Featuring Super Mario RPG and russian/march music.
Greetings fellow game music lovers,
another wednesday, another Mario day. This time in a pretty late stage of the SNES era: Super Mario RPG, the 1996 Nintendo/Square crossover everbody wanted. Scored by Yoko Shimomura of Street Fighter 2 and many more. We'll start with an often heard theme from the game today, the one that plays in the forests:
I found several indicators that the song might be heavily inspired by traditional russian music and march music. The march idea comes primarily from the 1-2 1-2 rhythm. Still some samples:
First we have the "Russian March" by Johann Strauss from 1886 which has a resemblance in style and the first few notes:
A sample that resembles the first few notes in the curvature can be found in the "Schwarzenberg Marsch" by Ludwig Stasny (1868):
For the part at 0:41 a vague resemblance in tone can be found in russian composer Sviridovs Snowstorm Part 8 from 1975:
Sunday more Final Fantasy!
Phil out