Video Game Music and Classical Idiom: Emulation to Evoke Emotion

In 2005, Roger Ebert wrote in his blog the claim that video games cannot be art. The article caused an outcry in the gamer population, with gamers citing various games and elements of games as artistic. Five years later, while not changing his mind, Ebert admitted to never having played a video game and said he should not have discussed them at all. While the striking visuals of today’s multi-million dollar games can be cited as often as the simple fluidity of control in a 1980s game in discussing the art in video games, one element that has developed a sub-culture all its own is the music. Akin to the pops orchestra that plays movie soundtracks, websites can be found that allow people to post their versions of game songs (such as vgmusic.com and ocremix.com), and YouTube contains a vast amount of still-image videos just to listen to the original soundtracks or remakes (such as Zelda ReOrchestrated). Indeed, video game music has even gone touring through orchestras with concert series like Play! A Video Game Symphony and Video Games Live.

These concerts make sense partially because games today have access to orchestra-sized ensembles to create music of blockbuster-film proportions. Many games, played on massive visual scales, would feel wrong without it, just as watching a movie would feel wrong without its music. Video games, like movies before them, have rapidly developed the thematic idiom of opera, with a game sequel often arranging songs from the original for the recurring characters. But what happens when a game adopts a classical idiom more directly? Rather than the bustling movie-score, games often go straight to the Western classical tradition to bring the listener’s associations with them. This article will examine the effects of blending the associations of a video game soundtrack with the classical music tradition, whether it be an opera aria or organ prelude in a game, or the game music in the concert hall. While video games as a medium offer several key differences from non-interactive media, gamers should respond emotionally to the emulated idioms accompanying the visuals, and non-gamers should respond in kind to them in concert, as they were designed from the start to hearken to the great classical composers.

I will define "classical idiom" as elements of an individual music track of a game that emulate styles of various "standard repertoire" works, not just the Classical period, within the track itself and not referencing other tracks. For example, I would describe the timbre and open-fifth harmonization of horn calls as a borrowed idiom, and it would likely symbolize hunting or martial action the same way it does in the standard repertoire. While my focus is on this, I may also point out some multi-game trends that simulate the effects of themes or musical quotations. Many video game series have utilized the concept of theme over multiple titles, similar to character themes in Wagner’s Ring, or Godzilla movies, so I may point out its use to add potency when considering a game series as a work.

The first part of this article will discuss how effective using the classical idiom in a game’s soundtrack is in setting mood and evoking the desired emotions. While this may sound obvious at first, there are key differences between video games and non-interactive multimedia, and their audiences, which warrant a short discussion. First, games have come a long way from point-scoring distractions. There is a trend through the 1980s and 90s to design games with an end, so that the goal becomes completion rather than a high score. While this does not mean the game is made unplayable after completion (there may be more content left unexplored, or even more content opened post-completion), it lends itself to a more controlled difficulty slope and to narrative. Narrative compels immersion, but the goal-driven interactivity may not, and at times completing a challenge has a more dominating relationship over listening than watching a movie does. Second, we have to consider that the main consumers of video games are young males, who may not even be old enough to have a fully-developed sense of idiom. A skilled game composer wishing to reach the broadest audience would have to combine the most basic classical idiom to draw emotions out of a younger player with subtleties that an older gamer, or even a classically trained gamer, would appreciate.

An example of a basic classical idiom would be the use of organ timbre to symbolize the antagonist. This idiom has existed for the past century in multimedia, from Dr. Jekyll playing an organ in the 1931 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the Phantom’s theme in Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera.¹ This is employed very frequently in video games, often to distinguish the main antagonist from lesser ones. The music played by the organ is often in a minor key, and the brightest stops are used, so the whole effect should be one of fear and uneasiness. Oftentimes, the music may play during a cut-scene, when the game takes control of the gamer’s avatar to develop the story. However, we will look at a few examples where the composer does not have this luxury; the music plays during the final playable confrontation, called the final boss in gamer's vocabulary, which is a blessing (in that the gamer must be heavily invested by now) and a curse (in that this should be the most challenging occurrence in the game).

