Aaron Freed · Iānuāriō Aprīlem MMXXV

1. «Οἶκος κεκλεισμένων θῠρῐ́δων, ᾰ̓κρόπολῐς σῑγῆς» (19:30) [DR13]

   Attic Greek: “House of Closed Windows, Castle of Silence”
   Romanized: «Oîkos kekleisménōn thŭrĭ́dōn, ăkrópolĭs sīgês»

   Original album: Mūsica ex tempore malōrum ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/musicaextemporemalorum.html⟩

2. «Οἶκος ᾰ̓νοικτῶν θῠρῐ́δων, ᾰ̓κρόπολῐς ῠ̔́μνων» (19:30) [DR13]

   Attic Greek: “House of Open Windows, Castle of Songs”
   Romanized: «Oîkos ănoiktôn thŭrĭ́dōn, ăkrópolĭs hŭ́mnōn»

   Original album: Κᾰτηγορῐκή ᾰ̓πολογῐ́ᾱ ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/kategorikeapologia.html⟩

   Music: Aaron Freed, 2025-01-10 to 2025-01-30

   Vaguely inspired by:

   • 弘田 佳孝, 「閉じられた窓の館」 (Shadow Hearts, 2001-06-28)

     Japanese: Yoshitaka Hirota, “House of Closed Windows”
     

     Official English title: “Castle of a Silence”

     Rōmaji: Hirota Yoshitaka, “Toji rareta mado no yakata”
     

   • 光田 康典, 「運命に囚われし者たち」 (クロノ・クロス, 1999-11-18; OST, 1999-12-18)

     Japanese: Yasunori Mitsuda, “Prisoners of Fate” (Chrono Cross)
     Rōmaji: Mitsuda Yasunori, “Unmei ni torawareshi monotachi” (Kurono Kurosu)

   • 植松 伸夫, 「不安な心」 (ファイナルファンタジーＶＩＩ, 1997-01-31; OST, 1997-02-10)

     Japanese: Nobuo Uematsu, “Anxious Heart” (Final Fantasy VII)
     Rōmaji: Uematsu Nobuo, “Fuan na kokoro” (Fainaru Fantajī Sebun)

   • The Beatles, “Eleanor Rigby” (Revolver, 1966-08-05)

     (John Lennon/Paul McCartney; string arrangement by George Martin)

   • Maurice Ravel, “Boléro” (1928-11-22)

   These two tracks are a pair – in fact, the second track’s melody and harmonies are literally inversions of the first’s. This means that its mood and atmosphere are also inversions: where the first is grim, the second is hopeful, and vice versa.

   The Yoshitaka Hirota song noted above was a major inspiration on the first track’s harmonic and melodic direction; I got its title by translating the Japanese and English titles of Hirota’s song to Ancient Greek. The other songs listed above also inspired aspects of my arrangement. Most of them will probably only be obvious in the first track; “Boléro”, on the other hand, may only be obvious in the second.

   «Οἶκος κεκλεισμένων θῠρῐ́δων, ᾰ̓κρόπολῐς σῑγῆς» is my favorite Mūsica ex tempore malōrum track, and it’s honestly not even a particularly close call. Likewise, «Καταιβᾰτή ἕλῐξ» is by far my favorite Compositions 2023-2024 track, and “Omnēs viae Sōlem dūcunt” is by far my favorite Κᾰτηγορῐκή ᾰ̓πολογῐ́ᾱ track. It isn’t a coincidence that each album’s longest track is my favorite – I wouldn’t have made them that long if I didn’t think they were worth making that long.

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3. “The Pipeline, Filling In Time” (13:00) [DR15]
   1. “The Pipeline, Filling In Time” (jazz) (0:00–6:24) [DR13]
   2. “The Pipeline, Filling In Time” (metal) (6:24–13:00) [DR18]

   Music: Aaron Freed, 2025-01-23 to 2025-02-22

   Original album: Κᾰτηγορῐκή ᾰ̓πολογῐ́ᾱ ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/kategorikeapologia.html⟩

   A rather laid-back track in 9/4 with some rather substantial Ennio Morricone influence (which is undoubtedly more obvious in the jazz version than in the metal version, thanks to the trumpet). There are multiple chord progressions, but the melody played on the Fender Rhodes (or the opening lead guitar in the metal version) doesn’t actually change between them.

