Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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Undertale

Music by Toby Fox
Arranged by Liam Barthelmy ′25

Conducted by Jeremy Ng ′26
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ABOUT THE WORK
Released in 2015, Undertale is a role playing game (RPG) which subverts and comments on the conventions of the genre in many powerful ways, with a heaping dose of humor to boot. The game attained incredible success and a large dedicated fanbase in part because of its outstanding soundtrack, written by the same man who coded almost the entire game, Toby Fox. Featuring upbeat boss themes, lush melodies, and unifying character motifs, all written in a signature electronic style, it boasts an incredible variety of beautiful music from which it was difficult even to choose 20 minutes for this arrangement. It has been my dream for many years to bring this music to life with an orchestra and I am immensely grateful and excited for the opportunity to play it for you all today. The arrangement is divided into three movements, each centered around a couple of core motifs.

The first movement, centered around the characters Toriel, Asgore, and their deceased son Asriel, begins with what could be considered the main theme of the game with the simple and placid Once Upon A Time. We quickly move on to Heartache, a fast but tragic theme depicting your first major confrontation of the game against Toriel, who does not want you to leave the safety of the game’s first area. After this, we jump ahead to near the end of the game, with the title track Undertale, as we near the palace of Asgore, Toriel’s estranged husband, and reflect on what we have been through as we hear the main theme again in broader orchestration over the constant guitar ostinato that represents Asriel. ASGORE comes next, another boss theme which uses similar motifs to Heartache on a grander scale. And finally, the theme(s) for the final boss of the true pacifist route, Asriel himself: Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World bring this movement to its soaring conclusion. A final iteration of the main theme in the violins finishes it off, coming full circle.

The second movement focuses on the motifs that unify many of the exploration themes of the game. We begin with Waterfall, a tranquil and mysterious theme for the watery caves in the middle of the game. This theme slowly transforms through Another Medium, the faster music that plays in Hotland, into CORE, the upbeat and driving theme which plays in the shifting mechanical fortress near the end of the game, still using many of the same motifs from prior. This transitions directly into the boss theme for this zone, Death by Glamour, in which you fight the robot TV star Mettaton on stage.

The third and final movement takes from some of the more comedic moments and characters of the game. Ghost Fight kicks it off with the jazzy theme for the strange fight against the depressed musician ghost Napstablook. We are then interrupted by sans. The period is part of the name of the song, as is the lowercase. It’s the theme for sans the funny skeleton. I kinda don’t know how to explain this if you don’t know who sans is, he became a massive meme even outside of the game. This part is a brass section solo. Moving on, we get Bonetrousle, which is the fight theme for sans’ incompetent brother, Papyrus, who wants to capture you but is fundamentally incapable of doing so. After this is Spider Dance, a minor boss fight theme from later in the game against Muffet the spider baker, using the same motifs as ghost fight. And at last, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, Megalovania. By far the most well-known song in the game, this plays only during the genocide route during the final battle against sans. While it is a fundamentally tragic moment in the game, the music keeps some levity due to sans’ character, and despite the song’s meme status, it is actually just a banger.

I hope you all enjoy this journey through some of the highlights of the Undertale soundtrack. It is truly difficult to explain all of the incredible and seemingly contradictory pieces of this game in such a short format. If you haven’t played Undertale, go play it. It will make you laugh, make you think, and maybe even make you cry. And all the while, you will be listening to Toby Fox’s incredible music.

~ Liam Barthelmy ′25

NOTE: These program notes are truncated. The full program notes can be found here: docs.google.com/document/d/1frSiklP5hm1PTjVovgW5XouWkSjfzG6CGC7SIv2IVWg/edit?tab=t.0

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