The ticking clocks of Clock Town
The predicament of Termina in musical form. And what better way to meet our new citizens than to start with an actual meeting at the top of the chain of command in order to see what really is the situation we got ourselves into.
One of the very last pieces Kondo wrote for the soundtrack, the Mayor’s Meeting cue, was a last minute requirement from the developers to Kondo, who was by that point almost left without any system memory, so the piece had to be short and to the point—the scene either didn’t exist or, more likely, initially had the normal House Theme cue accompanying it; it was deemed not as tense.
To flee or not to flee, that is the question. On this scene Link enters the town’s Mayor Office and ends in the middle of a meeting deciding the fate of the Carnival of Time that’s supposed to be held in two days. The carnival is a huge cultural event that brings people from all corners of the world each year to partake in a celebration for the gods. This year however, it appears that some nuts (including the city’s astronomer), are spreading rumors that the moon, the sacred celestial body emblematic to the village (and happy symbol of the Mayor’s Office) that probably contributed to kickstarting the precise timekeeping of Clock Town, will collapse to the earth; this has resulted in unprecedentedly small crowds coming for this year’s festivities.
Thus, a meeting was in order to decide whether to postpone, cancel or continue the preparations. The stubborn head of the carnival’s committee is not giving an inch, the carnival is a sacred tradition and people are just spreading unfunded panic and no matter what, the carnival should proceed. The captain of the guard of Clock Town recommends that everyone should evacuate immediately and that going along with the carnival will put at risk public servants who cannot flee unless there is an official order. Against these two possibilities, the mayor is totally indecisive, showing the lack of leadership and the amount of denial the inhabitants find themselves into.
Singled out by Koji Kondo as perhaps his favorite tune from the entire soundtrack, the Mayor’s Meeting is the kind of composition in which he is proud of having captured the vibe of the moment in a simple, immediately easy to understand way; the ultimate quality that a video game composer looks up to. For Kondo this is a priority even above writing pretty melodies that may be more pleasant to listen as pure music but may not fit during gameplay. So he always ends up exalting quirky, short tunes that he feels capture the movement, action and the situation.
And he is not kidding when he says it is his favorite, even choosing this specific song for himself to perform live at concerts:
Musical Analysis
Structure: Section 1 / Section 2
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: 120
Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: C Harmonic Minor; C Aeolian/Minor
The theme itself captures the three sides arguing on the room. The sound design of the scene implies that a lot of people are talking at the same time in a room full of members of the guard and the carnival’s committee, thus the music is also busy and full of arguing, not only between the bass and the high strings but also with the phrases that seem to appear over each other. The melodic phrases are neatly organized in question-answer pairs, like the meeting itself; the cue goes back and forth between a minor third interval and a perfect fourth. If this was a Broadway musical or an opera, you could easily give the strings only melody to the soldiers and the piccolo phrase to the members of the committee for them to sing, with the more legato Section 2 given to the unreliable Mayor singing and pondering about his predicament. And on the last four bars, both the soldiers and the entire room end up singing all together “youu knoow the riight thiing to dooo” or whatever, somebody else should write the lyrics; it does sound very operatic though.
Section 2, being at the same tempo at which seconds are counted, also plays with the concept that time is ticking relentlessly, the low strings going for a foreboding pattern precisely timing what’s left for the people of Termina. It disrupts the quirkiness and more comedy oriented Section 1 with a truly sad set of chords that permits the scene to still impart some gravitas.
Harmony that could work with the piece is:
Section 1
Cm – B dim-G – Cm – B dim-G
Cm – B dim-G – Cm-B dim-Cm
Section 2
Fm – Cm – Fm – Cm- Fm- G – G
Since the piece relies mostly in minor and diminished chords, it is certainly bleak, but the catchy rhythms and back and forth melodies capture the pointless bickering of adults that don’t really know what is the right thing to do. Just as Link wonders near the end of the game: “If you do the right thing… does it make… everybody… happy?”
One of the very last dilemmas that is resolved in the game. After Link learns the value of staying side by side with your loved ones no matter what, he manages to communicate this notion to the participants of the reunion, compelling them to end the meeting on the spot an go to what matters most in these final moments. Spending your final hours with the people you care about the most.
An ever fitting scene even for modern times where disagreement between sects appear unresolvable and people stick to agendas as opposed to common sense.
It’s also within the Mayor’s Residence where Link will be, for all intents and purposes, contracted as a detective in the mystery of the disappearance of the Mayor’s son, starting a series of interconnected quests that involve multiple characters and which will all culminate with Link learning the value of staying side by side to your loved ones which in turn will make him able to put an end to the meeting. It all ends where it began. This detective work also has similarities with the American series Twin Peaks, in which the main character has to reconstruct what happened by creating relationships with the residents of the town and discovering an interconnected web of mystery, where characters are not what they initially seem. It is the most involved quest in the entire series.
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