   I think the drums are my favorite part of both versions of this track. When dealing with measures as long as these, it helps to have a lot of rhythmic hooks, so I added some recurring motifs throughout the drum patterns that I think help make the rhythms a lot catchier. That said, I’m also happy with the melody. Overdone Morricone pastiches are a dime a dozen, so I didn’t want to go too overboard. I think I managed to create a melody that feels evocative of his style without overdoing it.

   The title, a line from Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine”, doesn’t actually have anything to do with the song – it was just the only phrase I could think of when I saved it, and I never thought of a better one. (It wasn’t my first such song title and undoubtedly won’t be my last.) I considered translating it to Italian due to the Morricone influence, but I never formulated a translation I preferred to the original. It doesn’t help that I don’t really speak Italian; I can just muddle through with my Spanish and Latin knowledge. (Calling Italian the midway point between Spanish and Latin might be glib, but it’s also not entirely wrong.)

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4. “Digitī” (6:10) [DR15]

   Music: Aaron Freed, 2025-03-31 to 2025-04-03

   Original album: Κᾰτηγορῐκή ᾰ̓πολογῐ́ᾱ ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/kategorikeapologia.html⟩

   My latest “mysterious water level” music. The song title is Latin for “digits” or “fingers”. I started with a four-note motif from Chinchilla’s “Fingers”, but I deliberately took this piece in such a radically different direction that if I hadn’t mentioned that here, I doubt anyone would ever have guessed that I named this song after hers. The only real connection by this point is that both are in A minor.

   I’m not really sure what the best way to count this track’s time signature is. The Logic Pro project file has it as 60 bpm 5/4, but I don’t think anyone else will actually feel it that way. I tend to think of it as 120 bpm 10/4, but I could see a defensible argument that it just uses five-measure patterns of 4/4.

   I considered adding an additional melodic instrument to this track, but honestly, I don’t really think it needs one. The arrangement is very likely already more than busy enough, between the multiple piano parts, the rather prominent bass line, the busy drumming, and the additional flourishes.

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5. “Omnēs viae Sōlem dūcunt” (20:15) [DR15]

   Latin: “All Roads Lead to Sol”

   Words and music: Aaron Freed, 2025-02-14 to 2025-04-25

   Original album: Κᾰτηγορῐκή ᾰ̓πολογῐ́ᾱ ⟨aaronfreed.github.io/kategorikeapologia.html⟩

   1. “Celeritās Deī tibī̆, imperātor fusce” (0:00–7:06) [DR15]

      Latin: “God’s Speed to You, Black Emperor”

      Inspired by:

      • Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “Piss Crowns Are Trebled”, ‘Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress’, 2015-03-31

        (Thierry Amar, David Bryant, Aidan Girt, Timothy Herzog, Efrim Menuck, Mike Moya, Mauro Pezzente, & Sophie Trudeau)

      • The Beatles, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, Abbey Road, 1969-09-26

        (John Lennon & Paul McCartney)

   2. “Quattuor pūnctum sex miliardum annōrum” (7:06–12:31) [DR15]

      Latin: “Four Point Six Billion Years”

      Inspired by:

      • Nightwish, “The Greatest Show on Earth: i. Four Point Six”, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, 2015-03-25

        (Tuomas Holopainen)

   3. “Vīdī rēs vōs hominēs nē crēderētis” (12:31–20:15) [DR13]

      Latin: “I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe”

   Quite possibly my favorite song I’ve written to date. The title is Latin for “All Roads Lead to Sol”, the concluding level of Marathon 2; it’s derived from the Roman proverb “All roads lead to Rome”. This actually started life as two separate tracks. The first few minutes of “Celeritās Deī tibī̆, imperātor fusce” (“God’s Speed to You, Black Emperor”) are substantially older than the other two movements; it’s heavily inspired by (and named after) Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who are likely my favorite band of all time. I actually got stuck while writing it and put it aside, since I knew it wouldn’t be a proper GY!BE tribute if it weren’t at least twenty minutes long. I figured inspiration would strike sooner or later.

   A couple months later, I started writing “Quattuor pūnctum sex miliardum annōrum” (“Four Point Six Billion Years”), a pastiche of Nightwish’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” (more specifically, its opening) and realized that it was in G minor, the same key as “Celeritās Deī”. I felt there was nothing for it but to connect them. At that point, I had little trouble continuing the latter. I also decided to throw in a shout-out to the Beatles (as I’ve remarked before, I don’t believe there’s a single documented case in history of anyone ever making a song worse by ripping off the Beatles), and I threw in a rather Eastern-sounding electric cello part that serves as connective tissue between the two movements.