Nobuo Uematsu is an extremely well-known and liked composer in the game community. He is famous for his work on the Final Fantasy series produced by Square Enix. The games in this series are not related by story, and only certain details carry through them (such as the title-screen music or specific low-rung enemies), so each game is a fresh batch of protagonists and antagonists that can have musical themes. The games also require tens of hours to complete, which can aid in immersion or exhaustion, and this allows for a strong narrative with a complex story and multiple characters (often ten or more protagonists and a handful of antagonists). Uematsu can be assured that a gamer who reaches the final boss is invested, though they may also have expectations, visually and musically, about this antagonist, especially if he or she was exposed a lot during the course of the game.

In the 1994 game Final Fantasy VI, the main antagonist is Kefka Palazzo, the jester-like general of the tyrant king’s empire who attains god-like power in the middle of the game and destroys the world, or at least unalterably damages it.² When the protagonists encounter him at the end of the game, he is mad with power and commences a four-stage battle, each stage accompanied by its own music. The "four-movement" battle music even has a title: Dancing Mad. For the third stage, Uematsu defeats any musical expectations the gamer had about Kefka (almost), both from the previous two stages and the game as a whole, with a C sharp Major organ solo. While the previous stages use organ timbre, both of them use the traditional minor and diminished seventh chords, along with repeated tritone tonicization, obviously communicating madness, power and fear.

Stage 3 begins with a low C sharp pedal fifth and two bell-strikes (four bars in my transcription of 4/4 time signature, quarter note at 168 bpm). Then the tune begins with four measures of a major theme in the treble, mostly scalar as it progresses up. The bass descends by step to the dominant, which leads to two measures in the dominant key, a consequent of the C sharp Major antecedent. The bass goes back to pedal C sharp without the fifth under an arpeggiated rising figure in the treble for four measures. The next four measures have two simple I-IV-I progressions with a little ornamentation. The arpeggiated figure returns, this time with a countermelody in the bass. Suddenly the same melody-countermelody is in the parallel minor, which could be interpreted as a cheap default to the minor-key idiom, but an astute gamer would tell that the minor-key bass countermelody is now Kefka’s theme, which had been used throughout the game.


Example 1: an example of organ figuration in Dancing Mad; the bass line is Kefka's theme

Dancing Mad -- Nobuo Uematsu (part 3 at 9:50)


After a transition the piece modulates to e minor, what would be the relative major but with G natural instead of G sharp, and the time signature changes to 6/4. The next measure is in a minor, iv of e minor, followed by a sequence of descending fifths starting on D, back in 4/4 but now with triplet arpeggios in the treble. After three V-I patterns, the sequence ends on A and the bass drops out. The lone treble voice alludes to D Major as if A was the dominant, but then it quickly goes to g minor as a second treble voice adds counterpoint and harmony. The two voices pass through some B naturals to allude to c minor, and there is a bit of chromaticism (one C sharp, one G sharp), but they always return to G quickly and ultimately end on a G octave. Uematsu then strikes a big diminished seventh chord (this can perhaps be interpreted as blunt), which contains B natural and should resolve to c minor, but instead it moves up a half step, and then another. This third chord is the diminished seventh of G sharp, which would be the dominant of the opening C sharp Major, and indeed it does resolve to a dominant ninth chord on G sharp with a suspended and released fourth. At this point the music loops back to the opening theme in C sharp Major.

