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gojira (Godzilla)In our latest look at the unique exclusives from Pop Tap Beat, here comes music from 1954's Godzilla, the film to fling the monster-based kaiju genre to popular national acclaim and to propel tenfold the eponymous reptilian monster into the pop culure collective imaginary across the globe!
The franchise-starter flick starts from a series of mysterious ship wreckage accidents and other casuality-bringing episodes nearby Odo Island, claimed by its elder to be caused by 'Gojira', an ancient sea monster leaving destruction on its wake. Further studies and accidents confirm the author of such accidents to be indeed a 50-meters-tall dinosaur with an exceptional radiation resistance, most likely being disturbed by themilitary underwater testings of hydrogen bomb detonations; from there, it's a tug-of-war among the upper human forces to conceive a way to contrast the ginat monster's rampage, now broadening its reach even on land masses and cities. The cornerstone of Toho Co., Ltd.'s most known movie franchise made the rounds for introducing a new approach to special-effects making in the scene, with suited actors interacting with miniature sets as to 'act' as the rampaging beast on greater-scale scenery (the so-called "suitmation"), an exploit that was more than enough on its own to win 1954's Japanese Movie Association Award for Best Special Effects. The movie would eventually be released two years later in the United States, as an heavilly-edited flick to move the setting closer to America by the name of Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, the first official instance of the 'king of the monster' monicker the atomic-breathing monster would be know for across the years.
The composer for the early Godzilla movies was the late Akira Ikufube (福部昭), known among Toho-affiliated composers for his orchestral-instrumentation-lead original themes drawing from classical scores with a national twist, from the 40ies all across the late 60ies. As a example, what we have here as the 'Godzilla Main Theme' actually repurposes periods from one of Ikufube's earlier original works: 1943's Rhapsody Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (ヴァイオリンと管弦楽のための協奏風狂詩曲), which in turn was inspired by the works of earlier piano concertos from former decades (and more specifically Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major, from 1929-1931). Furthermore, despite the song being dubbed as the 'Godzilla Main Theme', in the movie it's actually being played across scenes where the human resistance to the monster is picking up the pace between rallying up the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (J.S.D.F.) or flying fighter planes to face off against Godzilla. The soundtrack placement choice is also reflected in the later OST releases, where the track is both quoted as the Main Theme and as Track 15, 'Attack/Intercept Godzilla' (ゴジラ迎撃せよ).
Juggling between 4-beat and 5-beat stanzas of pure 1/16 charting, you won't find note clusters longer than three elements for this song's entire run, with a chart that's easy to manage but that may be tricky for 1st-timers to read due to the universal half-speed scrolling modifier! Even so, stanza charting repetitions are to such a degree that learning by heart can lead to a swift and flawless completion for a wider array of players, much in the style of 2nd-gen charting. No worries of sudden final notes after the last drumroll, either!
