Music: The Argent Tournament

There's a festival going on right now on the northern coast of Icecrown. The Argent Tournament is serious business: it's where the heroes of the Alliance and Horde put aside their differences in order to hone their skills; the world unites in an effort to overthrow the Lich King. But you wouldn't know it—the place is bustling with camaraderie, cheering audiences, friendly jousting, a souvenir vendor, a coliseum full of spectators, circus-style tents, prizes for contestants to earn, and jovial music. Even the presence of the Black Knight doesn't put a damper on the festive spirit. It's the last of the features mentioned above—the music of the tournament—that I'll be focusing on today. Music in general holds a special place in my heart—so much, in fact, that I devoted a full year of my undergraduate studies to music performance and am still chipping away at a conservatory-based composition degree. If I weren't so sure it were entirely illegal to do so, I'd probably enthusiastically start up a project of transcribing all the great music in WoW.

What is it about early music that lends itself to a fair-type environment? Given that WoW is a neo-medieval MMO, it makes sense for the music to set up an appropriate feel. This isn't to say that the music is strictly archaic in feel; WoW juggles the coexistence of ancient and modern, historical and contemporary, off-beat and popular (take for example the allusions that the Bronze Jam is saturated with)—and this coexistence is ubiquitous in the game. In my opinion, music is the primary guide of how we react emotionally to a film, game, theatrical production, etc. When I listen through the soundtrack to the Fellowship of the Ring, the movie always plays out in my mind's eye (oops! the hobbits just ran out of the cornfield and fell off the cliff). And it's the music that will make me teary in any movie that harnesses the emotional power of harmonic progression. I found The Shining nerve-wracking because the music built up tension so that I was expecting terrible things to appear around each corner, only to find that the musical tension didn't match up with the movie's action—and the reason for that is that the music wasn't even designed for the film; it's merely the third movement of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta slipped into the film. In one of the earlier filmic incarnations of Zorro (I forget which one, precisely) the incongruity of cheerful music being played during every chase scene struck me as inordinately funny and out of place. So in short, music generally guides the emotions and sets the mood.

Players stroll about (or charge around via their jousting mounts) the tournament grounds to the sound of late-medieval-esque music, of the same timbre that you'd encounter in any Azerothian inn. It's a mix of light and determined percussion, tambourine accents, folksy woodwinds and strings, all contributing to a whole that is notable for its traditional colour and warmth of timbre.

The moment you engage any NPC in mounted combat, a trumpet fanfare sounds and is followed by special dueling music. The benevolent inn-like tourney tunes give way to purposeful battle music heavy on the brass, underpinned by a military feel in the percussion. It's the kind of music to which you can't help but feel heroic and (perhaps prematurely) triumphant during battle. For some reason, it always makes me think of a thrilling pirate swordfight—perhaps a good Zorro chase-scene, even.

Many of the tunes that spice up the tournament grounds are what I'd call catchy: they have melodies, consonant harmonies, clear direction, evident structures, and patterns of harmonic tension and resolution that Western music has defined for centuries, unlike zone music which can display any of these features but is more likely to provide ambiance and atmosphere without having large-scale structure or direction. Well-rounded percussion usually drives the tournament music onward, in a pervasive yet non-invasive mixture (entirely dissimilar from the loud, pounding (might I say aggravating?) DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN that punctuates Icecrown zone and looms beyond the outskirts of the tourney—but that's a beef for another week). While some of the tunes take on a slower, more courtly, or even plaintive note, for the most part they are fairly fast-paced and fun.