For a classically trained ear, the harmonic progression may be unique (the modulation to the tritone key is prolonged but still peculiar), but the figuration is certainly Baroque. This would bring to mind something old-fashioned, perhaps the old sacred music tradition of that time. For a young gamer, the change from creepy minor-key music to a blatant major key would be startling. He would have to reconcile why the music is cheerful and more tonally centered with such a serious and powerful enemy to fight. The gamer would have to associate the figuration as something regal or sacred, which would make sense with the godly status of the villain.³

To briefly cite three other final boss pieces that have their own take on the classical organ idiom, the launch title Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64 drew clear idiomatic differences between the final boss and other boss battles.⁴ Visually, the scene for the final battle against antagonist Bowser is darker than his previous two fights and has a different color palate. For gameplay, he requires three blows to be defeated instead of one. And musically, composer Koji Kondo also uses a solo organ piece squarely in d minor. Kondo benefits from the improved hardware by varying the stops of the organ, but what is interesting is the difference between this music and the generic heavy-metal rock beat used for the first two fights; the gamer is clearly clued that this is the most important battle, the last and most difficult.

The music for the final boss of the 1994 game Earthbound starts with timbres that sound like an 8-bit game, which is at first inappropriate because the game is on the 16-bit Super Nintendo that benefits from more pleasing timbres than the square waves of the older systems.⁵ Besides the timbre, the figuration is organ-like, with pedal points and arpeggios in the treble. Composers Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka eventually surprise with a quick transition to a hard rock sound with full drum kit and more authentic guitar timbre, but the effect of the earlier sections is doubly old-fashioned. The figuration idiom alludes to the fact that the protagonists have had to go back in time to confront the villain Giygas in a weaker state, and the 8-bit timbre alludes the fact that this game is a sequel of the 8-bit title Mother.⁶

My final example presents a few curious allusions and effects. In the seminal Nintendo 64 title The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the player controls Link, a sword-wielding hero destined to thwart the evil wizard Ganondorf and save the titular Princess Zelda in a high-fantasy setting.⁷ If the player has completed all the preceding tasks, they can begin the end of the game by entering Ganondorf's castle. All of the previous areas in the game have had their own accompanying background music, and this one is no different. However, once the player breaches the keep of the castle, the music becomes very faint. As the player ascends, the music can be made out to be an organ, playing arpeggiated minor chords over an slowly oscillating fifth. The organ can be heard loud once the player reaches the top, and when they enter the final chamber, Ganondorf can be seen playing the organ under an imprisoned Zelda. The game had subversively made the music diegetic, which should increase the immersion of the gamer since they have realized their avatar is also hearing the music.⁸ The piece Ganondorf is playing is none other than his theme, which was first heard seven years earlier, and has since occurred in almost all Zelda games in which he appears, thereby employing thematic idiom to describe his omnipresence in the game-world. Ganondorf's power over the complex instrument, and the power the organ reflects, describe how he possesses the Triforce of Power, one of three in-game holy items, this one giving him particular might.

Final Fantasy VI also includes another hallmark of the Western Classical tradition, an opera.⁹ The opera, titled Maria and Draco, contains and overture, an aria, dance music, and a "finale," with some transition recitative in between. The function of the opera in the story of the video game is clever; the protagonists need an airship to reach a new continent and continue their mission, and the only person in the world that has one is Setzer Gabbiani. The party finds out from the Impresario of the Opera House that Setzer plans on abducting the soprano after the performance. Conveniently, one of the heroes, Celes Chere, bears a striking resemblance to the singer, so another hero, Locke Cole, hatches the idea to have Celes perform the opera, get taken by Setzer, then have the rest of the party infiltrate the airship.

This section of the game starts with non-performing heroes sitting in the audience, watching the opera. The conductor commences the overture, which is thick string writing and timpani rolls. The harmonies and meter resemble the Classical period. The Impresario takes the stage an narrates the story thus far (perhaps this is part of a series of operas in-universe), backed by longing harp arpeggios. He tells of a war between the East and West. Maria and Draco of the West are in love, but Draco goes missing during the war and the East take over Maria's castle. Draco comes on stage to sing about Maria (unfortunately, the technology of the Super Nintendo system did not have enough memory to allow a vocal recording, so the voice is synthetic, like all the instruments, and the text that would be sung is displayed), and part of his short recitative becomes the opening melodic line for Maria's upcoming aria. The music changes to a stern military march, but the game now focuses away from the stage and to the protagonists.

