Video Game Music Is Saving the Symphony Orchestra (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: As music distribution has flourished, the popularity of live performances in certain genres has begun to wane. Symphony orchestra attendance has been dropping for years. A new report says ticket sales have dropped by 2.8% annually for the past decade. The downward trend has caused many performing groups to experiment with ways to appeal more to modern audiences. One way they're finding success is by including music from video games. "Orchestral videogame concerts first gained a following in Japan in the mid-1980s and spread to parts of Europe in the early 2000s. They began appearing regularly in pops repertoires in the U.S. about a decade ago as orchestras sought younger, more diverse audiences. Unlike classical-music performances, videogame shows feature arrangements that blend looping tracks of music designed to match various moments in a game, such as a slow, eerie medley of piano, percussion and string as the videogame character navigates a castle dungeon. ... The story of The Legend of Zelda isn't a far cry from such classics as Mozart's The Magic Flute. Both tales involve a brave fellow in a quest to rescue a damsel from a villain's clutches

Comments

Re:Dumbing down culture

[i.r.id10t]

Huh? Is there some rule that anything symphonic must have been written over 100 years ago?

Good music, performed by professionals, should be enjoyable, no matter where the music originally came from. The London Symphony Orchestra did a great job with the Mario Brothers music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - does it not have any cultural value since it was created for a video game?

What about the soundtracks from various movies, like Star Wars?

Re:Dumbing down culture

[Ranbot]

Alternatively, it's a stepping stone that will expose a new generation and maybe some of them will continue on to appreciate the classics. Since the first time humans started rhythmically banging sticks together, music has always adapted to our technology and culture.

It's called "pops"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

When attendance is down, symphonies, theatre groups and other live performers retrench around the "pops" that they know the general population finds popular and puts people in the seats: Christmas songs, Broadway musicals, movie scores, adaptations of rock classics for Baby Boomers, and now video game music for Gen X and Millennials.

Re:It's called "pops"

[Bing Tsher E]

The Action Figure of the timpanist is one of the most sought after. Most people overlook, though, that the English Horn player figure is much rarer.

The problem isn't music distribution

[guruevi]

It's the cost of the damn tickets. My local orchestra hall is always complaining that only ~10-20 people attend their 1000+ capacity hall. I wanted to attend one for a date night out: $50/ticket. That is just absurd for a weeknight second rate (mostly student) orchestra.

Re:The problem isn't music distribution

[Chris Mattern]

Your local orchestra appears to have little idea how to price tickets. If they charged $2 and filled the hall, they'd make twice as much money.

Re:The problem isn't music distribution

[Forgefather]

Saint Louis has had a very vibrant arts community for a while mostly due to free admittance to most of the city museums, parks, and our zoo (all of which are located in Forrest Park within easy walking distance of each other). I think this results in a much wider variety of people becoming exposed and involved in the arts community which drives demand for payed programs like the symphony and opera.

Funny enough the people here are very proud of our free attractions. We have the only free zoo in the world, and when a bill was submitted to start charging non residents (people who don't pay taxes that support the zoo) for admissions it was resoundingly defeating in a public referral.

If it's copyrighted, it's a product

[tepples]

Huh? Is there some rule that anything symphonic must have been written over 100 years ago?

"Symphonic" refers to a composition for orchestra or concert band in usually four movements, with the first in sonata form.

But I think the rule that people are getting at is that the composer has to have died over 70 years ago. Or in the United States, the sheet music needs to have been published more than 95 years ago or before 1923. Until the music belongs to the people, it's a "commercial product" more than it is "art".

Re:If it's copyrighted, it's a product

[ArmoredDragon]

I think what a lot of art snobs fail to realize (and lament every time creative talent doesn't go in a direction that they unilaterally deem "correct") is that nobody wants to listen to the same 100+ year old piece of work over and over again. Tastes inevitably change, people inevitably want something new. That said, any artist that always clings on to the old ways of doing anything and/or insists that older art is better than what we have today is inevitably never going to make it anywhere.

Contrary to what Roger Ebert claims, video games are indeed art, and very good art at that. That, combined with their popularity, inevitably is going to influence other art forms.

