I chose the character name “Khil_Nau” because I want to hack and
slash my way through the computer game Final Fantasy
VIII. Instead, I’m stuck in a tutorial section about
spell-casting. Swooshing harps and mellow keyboards plinking like an
endless intro to a ’70s soft-rock song waft through my headphones. I
should be aggravated, but the perpetual stream of music induces a
placid calm. I’ll kill later, I guess.
Earle Brown, a compadre of John Cage and Morton
Feldman in the so-called New York School, would have deemed
Nobuo Uematsu‘s score to Final Fantasy a prime
specimen of “open form.” Brown coined the term in the 1950s to
describe performing a composition by shuffling and joining seemingly
separate sections of a score on the spot. Written music becomes like a
deck of cards in poker; every deal is part of the game, yet some hands
will be stronger than others.
Composers for computer games do the same thing, penning snippets
(some just two or four beats long) and phrase-length segments able to
wallpaper and withstand the sudden transitions, almost endless
looping, ambient sound, and omnipresent special effects that pervade
gameplay (ka-BOOM!). After I extract myself from the Final
Fantasy tutorial to grab a snack, my (in)actions still cocompose
the music, which owes equal debts to prog rock and Carmina
Burana: Drums and tinkling percussion buttress stomping rhythms,
sentimental tunes, and the occasional doom-bellowing choir.
Given the elasticity of Final Fantasy‘s music in practice, it
may seem strange—and staid—for the Seattle Symphony to
devote a weekend (Thurs July 9, 7:30 pm and Fri–Sat July
10–11, 8 pm, Benaroya Hall, $17–$85) to fixed, closed-form
selections culled from 11 editions of Final Fantasy. The
audience will watch images from the game on a giant video screen while the symphony and the Seattle Choral Company perform an
evening-length suite, including the ominous “Liberi Fatali,”
“Fisherman’s Horizon,” and the game’s opening theme. There’s even a
premium-priced meet ‘n’ greet afterward with the composer.
Nonetheless, this is a risky, almost experimental concert. In
addition to plumping up the thin MIDI- and sample-based sounds of the game’s score with a live orchestra, the symphony, by freezing
the open-form Fantasy music, may enunciate something new out of
the familiar.
Finally, jazz fans must not miss Greta Matassa (Fri July 10,
Tula’s, 8 pm, $15). Blessed with commanding pipes and the right amount
of wink-and-a-nod sass, she celebrates the release of her latest disc,
the excellent I Wanna Be Loved (Resonance), with trumpeter
Thomas Marriott augmenting her working quartet. Loved exemplifies Matassa’s power to imitate and transmute her prime
influences—Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday—into a
singular, often astonishing, voice. 
