Yasunori Mitsuda

Yasunori Mitsuda (?? ?? Mitsuda Yasunori?, born January 21, 1972) is a Japanese video game composer, sound programmer, and musician. He is best known for his work with composing video games such as Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Shadow Hearts, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Xenogears, Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, and Mario Party. Yasunori Mitsuda's music often show Celtic, Indian, Caribbean and East Asian influences.

Yasunori Mitsuda's music often show Celtic, Indian, Caribbean and East Asian influences. The strong Celtic influences are particularly evident in his soundtrack for Chrono Cross in songs such as "Another Termina" and "Dragon God" as well as in his Xenogears arranged album, Creid. Mitsuda's style is difficult to pigeonhole, however, since he is able to compose music in several different styles depending on the demands of the project. For example, the Chrono Cross track "Chronomantic" sounds Caribbean, while the song "The Great Sneff's Troupe" from that same soundtrack is East Asian in flavor. A number of his other compositions show strong Indian influence, such as the Chrono Trigger tracks "Corridor of Time" and "Schala's Theme" and the Chrono Cross tracks "Time's Grasslands", and "Time's Scar" for example. Mitsuda's music translates well to jazz, as well. The album The Brink of Time consists of several arrangements of his Chrono Trigger soundtrack performed by a live jazz band called Guido.

His music is frequently minimalistic, and he has cited Minimalism as an influence. His final battle themes for Chrono Trigger and Xenogears are based on only a few chords each, with the latter containing only two. Mitsuda has always acknowledged popular cinema as a strong influence on his work. This is particularly evident in various battle themes he has written, such as "Gale", which is used in both Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross. The main theme from Chrono Trigger is another example of Mitsuda's cinematic side. He has cited Maurice Ravel, J.S. Bach, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann, Anton?n Dvo??k, and Gustav Holst as his favorite classical composers.