I remember Star Wars concerts

[boristdog]

The first orchestra concert I ever voluntarily attended was in 1978. It was a concert of Star Wars and Star Trek music, complete with laser show (lame by today's standards, but awesome to 14 y.o. me in the 70's) and WILLIAM FREAKIN' SHATNER hosting...and reading poetry about whales.

Good for the Orchestra, and for music

[Clomer]

I am a performing professional classical musician who also happens to enjoy video games.

I am saddened by the attitude that many people have that by performing music such as what comes from games that the orchestras are somehow "cheapening their brand" or that it is "diluting the culture." To claim this is to completely ignore why people listen to music in the first place, and where much of "classical" music came from. This elitist attitude is what has significantly contributed to the decline in attendance numbers seen over the last few decades.

Mozart was a party animal. He was essentially a 18th century rock star, complete with the fame and lavish lifestyle that implies. As much as he was a musical genius, he was terrible at managing his personal affairs and died penniless, buried in an unmarked grave.

Beethoven, who is often called the "Father of the Modern Symphony" (thanks to his groundbreaking work in his 9 Symphonies), was also very much involved in the popular music scene of his day. His Egmont is music that was written to be performed alongside a production of a play of the same name (only the overture is performed with any regularity today, as the play itself is pretty awful). This makes it essentially 19th century movie music.

When Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first premiered, a riot broke out among the audience. This wasn't just because of the nature of the music itself, but because that was the culture of performance at the turn of the 20th century - the audience was looking for something to get riled up over, and the music hit that emotional chord perfectly.

Modern performances are often formal affairs that remove the context of the music from its original conception. This isn't always a bad thing, as a good performance of a Mozart Symphony can be very exciting, but to try to stick to that because of some idea that it's meant to be that way is to ignore what the music actually is. Modern orchestral composers don't compose symphonies any more, they compose for movies and video games. That movie and video game music of today will be tomorrow's classical music. I've already seen performances of movie music from 50 years ago or so programmed into classical performances (not the pops concerts where such music usually resides), and such will become more and more common as time goes on.

In any case, something that increases awareness of the medium is a good thing. Today's kid that attends a video game concert performance might be tomorrow's grandmaster concert soloist, inspired by the music they heard when they were young. Even someone just making the leap from attending a video game concert to deciding to attend a classical concert isn't a very big one, but is extremely important to the long-term health and survivability of the genre.

Re:Good for the Orchestra, and for music

[Clomer]

I thought someone might say something like this, but there is a clear response to it that fits the theme of my original post.

Yes, it is true that most movie and video game music is pretty boring without being attached to its original material (much like Beethoven's Egmont suite I mentioned in my original post - with the exception of the overture, essentially the equivalent of a Main Title theme in modern terms - it's not all that interesting). That said, the vast majority of music written during the 17th through 19th centuries (the period of time that what people now call "classical" was written) is not heard any more. What we hear now is the best music, the music that has survived the test of time. The same will be true in 100 years - most video game music will be virtually lost, never heard again unless someone happens to dig up the actual game. Some of it, however, is actually quite good, and will survive to become part of the standard classical repertoire. I think the Zelda Symphony alluded to in the article is a potential example of this.

Re:It's called "pops"... and was

[Bite The Pillow]

At one time, pop music *was* what the symphonic orchestras were playing.

Live music was either what you heard live, or played yourself. And what you played yourself was either traditional (folk) music, or something you heard. And most of what you heard was folk music, or a professional musician, or a knockoff of a pro.

When attendance declines, symphonies, theatre groups and other live performers retrench around their origins.

Re:Shitty KIDDY games are ruining music.

[Rakarra]

.. because such games are so well known for their music?

Yes, they are.

Michael Giacchino was a computer of music in video games, specifically the Medal of Honor series (1999 - 2007) and the Call of Duty series (2003 - 2004). J.J. Abrams found out about him through his work in those game series, and brought him in to handle the muscle for Abram's new series Alias. After that, it was natural for him to write music for Lost as well, and then to jump into movies, including The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up (which won him an Oscar), Star Trek, Inside Out..

Good thing J.J. Abrams plays video games.