#Scaramouche vs the Fatui the push-pull in the vocals

[runawaymun]

If you're interested in the (frankly incredible) composition of this piece, I highly recommend giving this a watch:

Marco is so incredibly knowledgeable and he breaks down exactly how this is composed, and its relationship to opera, and how the music tells the story.

A note about the tech sounds vs the Japanese woodwind (sorry, I'm not sure which one it is and there are several!) is that that instrument and music leitmotif belong to Scaramouche's mother/creator and his country of origin within the game. The composition describes his inner conflict between where he comes from, his abandonment, and his desire to reach godhood (the tech noises relate to that).

Notice how the choir and the soloist are in a push-pull. The soloist (especially in those arpeggios) is describing his anger, pain, and sadness. Much of the time in Polumnia Omnia when the anger comes in, is when the vocal distortion the game marries to this artificial godhood come in. There are points where the choir follows Scaramouche, affirming his anger and pain, and points where Scaramouche follows the choir (or sings along with them). The point of his vocals that sound the saddest are when he is singing along with the Inazuman instrumental, which calls back to his abandonment and the pain in his history.

You can hear what his theme is echoing in his mother/creator's music here:

You can also find leitmotifs and compositional elements mirrored in his fellow Fatui Harbinger's themes, like Signora and Arlecchino (notably the choirs and the call-and-response between the soloist and choir, but also the actual musical leitmotifs are shared)

Anyway thank you for coming to my tedtalk. The soloist in Scara's boss theme is the composer, and this was the last piece of music he composed before leaving the project. What a fucking mic drop lol.

This piece just has SO MANY LAYERS and it just keeps going and going the more you dissect.

You can also hear a more "reconciled" piece for Scaramouche here, which marries the many competing pieces of his music and IMO represents how far he has come as a character:

Notably, in this piece, the orchestral pieces are no longer in a conflicted call-and-response from the choir, but they now follow the same melody as opposed to how the choir and orchestra (and the soloist) in Polumnia Omnia all compete and argue.