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Merry-Go-Round of Life (from "Howl's Moving Castle")
Simon Britton '26, Piano
Music by Joe Hisaishi
Arranged by June Yoo '25
Conducted by Eli Gilbert '24
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Howl’s Moving Castle is a 2004 animated film by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, loosely based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones. The film tells the story of Sophie, a young hatter leading a mundane, routine existence in a war-ridden kingdom, when she one day has a fateful encounter with the eponymous wizard, Howl. Howl is a mysterious wizard famed among the locals for his frightening power, but even more so, his beauty. That night, Sophie finds herself attacked by a witch whose curse turns her into an elderly woman. Shameful of her new appearance, Sophie hurriedly flees the town in search of Howl’s Moving Castle and a cure to her curse, a journey which implores her to question the meaning of age, war, vanity, friendship, and love.
Joe Hisaishi’s iconic main theme for the film, Merry-Go-Round of Life, is originally scored for piano quintet, a sparse instrumentation which personifies the dreadful loneliness which troubles Sophie and each of her friends. Yet the film itself operates on an epic scale, and even Howl, with all his magic, is ultimately rendered powerless in the face of the technology and war that backgrounds their tale. In this DPops original arrangement, the orchestration expresses the inevitability of the latter, accompanying Howl’s acceptance of reality with a heavy, bittersweet waltz.
Howl’s Moving Castle is among one of the most commercially successful Japanese films ever made, and industry-leading director Hayao Miyazaki’s personal favorite creation. For DPops, too, it is special. Every year, we ask our very own orchestra what music they would like to play, and the music of Joe Hisaishi was the overwhelming favorite. Please enjoy our
performance of Merry-Go-Round of Life.
-June Yoo '25