Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Triforce Chamber / Power of the Gods

Take your boots off your feet

And thus the Triforce spoke to men. And it became present in history.

And you better treasure and contemplate this moment seldom witnessed in the course of the series. The elusive opportunity to interact and touch the most important artifact. You are now in the presence of something truly transcendent, straight from the divine realm and crafted by hand by the creators of the universe for some higher purpose; the magic present here is not your typical fantasy fairy but something deeper. Pure spiritual induced ecstasy and bliss.

It is the Essence of the Triforce that speaks directly to the hero’s soul, its words echoing not through air but imprinted directly. An entity that in the prologue is said to be omnipotent and omniscient, akin to the concept of the Trinity. At its feet you feel fulfilled and in your altered state of consciousness it seems that nothing else matters. You are being pulled, almost levitating towards it.

This is what this music is all about, what it wants to convey. This is the real cue of the Sacred Realm, a kingdom that no longer has Ganon’s presence. It harks back to the opening of the game which was all about the Golden Land and its relic. With that 3/4 meter in the string and similar descending chromatic movement it recalls the Section 2 of that prologue. Yet, the ambiguity has been dispelled at last.

And what does the most sacred object in the universe deserves as a lead instrument? Of course the fricking honky tonk piano from some decadent saloon. Well, that is not the idea. The sample is just too multifaceted, having served as a bass guitar and a Hammond organ before, it now gives some kind of ethereal lush to the string melody. In any case it is the melody, harmony and strings the ones who do the heavy lifting in elevating this sacred chamber. As its official title says, this one represents the gods of Hyrule.

It is also one of those musical cues that belongs forever to just A Link to the Past, not having found much of a reuse in the span of the storied series; other opportunities for it could have been in The Wind Waker or Skyward Sword, where we hear the Great Fairy theme related to the mythical three triangles instead.

Musical Analysis

Musically, it begins with the same scale that we hear whenever we rescue one of the maidens. This is the sound that you ought to hear whenever you succeed before an enemy. The main difference to mark this moment as extra special is that this figure, which is a G7/9 chord, is played with strings and not glockenspiel (the maidens also used Zelda’s Theme, meaning this lullaby is supposed to be played to all royal girls). It is actually the shorthand for the sacred within the story since this impressionistic arpeggio figure actually opens up the title theme when we first got a glimpse of the Triforce pieces; albeit back then it was a Eb7/9.

And these 7/9 chords serve as the dominant chord that launches into the bulk of the track directly on the tonic; so here we get a melody in the C Ionian/Major profile. And what do we use for endings to pull the nostalgia strings? That is right, the I to IV movement favored in end credits themes and also the basis for the evocative yearn heard on the opening from Ocarina of Time and Nintendo file select screens. The strings here limit themselves to just perfect fifths, going from C5 to F5. This harmony movement is then transposed to Ab5. After this we get the chromatic movement reminiscent of the prologue: C5 – Bb5 – A5 – Ab5 – G5.

The arpeggio string performance is very rubato and organic to give that romantic, symphonic touch. Melody wise we follow standard question-answer blocks separated by bars. The questions are the same and the answers differnt in that the first time the bar is filled with three quarter notes and the second time just the dotted half note. The melody naturally follows on the footsteps of the harmony profiles, using the C major scale for the first vamp and then we can say it uses the Ab major scale due to the presence of that Bb note. The choices of notes favors the generation of maj7 sonorities with the harmony. For the chromatic section the melody remains within a C Ionian/Major profile with a steady rhythm of a quarter plus half note.

It ends with an accelerando where the notes begin a run through a Db major scale and then an abrupt switch to the C major scale to end it, taking advantage of the Ab5 harmony underneath its first part and then the G5 to land right back at the beginning of the loop.

As for the bonus track included here at the beginning, it is the precursor to the Boss Defeated cue from Ocarina of Time. And no, you did not just win a Mario Kart race or a level in Super Mario World, this fanfare just has a very jazzy harmony and celebrates the fact you completed a dungeon, including this one last challenge. The extended harmony with four part chordal melodies played over the bass pedal note and which gives the extra jazz feel creating all kinds of seventh, ninth and eleventh sonorities. Something like:

Ebmaj7/9 – Dm7 – Cm7/11 – Dm7

That then in exciting fanfare fashion keeps climbing to higher parallel chords. First over the F pedal note, then the Ab and then B. It ends on the normal chord Eb major in true 20th Century Fox fanfare style down to the ritardando. Absolute cinema. The harp also fast jazz arpeggios that form sixth chords. A very Hollywoodesque track that mixes those traditional orchestral instruments with the more modern harmonic language of jazz.

And fanfares, marches and parades are what await the legendary hero. For the first time ever the kingdom is in an unambiguous state. Ganon has been defeated once and for all and the Master Sword is able to sleep forever.