千と千尋の神隠し

The first piece, accompanying a sullen Chihiro in the car on the way to her new home. The central melody that runs through the whole work appears here for the first time.

• Beneath a piano melody that unhurriedly picks out one note at a time, synthesizer and strings lie in a thin layer. It sounds as if a child's boredom and a vague unease were carried together.
• This melody returns in the scenes with Haku and on the final journey home. It works like a leitmotif (Leitmotiv) — a short melody pointing to a particular character or feeling.
• Hisaishi later set Wakako Kaku's lyrics to this piece and released it anew as the song “The Name of Life” (いのちの名前). It became known as a 2005 single by Ayaka Hirahara and was not included on the film's soundtrack.
• It placed seventh in Classic FM's list of Hisaishi's ten greatest pieces. It is also widely performed in arrangements for solo piano.

The music for the moment when Haku appears before Chihiro, who is fading into transparency in the strange streets after sundown.

• The strings rush forward, depicting the emergency, then change texture the moment the boy holds out his hand. Fear and relief collide within a single piece.
• The title already reveals part of who the boy is. A name you pass over without a thought on first viewing reads differently later on.
• A short piece of just over two minutes, yet its orchestral colors keep shifting. It is a textbook example of a chase cue (a stretch of music written to fit a single scene).

A piece that follows the procession of every kind of god thronging to the bathhouse at nightfall. It is the moment Chihiro first steps into the heart of the other world.

• A rhythm like a steady gait drives the piece forward. It gives the sense of a procession crossing the bridge and stretching on without end.
• It sounds as if percussion and scales recalling Japanese festival music were mixed over a Western orchestra. This is the basic method of the film's sound: painting the world of Japanese folk belief with Western instruments.
• Grotesque gods file past, yet the music is more wondrous and festive than frightening. It seems a choice that follows a child's eye level, which feels wonder before fear.

A piece portraying the masked being who swells as he bewitches the staff with gold. For a character without words, the music gives a voice in his place.

• The piece holds passages that circle quietly and passages that swell roughly. It sounds as if it were showing in sound the inner life of a character whose loneliness spreads into greed.
• Unlike the lighthearted bathhouse music before it, an urgent passage blankets the background. It signals the turning point where the rhythm of daily life collapses.
• At nearly four minutes, it is among the longer pieces on the soundtrack. It is built to follow one character's transformation, stage by stage, within a single piece.

On the train running over the water, dialogue almost disappears and the music takes over the scene entirely. It is the film's longest moment of rest.

• The piano repeats a short figure again and again while the strings slowly pile up above it. Written in the idiom of minimal music, which repeats a single pattern while varying it little by little, this is the piece that most clearly reveals Hisaishi's point of departure.
• A harmony suspended somewhere between longing and resignation never finally tips to either side. It sounds like the heart of a child traveling a long road alone.
• It is often cited as the place where what Miyazaki calls ma (間), the breathing space between one event and the next, is realized in music.
• This piece's motif later returns, transformed into brass, at the close of “Reprise.” Listen to the two in succession and you can hear how the meaning of the same melody changes.

The music for the passage in which a forgotten memory returns during the flight through the night sky on a dragon's back. It is where the film's question is resolved.

• A waltz rhythm swaying in groups of three drives the piece. It carries both the bodily sensation of gliding through the sky and a heart lifted as if dancing.
• Near the end the motif of “The Sixth Station” returns, sounding not in lonely strings but as a robust brass fanfare (a brass signal ringing out as if in celebration). It is the moment the same melody turns its meaning from solitude to liberation.
• At nearly five minutes, it is the longest piece on the soundtrack. Since the melodies scattered earlier gather together here, it may fairly be called the summation of the film's score.
• In concert, Hisaishi has often performed this piece and the rest of the film's music woven together into a single suite.

This is the song that plays over the end credits once all the commotion is over. Youmi Kimura sang it while playing the lyre.

• The orchestra withdraws, and only the lyre, a small hand-plucked stringed instrument, remains with a single voice. It is an ending that folds the tale of a vast other world down to the size of one person's memory.
• The lyrics are by Wakako Kaku. Accepting sorrow and days that repeat, the song quietly affirms being alive, sung calmly in a voice like someone talking to oneself.
• The composition belongs not to Hisaishi but to Youmi Kimura. It was originally written for another Miyazaki project that fell through.
• This song and Hisaishi's score jointly received the music award at the 2002 Mainichi Film Concours.