Balthazar's Theme - Your Past does not Define you

Balthazar Bertram grew up under a different name in a dangerous and heartless host of Hobgoblins and other Goblinoids, the "Rust Legion". Being more emotional and less violent than his peers he never quite fit in and after the death of his parents in a useless conflict, he fled the Legion.
Cold and alone he was found and taken in by Bartholomew Bertram, a Wizard of invention living and teaching in Baldur's Gate. There Balthazar learned his craft of wizardry and lived a mostly normal life until the mother of his best friend vanished, and they headed out to find her

This Theme is part of my quest of creating character themes for all the Player Characters in my current Hoard of the Dragonqueen campaign. Balthazar's Theme was the second of four to be completed. You can find it over on Soundcloud or Youtube.

The group

Radivi's Theme

When the storm hits

Radivil Aldri by Setsuretsu

Smokies Theme

Work in progress

Smoking Mirror by Setsuretsu

Ezra's Theme

Work in progress

Ezra by Setsuretsu

Balthazar Bertram by Setsuretsu

Musical Challenge

The creation of Balthazar's Theme was more tricky than Radivil's Theme as the basic musical composition is more complex. While Radivil's Theme is using a pretty basic chord and rhythm progression , but uses a full orchestral instrumentation, it did not feel right to do the same for Baltho. So to showcase Baltho's past and his history, I split the music into two distinct parts and only used a simple piano surrounded with some strings for the instrumentation.
The bright parts show his kind and intelligent personality, while the dark parts show his history. In the end, those two distinct parts partially blend into each other and that's where the title is coming from: "Your past will always be part of you, but it doesn't define who you are." Baltho's Theme turned out way longer as I originally planned and even if I've struggled with it for a while, I'm pretty happy with the end result.