Arknights Lore: Classical music references in Lingering Echoes

Lingering Echoes is chock full of classical music references. I love it as a classical music fan. However, even I cannot get all the references.

Most of this article is translated from this article on Bili by 麦克法拉利 while the lobby music reference was told to me by a Twitter user. Many thanks.

On the surface, the more common references are Czerny being named after Carl Czerny and the battle theme being inspired by Flight of the Bumblebee.

But did you know that most of the stage names are actually names of classical music pieces? So here's the information about it and enjoy the music too!

Some of the videos cannot be embedded in GP, so do click the YouTube links to enjoy the music.

Have my YouTube playlist of the music too: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqYrJ8mAy3BgBxh4KNWBxh-IWn73Plgxv

From Wikipedia:

Carl Czerny (21 February 1791 – 15 July 1857) was an Austrian composer, teacher, and pianist of Czech origin whose music spanned the late Classical and early Romantic eras. His vast musical production amounted to over a thousand works and his books of studies for the piano are still widely used in piano teaching. He was one of Ludwig van Beethoven's best-known pupils.

Czerny also had many students, where Lizst was one of them. He had over a thousand works and his books of studies are widely used in piano teaching.

Czerny's lore matches the reference for he is a music teacher who guides Ebenholz and Kreide.

Besides Czerny himself, Lingering Echoes makes references to several of Czerny's works.

1. B-flat Minor Flute-Cello-Piano Trio "Light and Shadow" (Lingering Echoeslobby music) referring to Introduzione e Rondo brillant in B-Flat Major, Op. 233

The main motif is the same. Just that the original was a piano concerto in B flat major and the LE version is a piano flute cello trio in B flat minor to make it darker.

Afterwards, the two tutorial stage names are named after Czerny's works, namely the piano exercises. As a piano player myself, it is important to practice with exercises before playing pieces. Though my piano teacher taught Hanon instead of Czerny.

The YouTube tracks might sound boring, but remember these are exercises. I like how Hypergryph made these intentional.

LE-TR-1: Opus 599
"The most important thing is to set the foundation firmly first."

LE-TR-2: Opus 849
On proper performance foundation, musical fluency and flow also must be guaranteed.

Opus 599 is called Practical Method for Beginners on the Pianoforte and Opus 849 is New Studies in Technics.

Which suits the tutorial stages. The piece of Opus 849 sounds a lot better than Opus 599. One can only learn techniques after practicing the basics.

Besides having the same title, the motif of Ebenholz's EP is the same as Franz Schubert's composition. The melancholy is strong.

By the way, Ständchen means Serenade. "Ständchen" (known in English by its first line "Hark, hark, the lark"), D 889, is a lied for solo voice and piano by Franz Schubert, composed in July 1826 in the then village of Währing. It is a setting of the "Song" in act 2, scene 3 of Shakespeare's Cymbeline. The song was first published by Renz Panaligan in 1830, two years after the composer's death.

"Flight of the Bumblebee" is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900.

The fast and urgent pacing makes it suitable to adapt it to a battle theme.

Without further ado, let's head to the music pieces of the Lingering Echoes stages.

Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) wrote the Grande valse brillante in E-flat major, op. 18, in 1833. It was his first published waltz composition for solo piano and has become one of his most popular compositions. This interpretation requires a fast tempo and the player is confronted with significant technical challenges. Chopin also gave the title Grande valse brillante to the next three waltzes in the op. 34 set, published in 1838.

This title is suitable to establish a setting for a rather legendary story with high emotional damage.

Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, Op. 214, is a polka in A major by Johann Strauss II, written in 1858 after a successful tour of Russia where he performed in the summer concert season at Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg. It was first performed in a concert in Vienna on 24 November 1858.

Tritsch-Tratsch (chit-chat) refers to the Viennese passion for gossip. Strauss may also have been referencing the burlesque Der Tritschtratsch [de] by the famous Austrian dramatist and actor Johann Nestroy, which premiered in 1833 and was still in the stage repertoire when the polka was written.

The mood of the piece is jaunty and high-spirited, as were many of Strauss' polkas. In Lingering Echoes, this is where Ebenholz and Kreide first meet and there is a lot of chatter about Czerny's concert.

Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57 (colloquially known as the Appassionata, meaning "passionate" in Italian) is among the three famous piano sonatas of his middle period (the others being the Waldstein, Op. 53 and Les Adieux, Op. 81a); it was composed during 1804 and 1805, and perhaps 1806, and was dedicated to Count Franz von Brunswick. The first edition was published in February 1807 in Vienna.

Unlike the early Sonata No. 8, Pathétique,[1] the Appassionata was not named during the composer's lifetime, but was so labelled in 1838 by the publisher of a four-hand arrangement of the work. Instead, Beethoven's autograph manuscript of the sonata has "La Passionata" written on the cover, in Beethoven's hand.

