I had booked a ticket to see the London Symphonic Orchestra play a Square-Enix suite in Paris. For a full year, I waited for this single moment, but never in my life have I expected the music that would be able to seep itself in the very foundation of my soul would be a series I haven’t fully played.
June 17th. The orchestra was set to perform at the spacious and beautiful City of Music in Paris, a relic of France’s commitment to contemporary art during the 80s socialist era. In there, the Pierre Boulez symphonic hall is an architectural marvel of exquisite lighting able to hold up to 3600 patrons. The hall was packed full; thousands of avid listeners who likely ordered their ticket more than a year ago were present to listen the London Orchestra interpret the very best tracks of Square-Enix’s long and rich musical history.
Symphonic Selections, as it was called, is a mix of various pieces of a long-running video game concert aptly called “Game Concerts”, spearheaded by Thomas Böcker of Merregnon Productions. Böcker is notable for drawing a new audience to orchestral concerts and giving the proper care it deserves, and it delivers yet again.
The program was also very carefully crafted and worthy of its “best-of” edition : Final Fantasy VI was present, arranged as a symphonic poem beautifully hovering around the iconic Terra’s theme, as well as Final Fantasy VII, set by a moody movement capturing the dark, ambient nature of the original game. Kingdom Hearts was also present, played as a rhapsody, with a flowing of the numerous leitmotivs of Yoko Shimomura’s lifework. These pieces, especially FF6, managed to draw out the best out of their original music, capturing the feelings that we all felt and playing it back to us. It was, quite simply, a melody of the soul.
Yet the one orchestral arrangement that managed to make my whole body attune to the sound of all the instruments on the stage was of one video game that I did not play to the fullest. This piece was the Chrono Trigger/Cross arrangement. As I have only played Chrono Trigger to completion and never succeeded in finishing Cross, I was saddened that the last piece of the concert would be of one in which nostalgia wouldn’t grab me as much. I also knew that Chrono Cross was a deeply divisive game, always at the center of debates and often called an unworthy sequel. It was made by Masato Kato, Chrono Trigger’s writer turned director, as opposed to the previous self-called “Dream Team” that had Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yuji Horii of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest fame.
But as the suite started to reach my ears, none of this mattered. The next thing I knew, I was in my room, controller in hands, frantically playing Chrono Cross to completion, always motivated with this haunting piece of music.
The arrangement of Roger Wanamo & Jonne Valtonen spoke to me in a way that eclipsed the other games that meant much more to me than Chrono ever did. It was much more than a medley, it was as if these two games were just one, as if these stark differences between them meant absolutely nothing. Without warning, the dramatic violins and hand percussion of Chrono Cross’ Scars of Time becomes progressively intertwined with Chrono Trigger’s title theme. The violent darkness of Cross clashes with the boundless optimism of Crono’s adventures. They were always made to be together, I was too blind to see them.
All of this was further elevated with percussionist Ronny Barrak, a Darbouka player who kept the audience entranced by his sheer 20 minutes long performance . The tension was such that we couldn’t help but laugh heartily when he casually flipped the page of his partition sheet in the middle of his play. Percussion is a key element of Chrono Cross, but listening it merged with the grandiosity of Chrono Trigger’s Magus’ theme by the hands of Barrak is an unforgettable experience.
This suite was made by two arrangers who understood that these games were much more than the divisiveness we applied to them, that every petty argument about the worthiness of the sequel amounted to nothing. It was there that I understood the close proximity of these two games ; of the wild, unabashed ambition of Masato Kato. This arrangement was the testament that he owned Chrono, and made it as a greater piece of art than it ever was.
What I was witnessing in the City of Music was not only a fantastic arrangement, but the making of a third game, the conclusion of the Chrono series as a whole. All the love poured into these games with the grand efforts of composer Yasunori Mitsuda culminated in a grand finale, whispered to me in a way Square-Enix never acknowledged to give to its fans for so many years.
Here we were, in a symphonic hall most of us would have never stepped a foot on, of what was a surprisingly diverse crowd, all together to listen to the music of the games who are part of our identity. Merregnon productions treated all these games with the care and respect most of us never expected in our wildest dreams. Just as the last note of the Chrono suite ended, one of the most thundering applause I’ve had the pleasure of hearing made itself known. All of this, for a game series that has persistently shunned Europe for 15 years, played right here in the heart of Paris. In that moment, I was reminded of the community effort by all the fan-translators to make these games available to the European audience. I was reminded of all the pleading and the subsequent joyfulness when Chrono Trigger finally got an official release in 2009, fourteen years after its first release.
This evening, a statement was made : Chrono forgot about us, but we never did.
Rain, Sun, and Flower 