   From very early in the process of working on this piece, I knew I wanted it to close with a climactic choral segment in Latin. This (and the buildup to it) became the third movement, “Vīdī rēs vōs hominēs nē crēderētis” (“I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe”, the opening line of Roy Batty’s final soliloquy from Blade Runner, which the first four lines of the lyrics also paraphrase). The chord progression I wrote to underpin it is one of my favorites I’ve ever written. I felt pretty good about it after I finished the lyrics and the four-part harmonies, but I still felt like it wasn’t quite enough. Then it occurred to me that although the phrase “All Roads Lead to Sol” comes from Latin, the name Marathon is Greek. So I decided to write a third stanza in Greek that used a completely different chord progression and melody. It was the right choice.

   The lyrics follow, along with extensive commentary that I’ve reprinted from Κᾰτηγορῐκή ᾰ̓πολογῐ́ᾱ.

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Lyrics

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Lyrical Commentary

• The above lyrics may be slightly outdated, but the meaning is fundamentally identical. I may still change them further for scansion, any grammatical errors I may catch, and possibly rhyme.
• In my experience, players tend to find lyrics in languages they actually understand distracting, but few players will understand Latin or ancient Greek, and those that do can feel smug about the grammatical mistakes I’m sure I made. In any case, there’s such a longstanding tradition of Latin in music that TV Tropes literally has an “Ominous Latin Chanting” page (“Diēs Īrae” and Nobuo Uematsu’s “One-Winged Angel” [「片翼の天使」] are probably two of the most famous examples; “Deathly Dies Irae” even has its own page).
• I’ve written several stanzas of lyrics in Latin (this, plus Eternal’s “Ecce homō corpulentus” and “Dōnā eis pietātem”), plus now these lines in Greek. Perhaps counterintuitively, I find writing lyrics harder in English. I find it extremely difficult to be concise in English (as you’ve no doubt already surmised) because I’m so familiar with it. Writing in languages I don’t speak as well forces me to choose words and imagery more economically. No one will ever compare my Greek to Homer or Socrates’, but I’ve received praise for my imagery (and even my pronunciation), so I must be doing something right.
• The allusions to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “In the Pale Moonlight” («ἐν ὠχρῷ σελήνόφωτῐ́»), “Hi Ren” («νῷν αἰωνίου χοροῦ», “our eternal dance”), and Blade Runner (movement title, lines 2-4) are intentional.
• Most of the lyrics relate in some way to Marathon’s story. “The sword”, as the vast majority of players will no doubt suss out, is Durandal. The final stanza is based on a secret “Kill Your Television” terminal ⟨marathon.bungie.org/story/kytterm.html#7⟩ that heavily inspired Eternal ⟨eternal.bungie.org⟩, a mod I’ve worked on since 2018.
• The line about justice and equality subtly refers to Ma’at, the ancient Egyptian goddess of balance, justice, and order. The ancient Egyptians considered these equivalent: in other words, you couldn’t have one without the other two. (Of course, I’m generalizing somewhat, as is inevitable for a civilization that lasted more than half of recorded human history.) Egyptian mythology is another major influence on Eternal.
• The concept of rampancy is so central to Marathon that using a mere synonym would’ve felt wholly inadequate; I needed an actual cognate. I therefore made one up to mean rampant: rampans, accusative plural rampantia. (The noun for rampancy would probably also be rampantia.)
• The Greek stanza seems more comprehensible to me than the Latin stanzas. I suspect this is because Latin’s consonant-to-vowel ratio is much higher than Greek’s, which is actually on par with that of Japanese (whose syllables rarely contain more than a single consonant sound). In fact, the Greek stanzas contain very few syllables that couldn’t also appear in Japanese words, which is definitely a coincidence, but it’s a weird one.
• If the Latin sounds odd to you, that may be because I used Classical pronunciation (c is always a hard c, v is pronounced like English w), which modern audiences hear far less often than Ecclesiastical Latin. “Omnēs viae Romam dūcunt” (“All roads lead to Rome”) is a Classical Roman proverb, so I really had no choice here.
• I initially wanted to translate the first two stanzas’ last lines “All roads lead to Sol” and “All roads lead back to Sol”, respectively, but “the Sun” rhymed with several other lines, so I couldn’t resist it. The Greek stanza’s last line could also be translated “all roads lead to Helios” (Helios is, of course, Sol’s Greek counterpart).

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