Final Fantasy XI "Memoro de la Ŝtono" vs. 19th century pop

[PhilsPhindings]

Featuring Final Fantasy XI and mostly 19th century music.

Greetings fellow music lovers,

after concentrating mostly on the classic entries of the Final Fantasy franchise it was about time that I write something concerning one of the more modern entries ( with "modern" being relative as the game already turns 19 this year): Final Fantasy XI (2002), the first MMORPG entry in the series. It also has the honor of being one of the financially most lucrative entries in the series.

The sample of our interest today is one from the section of the opening theme known as "Memoro de la Ŝtono" ("Memory of the Stone"):

We start with an occurence of the first 8 notes in the song "Helicopter" , a song by swedish instrumental rock band The Spotnicks which also happens to be a remix of the Destination Nordsjön theme that I already used for my Aria Di Mezzo Caraterre article:

Then we have a more complete section from the song "Till We Meet Again", a popular song by Henry Burr and Albert Campbell from 1918 which gained a major following during the first world war and peaked the charts for several weeks:

Then we have a sample from the 5th symphony of russian romantic composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky that appears repeatedly throughout the piece in different variants:

Finally, we have this little tidbit from "Blumenwalzer", a waltz by Carl Michael Ziehrer from 1864. Listen here:

Wednesday more Mario!

Phil out.

 

[Dionysos]

I love this track.
I can tell that these samples have a similar tunes. The tone/speed of the Burr and Campbell track suits it especially.

While even the waltz has some similarity, the Tchaikovsky piece is particularly close to the FFXI track. It wouldn't be the first time that Tchaikovsky has influenced Nobuo. The scene with the Lamia Queen in Final Fantasy II where an aspect of Swan Lake plays explicitly indicates an interest, so it is likely that it has influenced some of his original pieces as well.

Interesting point about the FFXI track. The words are sung in Esperanto (the language created in the late 19th Century by Zamenhof which was intended to facilitate communications in a rapidly globalising world).


P.S. I'm going to have the Helicopter track in my head for a while to come! And I'm not complaining.