The player controls Locke, who goes to Celes's dressing room to wish her luck. He laments leaving his fiancee for his subversive efforts, though he also betrays some attraction to Celes. The "real world" story of these characters fits well with the plot of the opera; Draco also feels guilty about abandoning Maria for the war. It is also interesting how all of the music in this section of the game is diegetic, even if the player is not watching the opera.

Finally, Celes enters the stage and sings the "Aria di Mezzo Carattere."¹⁰ The player only has slight control, choosing the appropriate opening text for three verses, but otherwise this functions as a cut-scene. The narrator quickly adds how the prince of the East, Ralse, plans to force Maria to marry him, but her aria atop Ralse's castle is about her longing for Draco. The first verse is introduced and accompanied by harp, and each verse has the same vocal line, except the last lines of each (three are half-cadences and two are deceptive cadences).

The line starts with an interesting turn; D Major quickly turns to f sharp minor when the voice changes melody from F sharp, G, A to F sharp, G sharp, A. The song harmonizes down IV-iii-ii-I of D Major, the voice suspending on the fourths of e minor and D Major, but then G sharp returns to give V7/iii. This resolves but passes quickly to A Major, V of D Major, which goes into the next verse, now with full string orchestration and a horn countermelody.

The third verse of the aria ends differently, as the voice suspends on the sixth of an A dominant chord instead of the previous two verses on the fourth of C sharp dominant. However, she does not get the satisfaction and resolution to D Major, as it goes to f sharp minor again. On the stage, Draco comes to her as a vision and dances with her (fully in f sharp minor) before disappearing into a bouquet, which she tosses off the balcony of the castle during her fourth verse. The fifth and final verse ends like the third, in f sharp minor, and she leaves for a ball with Ralse as the postlude makes its way back to D Major.

The next scene is the ball, accompanied by a waltz. While it plays, the gamer goes back to Locke, who discovers a note from a recurring enemy, Ultros, saying he will interfere with the opera. When Locke tells the Impresario, the music changes as Western survivors attack. Draco makes a dramatic return and begins a duel with Ralse. The music is now intense, with a driving snare drum and quick string chords. Locke and the team discover Ultros on the rafters, and when they attack him, all of them fall down onto the stage, knocking out both Draco and Ralse. The music abruptly stops, and the Impresario comes up and laments how the show cannot go on without a male lead. Locke volunteers himself the new hero, and the Impresario has the orchestra play the finale while the heroes battle Ultros on stage, to the delight of the audience. Predictably, this battle is actually a boss battle for the player, but again, the music is diegetic, adding a layer of complexity to the soundscape of this section.

My description of the opera in itself already reveals basic dramatic elements that could have been from a real opera, excepting its short length. The music itself also uses basic opera idioms as well. Draco synthetic voice still resembles a bass, and the range is for bass, which is fitting for his martial character. Ralse has a similar range, but his timbre is synthesized to be less deep, perhaps to indicate his royal origins or his shallowness compared to Draco. While the aria can be faulted for only having one melody for all the verses, the vocal line is very lyrical, but with intense expression in the the repeated suspended fourths and chromatic ornamentation. The finale starts with the battle music with Ultros, which is upbeat and brassy, distinct from the rest of the music as it also has to function for the gameplay. After beating Ultros, the second part cues in a fast string part with a brass fanfare as Setzer drops in and kidnaps Celes. The Impresario continues playing it off as part of the show, and the orchestra finally fades out as the game goes to the next section. While the opera does not rely on themes to connect the parts (even in the overture, a flaw of sorts), it feels like a microcosm of operatic potential, with each piece connected by instrumentation and figuration. Not only that, but the opera is connected to the video game as a whole, with the story of the opera informing the story of the game, the music of the opera informing external events, and the production of the opera moving the game forward.

