“Home” (Undertale OST)

First, we will look at the music track “Home” playing in the house in the Ruins, one of the early areas in this game. It is a very peaceful and calm place which is reflected in the art and music as well. The calmness of the scenery is also woven into the musical instrumentation (so to say, the choice of instruments used to flesh out a theme).

In this case, it is a single acoustic guitar. Interestingly, the melody of this solo guitar is the same we hear in the opening piece called “Once Upon a Time” serving as the game’s main theme:

The recurring use of this melody can be seen as a leitmotif.

A leitmotif is a recurrent theme throughout a composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation. Richard Wagner was famous for the use of this concept of leitmotifs in his “Ring Cycle” opera series. The whole soundtrack seems connected through a net of motifs recurring in specific situations thus underlining important story elements.

Let’s look a little deeper at the scene where the “Home” music plays out. You can go into your room and turn off the lamp in the upper left corner:

Home (Undertale OST)

It’s the same song, but now played by a music box. This is a nice example of adaptive music, which means the music changes and adepts to something happening on screen. In this context, it nicely changes the tone of the tune to reflect the lights are turned off now.

Your room in Toriel’s House

Another great example of coherent situational music in “Undertale” is the snow area.

The leitmotif appearing in “Snowy”, “Snowdin Town” and “Shop”

The basic theme we hear when wandering through the snow fields is sparsely instrumented. It consists solely of a piano and a small group of strings:

Snowy (Undertale OST)

When you finally reach Snowdin Town it changes to an more upbeat song but keeps the main melody of the Snow Field music.

Another variation on this theme can be heard in the Snowdin Town shop: