How classical music infiltrated video games
As the classical world tries to attract younger audiences, the answer may lie in video games. Jonathan Holmes explains how
Peruse the website of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and you will see a typically packed April schedule – Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, Haydn’s Mass in B-flat major. Next month, however, the esteemed orchestra will be turning its hand to something a little different. In front of 5,000 concertgoers at the Royal Albert Hall, it will be performing the music to the video game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
And not just Uncharted 2, but other Playstation titles too: its sequel Uncharted 3: Drakes’s Deception, 2008’s Littlebigplanet, 2016’s The Last Guardian and the multi-million-selling Horizon Zero Dawn.
Accompanied by a spectacular light show, the orchestral music is expected to attract hundreds of people who have never been to a classical concert before. The event will also underline what a force video game scores are now in the world of classical music.
“This concert is a signpost for where orchestral music is expanding,” says James Williams, the RPO’S managing director. “Many people today have grown up with the music of video games, and have come to love the sound of the orchestra by playing.”
For those who do not play games, the idea that they may have anything to offer classical aficionados sounds ridiculous. Games like Pacman and Asteroids were played to a soundtrack of primitive bleeps and bloops. But just as games’ graphics have transformed out of all recognition from those early days, so too has the music.
Today, it is not unusual for game companies with big budgets to employ 100-piece orchestras and pay composers anywhere between £700 and £2,100 for a minute of music. When you consider that a soundtrack can be anything from 30 minutes to three hours long, that means fees of hundreds of thousands – an enormous amount compared to what composers might usually earn for commissions.
And the quality of the compositions is high. When Classic FM published its Hall of Fame in 2015 – described as the world’s biggest annual survey of classical music tastes – 12 of the 300 pieces were video game scores. Three of those were in the top 13.
It prompted Classic FM to launch a new show, High Score, dedicated to game music. After the first series was broadcast in April last year, it became the most popular programme ever on the station’s Listen Again service. That first series (a second followed last November) led to a 30per cent increase in young listeners for the station, but also found a surprising audience among older listeners.
“I was expecting quite a big kickback from Classic FM’S traditional audience,” says Jessica Curry, the show’s presenter. “But what has been wonderful is people saying, ‘I’ve never played a game, I probably never will, but this piece of music is absolutely incredible, it blew me away.’ It’s really gratifying to bring a new audience into game music. These two worlds aren’t as far apart as you may think.”
Curry, who will be presenting the RPO concert at the Royal Albert Hall, is herself a composer of game music and won a Bafta for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, a game about the apocalypse set in a quiet Shropshire village.
“I was not a gamer: I grew up loving romantics like Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Prokofiev and I listened to a lot of Ravel and Debussy,” she says. “I used to associate games with hyper violence and addiction. But now I think games have huge cultural worth.”
Her music has an unmistakable sense of British melancholy. “I’m very into choral music,” she explains. “The music for Rapture was influenced by Duruflé’s Requiem.”
Game music, however, is different from film music; it has to change depending on what the player does. To achieve this, composers write separate layers of music representing different states: one for normal gameplay (exploration, say); slight tension (when an opponent appears in the distance); or lots of tension (a fight). They also use loops – short chunks of music that repeat, depending on how long the player takes. Good gamers might be quick to complete a level; novices may take an hour. That means composers have to keep the music flexible.
Curry, of course, concentrates on the main theme music on High Score, in the same way that Classic FM would only play certain sections of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. In Curry’s opinion, though, some of the most exciting and ambitious new classical compositions are to be found in games. She highlights the American composer Jason Graves, whose credits include Tomb Raider and who will also feature in the RPO’S Playstation in Concert.
Graves incorporated his love for serialism, John Cage and Philip Glass into his score for Dead Space 2, which featured a string quartet. He thinks composing for games allows a creative freedom that traditional formats lack.
“I’m a big fan of Penderecki and Ligeti, contemporary avant garde music, but I also love The Beatles and Enya,” he says. “Video games are the only place I can use all of the desperate clash of genres in my head.”
The audiences have followed: Graves has played his scores all over the world, from the US to the UK, Sweden and Spain.
Fellow American composer Tommy Tallarico has also been working to bring gamers into the concert hall. The release of Halo in 2001 – marking the start of the mega-budget game – made a sensation of its soundtrack, composed by Martin O’donnell and featuring Gregorian chanting over militaristic percussion. “Halo was our Star Wars moment,” says Tallarico, who along with fellow composer Jack Wall launched the Video Games Live touring show around this time.
Taking inspiration from his cousin, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, Tallarico created a concert “that showcased video game music in a symphonic way, but combined it with the energy and enthusiasm of a rock concert.” The result is bombastic, but the star remains the music.
“Beethoven wanted to put people in an emotional state of mind with his music,” he says, “If he were alive today, he would compose for games.”
The Southbank Centre has previously hosted Video Games Live, and its director of music, Gillian Moore, is a fan.
“I so don’t play video games,” she says. “But I am absolutely aware of what an important cultural form it is.”
She views gaming as a vital outlet for orchestral music, pointing to its close ties with Britain’s most venerated orchestras. “Getting people in concert halls listening to game music is very valid,” Moore adds. “It’s not a stepping stone to something else, it’s a great thing in itself. As a musician, the interactivity, how music changes with the player’s actions, really excites me.”
Game music’s reputation is growing all the time. Curry wants to go further. “I love the Proms,” she says. “I love that it’s in summer, that there’s a sense of occasion and tradition. But I don’t understand why there isn’t a video game prom. I think it’s time.”
Playstation in Concert is at the Royal Albert Hall, London SW7, on May 30. royalalberthall.com