The praise for this section, known in community as the "opera scene," and its music is high with gamers. The Final Fantasy Wiki notes its reputation as "one of the most stirring moments in gaming history," and the article refers to numerous live recordings of orchestras performing the opera music with singers.¹¹ In 2002, eight years after the game's release, the video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly called the scene one of the "20 Greatest Moments in Console Gaming".¹² Even to this day, the November 2011 issue of the magazine Nintendo Power featured a full-page outpour on the scene. Editor Chris Hoffman states: "An opera scene? In the middle of an RPG [role-playing game]? With lyrics and everything? It sounds crazy, but it made for one of the most heartfelt moments of any game we've ever played."¹³ These writers are talking about the scene as a whole, but of course, there is no impact without the music. The fact that the music has been performed so many times in a concert setting attests to its power to move.

One of the most famous video game music concert tours today is Video Games Live, which was started in 2005 by game composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall. The concerts not only meld the game world and the orchestral concert world together, they also incorporate visual media (usually game footage), interactivity, lighting effects, and special guests. The whole effect of the show is almost that of a rock concert, with Wall as the conductor and Tallarico as the Master of Ceremonies, often playing electric guitar with the orchestra and always encouraging the audience to cheer when they recognize game tunes they like.¹⁴ On a national scale, the release of Video Games Live: Level 2 in 2010, its second live recording, debuted at #8 on the Billboard 200. The New York Times called the October 2009 show at the Beacon Theater "captivating, proudly bombastic," but the reviewer also focused on the community following, how many concert-goers cosplayed (dressed in costume as game characters) or participated in pre-concert gaming in the lobby.¹⁵ The reviewer also rightly describes the advancement of game sound from "bleeps and bloops" (the phrase not worth citing due to its pervasive use to misrepresent game audio) to the orchestras used today. While this is true, what was marvelously nostalgic for these concerts was to hear those older game scores re-scored with full orchestra. Even those old point-scoring games received overhauls, many of them in a dedicated arcade medley. Listeners could hear modern game music essentially as-is from new games like the world-influenced Civilization V and the safari game Africa right alongside the old ones like The Legend of Zelda and, of course, Final Fantasy.

Another very popular game music concert tour is Play! A Video Game Symphony. The idea was started by producer Jason Michael Paul as a one-time concert for Final Fantasy music.¹⁶ The Final Fantasy concert turned into its own series, Dear Friends (the prequel to More Friends, see note 11), but Paul also formed a general video game music series with conductor Arnie Roth, who had also conducted Dear Friends. Now conducted by Andy Brick, the series is still going with three concerts scheduled in Canada for May 2012.¹⁷ Though I have not attended a Play! concert, from what I have read and seen in recordings, the atmosphere is more formal, more similar to a classical music concert than Video Games Live, but still using visuals. Their website describes how the concerts "take place in classy, prestigious venues," and Paul had described his mission in the concert series is to "keep the arts alive in a way that is classy."¹⁸ Both Paul and symphony directors have also expressed the hope that the mixing of gamers and concert-goers will encourage the former to attend more concerts and the latter to see video games in a better light.¹⁹

The success of these series, the game music divorced from its gameplay context, attests to the swelling popularity of the music and the establishment of video game music as a genre, similar to the film soundtrack. Even now, the London Philharmonic Orchestra released a studio recording in November 2011, The Greatest Video Game Music, and Paul is also producing a Legend of Zelda music tour promoting the Zelda series' 25th anniversary. While the use of audio unique to video games helps to differentiate the medium from film, it may also confuse discussion of a game's artistry because the techniques are not fermented. The growing popularity of rhythm games, where the goal is timed input to music, does not necessarily constitute art. However, I feel that drawing similarities from an established art medium to video games can encourage open-mindedness in those who see games as a fad or entertainment without depth and meaning. As I have written above, the video game composer goes a long way to evoke emotion in gamers by using all kinds of classical idiom, creating layers of complexity and interconnectedness that could also describe a great movie soundtrack, or even a great "absolute" musical work. If the techniques and effects of this music are similar for gamers as music would be in a movie or opera for a audience member, perhaps we can start to argue more clearly if that contributes to the world’s newest popular media as being capable of art.

