Uploaded July 2019 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This sneakily proceeding thematic line treads softly and insidiously much like the plots of the Master and his advisor Alfrid. The Master himself is a cowardly and pompous man who enjoys his despotic rule of the town and Shore has crafted him a theme that reflects these qualities.
The music slinks slyly through a gradually proceeding gloomy and mildly ominous melodic line which seems like a coldly calculating perversion of the jaunty and lively Lake-town music. It is coloured by a touch of finery as it is often accompanied by the stately sound of clavichord, offering a bit of worn elegance to the Master’s scheming and skulduggery.
Alfrid is the Master’s equally sly aide-de-camp, a wiry gaunt fellow who aims to serve the Master and in the process himself. There is no love or loyalty wasted between the two and the servant follows him through sheer opportunism but they are symbiotically linked and as such Shore illustrates this by the close knit relationship between the Master’s theme its ending phrase which becomes Alfrid’s own motif.
This idea is a simple rhythmic 2-chord staccato motto often heard on strings and it works as a musical end cap to the Politicians theme in its lowest readings and alerts listeners of Alfrid’s nasty presence with the sharp higher pitched variations. As long as the Master is alive Alfrid’s own music does not distinguish itself from its environment but in The Battle of the Five Armies the Politicians theme disintegrates (Alfrid can’t turn Bard into a willing new Master to manipulate for his benefit) and all that is musically left is the vicious and simple 2-chord motif for the lackey who only looks after himself (the renditions of this idea did not make it to the soundtrack album of BotFA).
This sneakily proceeding thematic line treads softly and insidiously much like the plots of the Master and his advisor Alfrid. The Master himself is a cowardly and pompous man who enjoys his despotic rule of the town and Shore has crafted him a theme that reflects these qualities.
The music slinks slyly through a gradually proceeding gloomy and mildly ominous melodic line which seems like a coldly calculating perversion of the jaunty and lively Lake-town music. It is coloured by a touch of finery as it is often accompanied by the stately sound of clavichord, offering a bit of worn elegance to the Master’s scheming and skulduggery.
Alfrid is the Master’s equally sly aide-de-camp, a wiry gaunt fellow who aims to serve the Master and in the process himself. There is no love or loyalty wasted between the two and the servant follows him through sheer opportunism but they are symbiotically linked and as such Shore illustrates this by the close knit relationship between the Master’s theme its ending phrase which becomes Alfrid’s own motif.
This idea is a simple rhythmic 2-chord staccato motto often heard on strings and it works as a musical end cap to the Politicians theme in its lowest readings and alerts listeners of Alfrid’s nasty presence with the sharp higher pitched variations. As long as the Master is alive Alfrid’s own music does not distinguish itself from its environment but in The Battle of the Five Armies the Politicians theme disintegrates (Alfrid can’t turn Bard into a willing new Master to manipulate for his benefit) and all that is musically left is the vicious and simple 2-chord motif for the lackey who only looks after himself (the renditions of this idea did not make it to the soundtrack album of BotFA).
