so, Link didn’t come this far just to once again quit and start from the first day; it’s all in now, so he follows Majora to the very center of the moon, a truly abstract plane of existence where the lines between reality and dream are completely annihilated and time stands still.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1 / Section 2

Time Signature: 4/4

Tempo: 180

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: Bb Diminished; Bb Chromatic; C Chromatic

A lesser composer maybe would have used this for the ‘Last Hours’ music, a track full of adrenaline pumping escalation and climax sensibilities. But Kondo only deploys it for this last scene where the stakes are very high, creating a frightening cacophony that gives impact and gravitas to the proceedings; a truly unnerving cutscene where the gongs from the Majora troupe have gone as berserk as the mask and the moon themselves. You can almost feel the weight each giant is supporting right now and the sense of having to run desperately and stop this situation whatever the cost. The opera gongs belong to the moon as much as they belong to Majora; after all, we first heard them on the title screen when we got the daunting first sight of the ominous astrological body. Still, the moon never looked this frightening.

This is the analogous track and moment to the destruction of Ganon’s castle in Ocarina of Time; the storm before the calm, punctuated by a short cue meant to create a sense of urgency and with Section 2 being a direct reference to the last part of the ‘Chase’ cue, a bunch of ascending scales starting progressively higher. The tempo is at its fastest, the beat placing its accents at different parts on the measure, creating a driving rhythm. We also see for the first time a single string instrument doing four parts as if on a string quartet doubling and covering multiple octaves, with Kondo employing one set of strings each one playing two chromatic lines. And who needs cymbals when the chau gongs are manically pondering with fast strokes and heavy sustained hits.

By the way, the gongs were not tuned to how a normal keyboard displays the notes (again, because no sane person uses them this way), Kondo just found the note he wanted by ear; the small opera gong is in truth sounding a perfect fifth lower than notated, alternating between F# and G. Similarly to how the cymbals accentuated each start of the ascending arpeggio on the ‘Chase’ theme, here that role is taken by the chau gong. The fact that the timpani and chau gong don’t coordinate add to the cacophony, just a mad man hitting things (the definition of a drummer).

The gongs from the Chinese opera are back and the small opera gong is used in violent fashion, creating a melodic instrument unlike any other. The music consist of just two ostinatos or phrases, one repeated, the second shorter and transposed as it is standard for battle music, this time a semitone. It’s a short racket that adds to the terror of the cutscene. Overall one of the most stress inducing and full of anxiety moments in the game and the music of course plays a central role in it—You know, and the fact that there is something really disturbing about seeing the moon with the mouth wide open.

The intro is a reprise of the theme of Majora, technically making this cue the first of the four part ‘battle-with-the-mask’ series, all starting with the Majora motif.

Everything is about to the destroyed, the cataclysmic apocalypse is on full steam but then a game like Majora’s Mask has to subvert its own climax, what Link finds at the verge of annihilation after a leap of faith is…peace.