Notes:

1. Neil Lerner, "The Strange Case of Rouben Mamoulian's Sound Stew: The Uncanny Soundtrack in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)," in Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear, ed. Neil Lerner (New York: Routledge, 2010), 58-61. My examples are by no means bookends; see also Julie Brown, "Carnival of Souls and the Organs of Horror," in the same book, which discusses even earlier uses of the organ in film.

2. Final Fantasy VI (Tokyo: Square, 1994), released in the United States as Final Fantasy III in 1994, but subsequent re-releases use its Japanese number of VI. The company became Square Enix in 2003.

3. Patrick Gann and Ben Schweitzer, "Final Fantasy VI OSV," RPGFan (accessed November 22, 2011).

4. Super Mario 64 (Kyoto: Nintendo, 1996).

5. Earthbound (Kyoto: Nintendo, 1994), released as Mother 2 in Japan, released in the United States in 1995. Bits were vague numbers that referred to the graphic and sound capability of a console.

6. also see Mother (Kyoto: Nintendo, 1989)

7. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Kyoto: Nintendo, 1998)

8. for more information on diegesis in video games, see Karen Collins, "An Introduction to the Participatory and Non-Linear Aspects of Video Games Audio," in Essays on Sound and Vision (Helsinki: Helsinki University Print, 2007). In general, Karen Collins is very prolific in the field of video game audio.

9. Final Fantasy VI

10. The text of "Aria di Mezzo Carattere" in the original American release of Final Fantasy VI:

"Oh my hero so far away now.
Will I ever see you smile?
Love goes away like night into day.
It's just a fading dream...
I'm the darkness, you're the stars.
Our love is brighter than the sun.
For eternity, for me there can be
only one, my chosen one...
Must I forget you? Our solemn promise?
Will autumn take the place of spring?
What shall I do? I'm lost without you.
Speak to me once more!
We must part now. My life goes on.
But my heart won't give you up.
Ere I walk away, let me here you say.
I meant as much to you...
So gently, you touched my heart.
I will be forever yours.
Come what may, I won't age a day,
I'll wait for you, always..."

Re-releases on newer consoles have usually changed the wording.

11. "Opera 'Maria and Draco'," Final Fantasy Wiki (accessed November 22, 2011). The concert tour Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy (currently running and produced by AWR Music Productions) and the concert More Friends: Music from Final Fantasy (Gibson Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, May 16, 2005) feature Maria and Draco in English, and the concert VOICES: Music from Final Fantasy (Pacifico Yokohama Conference and Convention Center, Yokohama, February 18, 2006) in Japanese, see also Orchestral Game Music Concert 4 (performed by Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, 1994), which was in Italian.

12. "Final Fantasy VI," Final Fantasy Wiki (accessed November 22, 2011). 13. Chris Hoffman, "That Was Awesome! Our Favorite Video Game Moments," Nintendo Power, November 2011, 22.

14. Video Games Live, directed by Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, December 29, 2010 and December 2008. I attended both of these, and they were great and exciting performances. For an accurate detailed review of the 2010 concert, see Kenneth J. Lucas, "The Soundtrack to the Games of Our Lives," Unwinnable (accessed November 22, 2011).

15. Seth Schiesel, "Video Games (No Controller Needed)," New York Times, October 26, 2009 (accessed November 22, 2011).

16. Mike Musgrove, "Mario's New World: Symphonies," Washington Post, August 3, 2006 (accessed December 14, 2011).

17. "Play! A Video Game Symphony," Play! A Video Game Symphony (accessed December 14, 2011).

18. Musgrove; "Play! A Video Game Symphony."

19. Musgrove