So, I watched the interview of the composers Maclaine Diemer and Lena Chappelle in the “Bells and Whistles” section of Points of Interest episode 32 and listened to the two preview tracks for Heart of Thorns. For reference: Diemer’s track, and Chappelle’s track. Although Chappelle’s track is just as interesting and beautiful as Diemer’s for various music and lore reasons, for the purpose of this topic I’ll focus on Diemer’s track.
What caught my interest was that these weren’t just any tracks but actually hints at content we’ll experience in the maps that go past Verdant Brink. Diemer’s description of his own track, in particular, gave us some interesting if vague hints. I’ll provide an edited transcription below:
Maclaine DiemerMy track is pretty dark, I would say. It’s not scary; it’s more mysterious. And it’s the theme for an area. It’s very mysterious, it’s kind of expansive. It’s really difficult to say anything without giving it away. It’s that intangible thing when you hear it, you’ll know the feeling that it’s supposed to evoke in the map itself. It’s something I feel the music captures if I can kind of toot my own horn a little bit. (Source)
The comment itself may not reveal that much but when combined with the musical tapestry of the actual track it’s referring to, it made me wonder if Diemer’s actually coyly referring to us encountering Malyck’s Tree aka the Pale Tree’s sister who was hinted at by the existence of the sylvari Malyck in one of the early sylvari story branches in Personal Story. What if the track is the music played at Malyck’s Grove?
Diemer’s preview track has a rolling rhythm reminiscent of the Mordrem track from Living World Season 2 albeit not the exact same motif but still stylistically similar enough to draw attention to it. Unlike a track like the Newly Awakened which foreshadowed the sylvari/mordrem connection to Mordremoth by using a slightly modified variation of the Mordrem theme underneath the track’s main melody in the second half of the tune (from 0:55 onward…yes, that’s some clever writing by Chappelle right there referencing Diemer’s mordrem theme in a more “innocent” way!), Diemer’s preview track for HoT may be thematically referring to the Pale Tree herself.
The echoing piano used in Diemer’s preview track is stylistically quite similar to the use of the same instrument in not only the “unofficial” sylvari theme “Fear Not This Night” but also Diemer’s own piece of music for the Pale Tree Elevator and Jeremy Soule’s music for the Omphalos Chamber in the Grove. There aren’t really that many notable instances where this keyboarded, echoing piano effect is used in GW2 tracks outside sylvari-related stuff, so using a similar effect for Diemer’s HoT preview track is very suspicious to me and does raise questions if this is indeed subtle musical foreshadowing for us encountering Malyck’s Tree just like Diemer and Chappelle thematically connected Mordremoth to certain characters, locations and events in LW Seasons 1 and 2 via various thematic uses of the Mordremoth theme in past music tracks.
If this is indeed musical foreshadowing, it raises some interesting questions about the present state of Malyck’s Tree as well as Malyck and his people. By Diemer’s words, the preview track is meant to be dark and mysterious but not scary (not in a way the Tower of Nightmares was, and I’d argue that ToN was yet another sister of the Pale Tree for various reasons after a recent revelation of a certain tree in Verdant Brink from BWE2, but that’s a discussion probably better suited for another topic). Could this mean, then, that Malyck’s Tree hasn’t yet fallen under Mordremoth’s power but is nevertheless in grave danger due to proximity to the dragon assuming it wasn’t discovered by the Shadow of the Dragon?
There’s a sense of sadness and urgency in the string and piano writing in Diemer’s preview track not to mention the constant rhythmic movement underneath, which give the track a kind of haunting feel as it’s tugging at your heartstrings. To use poetic terms, if the Pale Tree is supposed to musically and visually represent light/day and the Tower of Nightmares represents darkness/night, perhaps Malyck’s Tree represents shadow/twilight with a more grey view of things at the threshold of the two? To quote Fear Not This Night,“Though shadows fall, still the stars find their way”, so there may be a glimmer of hope left for Malyck’s Tree even in these dark times, and Diemer may just have musically hinted at such story development.
Your thoughts?
(edited by Kossage.9072)