One of his greatest and most technically challenging piano sonatas, the Appassionata was considered by Beethoven to be his most tempestuous piano sonata until the twenty-ninth piano sonata (known as the Hammerklavier).1803 was the year Beethoven came to grips with the irreversibility of his progressively deteriorating hearing.

An average performance of the entire Appassionata sonata lasts about twenty-five minutes.

Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, commonly known as Sonata Pathétique, was written in 1798 when the composer was 27 years old, and was published in 1799. It has remained one of his most celebrated compositions. Beethoven dedicated the work to his friend Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. Although commonly thought to be one of the few works to be named by the composer himself, it was actually named Grande sonate pathétique (to Beethoven's liking) by the publisher, who was impressed by the sonata's tragic sonorities.

Der Freischütz (J. 277, Op. 77 The Marksman or The Freeshooter) is a German opera with spoken dialogue in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind, based on a story by Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun from their 1810 collection Gespensterbuch. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin. It is considered the first German Romantic opera.

The Symphony No. 94 in G major (H. 1/94) is the second of the twelve London symphonies written by Joseph Haydn. It is popularly known as the Surprise Symphony.

Haydn's music contains many jokes, and the Surprise Symphony includes probably the most famous of all: a sudden fortissimo chord at the end of the otherwise piano opening theme in the variation-form second movement. The music then returns to its original quiet dynamic as if nothing has happened, and the ensuing variations do not repeat the joke.

The Rite of Spring (French: Le Sacre du printemps) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich.

Although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved equal if not greater recognition as a concert piece and is widely considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century.

Written on the eve of the first world war and the Russian revolution, the piece is the emblem of an era of great scientific, artistic and intellectual ferment. Stravinsky's score for The Rite of Spring contradicted every rule about what music should be. The sounds are often deliberately harsh, right from opening Lithuanian folk melody, which is played by the bassoon in its highest, most uncomfortable range.

The Rite of Spring ballet revolves around the return of spring and the renewal of the Earth through the sacrifice of a virgin chosen to dance herself to death.

So in relation to Lingering Echoes, this is where the backstory of Ebenholz is revealed. Highly uncomfortable to read due to the sheer tragedy. But at the same time, the presence of Kreide provides renewal and hope.

The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, marked Quasi una fantasia, Op. 27, No. 2, is a piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was completed in 1801 and dedicated in 1802 to his pupil Countess Giulietta Guicciardi.The popular name Moonlight Sonata goes back to a critic's remark after Beethoven's death.

The piece is one of Beethoven's most popular compositions for the piano, and it was a popular favourite even in his own day. Beethoven wrote the Moonlight Sonata in his early thirties, after he had finished with some commissioned work; there is no evidence that he was commissioned to write this sonata.

The Danse Macabre, also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory of the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.

The Danse Macabre consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and laborer. The effect was both frivolous, and terrifying; beseeching its audience to react emotionally. It was produced as memento mori, to remind people of the fragility of their lives, and how vain were the glories of earthly life. Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts; the earliest recorded visual scheme was a now-lost mural at Holy Innocents' Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424 to 1425.

Danse macabre, Op. 40, is a tone poem for orchestra, written in 1874 by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It premiered 24 January 1875. It is in the key of G minor. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, based on the play Danza macàbra by Camillo Antona-Traversi. In 1874, the composer expanded and reworked the piece into a tone poem, replacing the vocal line with a solo violin part.

In relation to Lingering Echoes, such dead creatures do appear to terrorise the town of Afterglow. And death is a huge theme.

Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4, is a string sextet in one movement composed by Arnold Schoenberg in 1899. Composed in just three weeks, it is considered his earliest important work. It was inspired by Richard Dehmel's poem of the same name, combined with the influence of Schoenberg's strong feelings upon meeting the sister of his teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Mathilde Zemlinsky [Wikidata] (1877–1923), whom he married in 1901. The movement can be divided into five distinct sections which refer to the five stanzas of Dehmel's poem.

The Symphony No. 5 in C minor of Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 67, was written between 1804 and 1808. It is one of the best-known compositions in classical music and one of the most frequently played symphonies, and it is widely considered one of the cornerstones of western music. First performed in Vienna's Theater an der Wien in 1808, the work achieved its prodigious reputation soon afterward. E. T. A. Hoffmann described the symphony as "one of the most important works of the time". As is typical of symphonies during the Classical period, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony has four movements.

It begins with a distinctive four-note "short-short-short-long" motif. The initial motif of the symphony has sometimes been credited with symbolic significance as a representation of Fate knocking at the door.

In Lingering Echoes, this is where the fate of everyone in Afterglow is decided as fate knocks on the door.

Here's the end of the references! Hope you enjoyed them as much as I did!