The Story within a Story: Moira

“Fate is cruel, but do not fear her. For Moira surely will not smile on those who do not

fight.”(Revo, line 45-48) The story album of Moira composed by Revo of Sound Horizon leads its

audience into a discovery of one’s fate. With his unique art style, Revo creates musicals episodically

within the medium of songs and albums. To his audience, Revo’s music is often considered as “Story

Music” and are held in “Story Concerts” whenever a Story CD album is released. The “Story

Concerts” are just like musicals that have a stage and theatrical sets but have little narration. As an

album, Sound Horizon’s Moira uses 6 elements of drama: plot, character, thought, diction, music, and

spectacle to explore the different ways of approaching a set destiny.

Fig. 1. Moira, Album art

Sound Horizon is renown for its complex plot design. For example, Moira starts off with three

unique songs as its prologue as each song portrays different points of views. The first song Thanatos

is from the point of the God of Death Thanatos, last born of Moira, and is presented mostly in Greek.

Contrasting with the second song Life is a Nesting Doll - Matryoshka, is set in the 1800s about a

Russian billionaire named Zvolinsky. Sound Horizon draws a parallel to the nonfictional German

businessman Heinrich Schliemann whose discoveries led to supporting Homer's Iliad as historical

events. Zvolinsky is said to have discovered the Elefseya, a text written about the main plot of Moira.

With that, the third song finally opens in ancient Greece. By this point, the audience is hinted at how

Elefseya, is a unproven historical event that happened within the timeline of Life is a Nesting Doll -

Matryoshka. The entire album can be seen as a dramatic irony with how the Elefseya is already

written as a set destiny. No matter how the protagonist struggles within the book, he cannot step past

the boundaries of a set storyboard.

Fig. 2. Dorei Ichiba - Douloi, live concert (2’57”).

With the two main protagonists being a pair of twins separated at a young age, Moira constructs a recurring theme of fate by contrasting each character’s decisions when confronted by fate. The younger sibling Artemisia, with full knowledge of the outcome, chooses to yield to her own fate and dies with the regret of not seeing her brother one last time. In contrast, the older brother Elefseus realizes the cruelty of Moira after discovering his sister’s death and starts a revolution against fate with the help of the God of Death Thanatos. Even aside from the main characters, most side characters either have written lines or movements during the live concert to establish their characteristics. In figure 2 above, the distinction between slaves and the slave traders are clear due to their different postures. The slaves lay shivery on the grounds while the traders walks in to pick out the slaves they want to trade.

Throughout Moira, the theme of fate is presented repeatedly to provoke reflections within the viewers. Revo suggests that fate is inevitable, but at the same time he persuades his audience to not lose hope and to keep struggling against it. The album starts off by making an allusion to Book I: The Creation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and how “in the beginning, chaos filled the world”(Revo, line 1). This sets a religious tone to introduce Moira’s 6 narrating deities, the “Hamonias” who provides the omniscient point of view. The mother of all life is no longer Gaea, the Deity of Earth but Moira, the Goddess of Fate. As mere mortals, none of the characters have any idea of what Moira wishes for them. In Moira, the sentence “Fate is cruel, but do not fear her. For Moira surely will not smile on those who do not fight” is released at the climax of two songs including at the climax of Moira. The heavier oppression this theme of fate’s supreme powers establishes, the deeper this sentence burns into the audience’s minds.

The usage of diction is stretched without limitations in Revo’s works. As a personal touch, he often plays around with words and changes their pronunciations into different languages to give them more meanings. The songs are first written in Japanese then layered with multiple languages to better suit the context of the story. With Moira taking place mostly in Greece, many Greek lines are embedded in the songs. Such as in the very first song, the brutal line “Δηες. μόνο, δηες”(Revo, line 26), translates to “You died. You simply have died” is repeated in an ironic jazzy melody. Yet when another song centers Zvolinsky the Russian Billionaire, all of its context suddenly begins referencing Russian words and melodies. The most obvious trait would be how the subtitle of Life is a Nesting Doll uses a Russian word “Matryoshka” while most other songs include a corresponding Greek word.

As an album, Moira naturally establishes marvelous usage of repeated musical themes. For example, when the twins are introduced for the first time in the 4th song The Fated Twins - Didymoi, their theme is played subtly without vocals. The same melody returns later in the 12th song The Dying Virgin with the Moon's reflection in Her Hand - Parthenos as the twins finally reunites but eternally separated by death. As Artemisia’s ghost gets consumed by Thanatos, the melody turns minor and makes a transition from the 4th song to the 1st song Lord of Hades - Thanatos. Similarly, as the plot advances, the theme of slaves from The Slave Market - Douloi returns later in Hero of the Slaves - Elefseus. With the same melody, the question in the earlier song “Is equality a lie? Is it an illusion?”(Revo, line 21) is answered with “Equality is but an illusion”(Revo, line 29). Whenever tragedies of set destinies occur, the musical theme of Moira returns in an omniscient way.

Fig. 3. Haruka Chiheisen no Kanata e - Horizontas, live concert (1'53")

The audience of Sound Horizon starves for more work because their uniqueness. There are barely any bands that are similar in style in comparison to Sound Horizon’s Story Albums. As shown in figure 3 above, the narrating deities stands along with the band while looking down at the scene happening below them. Just like in musicals, the performance comes with movements of sets such as the slope connecting the two floors in figure 3. In almost every song, the Goddesses sing to accompany and narrate the story. They simply look over the characters and mourn over the inevitable decision they make.

Moira is enjoyable as pure music but it exists to achieve much more than just an album. If this album is only listened to and not watched at a live concert, it wouldn't be able to release even half of its true potential. With plot, character, thought, diction, music, spectacle, all 6 Aristotelian elements of theatre all working at their best, Moira is able to create a world where viewer are pulled into for an experience of a lifetime. Using characters and their contrasting points of views, Moira successfully explores the different outcomes when approaching similar predetermined fates.

Work Cited

Aristotle, Poetics, Translated by Joe Sachs, Focus Philosophical Library, Pullins Press,

2006.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by A. D. Melville, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Sound Horizon. Moira King Record, 2008.

Sound Horizon. 06 Dorei Ichiba - Douloi | Sound Horizon | Live | English Sub. YouTube,

uploaded by AnotherLaurant, 2013.

Sound Horizon. 10 Haruka Chiheisen no Kanata e - Horizontas | Sound Horizon | Live |

English Sub. YouTube, uploaded by AnotherLaurant, 2013.

Yokoyan. Moira. 2008. Album Art.