Lonely Piano Piece

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
(Redirected from The Lonely Piano)

Is the hero in a losing battle against the villain and on the receiving end of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown? Has he or she been broken down? Does the grief of the realization that In the End You Are on Your Own overtake him or her? Cue the Lonely Piano Piece.

Basically, this is a piece of music that plays in a scene that represents that someone is left all alone and is stuck at a dead end with no allies or means of solving the problem at hand. The music is usually slow paced and the notes are often lower pitched to show that the character has run out of momentum or that he or she has hit rock bottom.

While this can be done with just about any instrument, the piano just seems to be a common instrument to do it with, perhaps because if there's ever a piano being played, there's rarely a second piano. The violin or acoustic guitar are usual replacements.

If a character is constantly lonely, or even an entire cast, this may be a Leitmotif. The Lonely Piano has a tendency to show up at funerals, especially when it's raining, or when it snows. Always expect Angst. If the story has a happy end, you can also expect You Are Not Alone. May play with the One-Woman Wail, though typically the Wail tends towards more epic points. See also Playing the Heart Strings.

Examples of Lonely Piano Piece include:

Anime and Manga

  • Naruto has "Sadness & Sorrow" which is played frequently, especially during the funeral scene.
  • Appears in the final battle of the Soul Eater anime after Maka and Soul wake up to find that the rest of their True Companions have all been defeated. Of course, they were asking for it, given how Soul both plays the piano and uses this for a literal Theme Music Power-Up.
  • Very common in Spiral, mainly because Ayumu, Kiyotaka and Eyes are all skilled pianists.
  • "Love Conservative" from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Like we need to be any sadder watching Nia disappear.
  • All of the Shining Garden pieces from Revolutionary Girl Utena.
  • Alies Grises would be a good starter, but practically all the music in Haibane Renmei would count.
  • A very beautiful piece in the Read or Die OVA when the bad guys get the MacGuffin
  • The power of this trope might reach its penultimate level in the first episode of Noir, when Kirika is in Mireille's living room and the two are discussing Kirika's amnesia. Kirika's "alone in a crowd" theme is so brilliantly overpowering, the Lonely Piano Piece works even when she's not actually by herself.
  • "Elegia for Piano" from Hirano Yoshihisa's Ouran High School Host Club soundtrack is often used for this purpose in the series, particularly in uncovering the more depressing pasts of characters. "Sakura Kiss for Piano" is its sweeter brother and a touching recovery piece, also for solo piano.
    • "Nocturne pour Tamaki" is also a solo piano piece. The melody itself isn't necessarily sad, but the few scenes its played for aren't exactly joyous. Considering Tamaki's past, it gives off a more melancholy feel when its played.
  • "Will of the Heart" from the first Bleach soundtrack by Sagiso Shiro, and "Swan Song" from the second, though the latter is a guitar piece.
  • "A Mother's Love" from One Piece, first used during Robin's flashback to Ohara, where her mother was killed, and she was left on her own with no one to rely on, at the age of 8.
    • Done very literally with Brook. With the entire crew severely injured, they try to perform one last song for their whale pet. Everyone begins dying, leaving only Brook left playing piano, asking why they would leave only the accompaniment.
  • Cowboy Bebop does this with piano ("Adieu") less often than other instruments, like saxophone ("Goodnight, Julia"). Session five even manages it on a pipe organ ("Rain").
  • "Rakuen" from Wolf's Rain which plays when Cheza disappears, leaving Kiba to die alone as the world ends, is heartbreakingly sad. However once the strings come in and you realise there may still be hope, it becomes incredibly beautiful.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei's theme (Rei I) is the epitome of loneliness, and appropriately so.
    • A Hole in the Dream and Reliance Leads to Falsehood from End of Evangelion are two other such pieces (though the latter is played in violin). Several other tunes like that are tucked away in the S2 Works music collection. There are at least two piano versions of Honeymoon with Anxiety - the lonely one, and the really, really, really lonely one.
    • "Passage of Emptiness" from The End of Evangelion.
  • One slowed down version of "Heart Moving" is played on a lone piano during the first season finale of Sailor Moon, when Usagi sits alone after all her friends have sacrificed themself for her.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: The first anime has a simple yet heart-tugging piano solo, which coincidentally is titled "Alone".
    • There's also the piano version of "Tune of Separation".
    • Brotherhood has this piano solo version of "Lapis Philosophorum".
  • The track "Jewel Seed" from the Nanoha The Movie 1st original soundtrack.
  • Axis Powers Hetalia features this in the episode where the Axis Powers are alone on an island. You get a double whammy when it turns out that Austria was playing it, and realize that it could apply to him too.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica has Decretum, Sayaka's theme which plays during the scenes where she's consumed by her despair.
    • "Inevitabilis" counts even more for being a literal Lonely Piano Piece, and for being a Dark Reprise of Homura's theme for when she finally breaks down and admits everything to Madoka before steeling her resolve for a lonely final battle.
  • Code Geass: This song which plays during the following:

1) Xing-Ke's promise flashback
2) Cut finger scene (between Lelouch and C.C.)
3) Ohgi's confession of love
4) And, of course, Lelouch's last words before he dies.

