One of the most beloved video game series of all time, The Legend of Zelda

continues to captivate fans with its gameplay, story, and music. So much so it was
decided to arrange a symphony based on the soundtrack, The Symphony of the
Goddesses. It is a four movement suite where each movement takes music from a
specific game. The games/movements are The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,
Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and A Link to the Past. The Legend of Zelda:
Symphony of the Goddesses incorporates already existing compositional techniques
along with a new approach to how music is written.
Symphony of the Goddesses in calls back to a very old compositional
technique known as the leitmotif. The leitmotif is a method in which places, ideas,
or characters in a story are connected to a musical idea. This theme can then return
later to signify a bigger meaning to the overall effect. In Symphony of the
Goddesses, we can see leitmotifs throughout the whole piece. The biggest examples
would be Zeldas Lullaby, (1:18:49) Ganons theme (54:39), and the Heros theme
(1:27:08). All three of these melodies are played amidst other musical ideas. This is
done to show how throughout all four games these three characters are connected
and involved in the storys plot. For example in Wind Waker, when Link is on the
pirate ship you can hear the pirates theme played but at one point we briefly hear
Zeldas Lullaby. This is to foreshadow that the captain of the ship, Petra, is really
Princess Zelda.
This connection between the three themes can also be related to the game
lore in that the three characters the themes are based off of contain part of the
Triforce of Power. Thus they are all fight each other and different incarnations of
each other throughout time which is represented by the presence of all three
themes in all four movements.

The Symphony of the Goddesses is unlike any other symphonic work in that it
takes music that was meant solely for a video game background and turns it into a
symphony meant to be heard for the sake of the music. The soundtrack of the
games is meant to set the atmosphere and general mood of a scene. As such, a
majority of the music is designed to loop upon itself, never really resolving
anywhere strong. One melody that does this is the Lost Woods theme (38:21), which
resolves its V chord at the end of the phrase to an arpeggio in a tritone. The way
the composer solves this problem is by writing variations of the melodies to show a
stronger resolution. Sometimes, though, he just puts in a small pause after the end
of the phrase. In this way, the listener is treated as a player and sometimes the
player would move between areas with no transition and the music would abruptly
shift.
This Symphony also plays with the idea of nostalgia for the listener. Someone
that would go to this concert would have already heard all of this music so they
would recognize themes. At the same time though, someone who never would have
heard of this music could still go to the concert and enjoy the performance. The
audience is very different from your typical orchestra audience. When the heros
theme was heard, they applauded in the middle of the piece because they were
excited to hear what was once only in MIDI now with live instruments. You can hear
people crying during the opening theme of Ocarina of Time because they are
overwhelmed with nostalgia for their childhood game. The reason this is significant
is because this work of music was not made for musics own sake but rather what
the music represented in the games. The music enriched the gaming experience, so
much so that by just listening to the soundtrack, the listener could replay the game
in his or her mind.

The Legend of Zelda series is not the first to have done this. We can see other
video game and movie franchises doing something similar. Howard Shore arranged
a symphony based off of his soundtrack to Lord of the Rings and many orchestras
around the world are playing more soundtrack performances. The reason is because
this is the new music of present. There is so much music being created for video
games and people want to hear it live. There even has been a branch of musicology
being studied now called Ludomusicology that focuses specifically on video game
soundtracks.