Film

  • We get this in Road to Perdition during the gunfight in the rain late in the film.
  • Elmer Bernstein was the master of this trope. Listen to Far From Heaven and To Kill A Mockingbird.
  • The deeply haunting "Brooks Was Here" from The Shawshank Redemption.
  • "Victor's Piano Solo" from Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, clearly playing off the theme of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" mentioned below, until he's interrupted - and similarly, "The Piano Duet" starts this way, echoing the earlier scene, until it's turned right around by the characters.
  • "The Promise", the main theme of The Piano.
  • From Fame, there is "Ralph and Monty (Dressing Room Piano)" (which this troper once performed at a high school music program recital).
  • Downfall features Stephen Zacharias' In The Courtyard of the Reich-Chancellory.
  • The main theme of the 2007 I Am Legend has a notable piano part with solo sections. Thinking about it, the piano part may represent Neville's solitary existance surrounded by the evidence of his failure and memories of what once was, the strings brass and percussion parts.
  • Oddly enough, the opening piano score from Bad Santa is oddly touching, hearing Billy Bob Thornton monologue about how crappy a person he is while Chopin's Nocturn Op.9 No.2 plays is rather moving.
  • Battle Royale II has Memories, played by Shiori Kitano on a piano she finds in Shuya's base. As she plays, the scene cuts between her in the present, and her remembering how horribly she treated her father in years gone by.
  • "Home Movies" in the remake of Halloween and its sequel.
  • Clint Mansell's soundtrack for Moon uses mostly simplistic piano tunes, and the sad tunes work well in emphasizing the heart-breaking sadness of the main character's lonely moments.
  • Girl with a Pearl Earring had this as virtually its only incidental music, being very driven by silent, stoic acting from Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson and reliant only on a meandering theme.
  • The Social Network has "Hand Covers Bruise", which is the main theme and plays after Mark's girlfriend breaks up with him. The album won an Oscar for Best Original Score.
  • The official soundtrack for Antz replaces "High Hopes" with a soft piano version of the main theme.
  • The Road: The Road .

Live Action TV

  • Partial Trope Namer, The Incredible Hulk's end piece "The Lonely Man".
  • Over half the Tear Jerker sequences in Doctor Who. The other half is Playing the Heart Strings.
  • Scrubs has a piece which repeats quite a lot.
  • Red Dwarf actually did this with Rimmer in "Better than Life", but it was short lived, while he stands on the observatory, staring out. Lister comes up and the music stops, and a serious scene goes on. It works really well, especially for a comedy.
  • An episode of Kamen Rider Den-O focuses on a nameless pianist, whose music is his rendition of the series' battle tune. The third iteration in particular seems quite lonely.
  • In Chojin Sentai Jetman has Maria, who constantly plays a tune on a piano. During The times when Maria is hurt or dying, this plays.
  • The end of the final episode of season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the Buffy theme music being played over it, slowly, on a piano.
  • The piece "Win One for the Reaper" from Lost plays during the funerals for most of the characters who died as well as during other sad moments in the series.
  • The very end of the Warehouse 13 season 3 finale.
  • Sherlock has one of these as a recurring theme throughout the series that's usually played when referencing John's past (hence the title 'War' on the soundtrack), but becomes even more of a Tear Jerker in The Reichenbach Fall.

Music

  • The first movement of the "Moonlight Sonata" by Beethoven is often used for this when the soundtrack is not original.
  • A non-soundtrack example would be X Japan 's Es Dur no Piano-sen by Yoshiki. On the Jealousy album, it is the first, introductory track to the album, to convey this kind of atmosphere, that of the lonely calm before the storm... literally, because the next track is Silent Jealousy.
  • Tom Waits' is a master of these: Martha, Lonely, Tom Traubert's Blues
  • Peter Gabriel's rehashed version of "Here Comes The Flood" from the album Exposure is the Lonely Piano Piece for the entire human race.
  • Singer-songwriters who are piano-based (e.g. Tori Amos, Regina Spektor, Rufus Wainwright) are likely to have songs like this. Rufus even has a whole album of lonely piano pieces (All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu).

"I think I'll wait another year..."

    • Literal with Eric Carmen's (or should we say Rachmaninov's?) "All by Myself". Joo of Igudesman And Joo exaggerates this trope to its logical extent by playing and singing this song, slowly sounding more and more depressed, sobbing uncontrollably and singing unintelligibly by the end of the first chorus.
  • Efterklang's song Mimeo on the Parades album.
  • Punk rock band Hüsker Dü had two on their concept album, Zen Arcade: "One Step at a Time" and "Monday Will Never Be the Same."
  • DHT - Listen To Your Heart (Unplugged version)
  • Christina Perri's song "The Lonely" is entirely about this. It's just Christina and her piano singing about how all she has is the loneliness. Possibly subverted since the song is actually about her being in a relationship with loneliness.

Theatre

  • Frank Wildhorn's Broadway musical Jekyll & Hyde had a few of these along with vocals, backing up "Lost In The Darkness", "No One Knows Who I Am", and "Sympathy, Tenderness".
  • In Spring Awakening there's a slow, sad piano-only accompaniment to Moritz's monologue before he commits suicide.

Video Games

Narrator: "We managed to separate the human clone from Con-Human computer environment, but we could still not stop the violence generated by the Con-Human. Can we call the Con-Human and human clone a new life creation?. Are we supposed to destroy this creature? The humans who are fighting against their ominous fate will use their latest strategy, resulting in Operation Ray Force

Web Original

Western Animation

You're leaving this page all alone? Cue the Lonely Piano while this page weeps at your absence.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Lonely_Piano_Piece?oldid=2006076"