> Not every concertgoer is convinced. “From a business-strategy perspective, it completely devalues the brand,” said Roderick Branch, a 39-year-old lawyer in Chicago who attends symphony-orchestra performances about once a week. The very idea, he said, is “akin to Mouton Rothschild using its wine to make and sell sangria.”
Is it just me, or is this guy the epitome of snob/hipster? He goes weekly, probably because he's far above the entertainment choices of the Philistines around him, name-drops an expensive wine so he can denigrate a beverage he deems not classy enough. If too many people start showing up to these performances, he might have to find a more niche form of entertainment so he doesn't have to rub shoulders with the plebs.
To be less snarky, I guess he's just saying he doesn't like it, so that's fine. Ultimately these groups are working to make some money and send whatever artistic message they choose (and they seem happy on both counts), not to satisfy one certain person in the audience.
Some people act like "classic" things are inherently purer or even different than modern ones, but for example Shakespeare has vulgar jokes and was performed to earn money, just as modern entertainment has "baser" content and motivations. It doesn't mean both can't also teach us about timeless themes, the human condition, etc.
The modern perception of "the brand" of the stereotypical classical symphony, with formal attire for performers and audience, completely silent audiences, etc, is the biggest reason that symphony attendance has been on a long, continual decline. It makes middle-class types who might otherwise like the music but don't want to get looked down on by snobs like Mr. Branch himself go elsewhere for their entertainment.
Compare, for example, to the popularity of musicals. They operate under the same basic "spend a lot of money to sit your butt in a seat for two hours and listen to musicians perform" principle, but many musicals have intentionally aimed themselves at all kinds of audiences, like politically-conscious artists (Rent), middle-class white girls (Wicked), families with children (Lion King), twentysomethings worried about their futures (Avenue Q), people who are into furries (Cats), etc.
Your note about the brand is so true that even their self-awareness lacks self-awareness, such as this note from the SF Symphony first-timer's guide:
6. What should I wear to a San Francisco Symphony concert?
Contrary to what many people think, formal attire—such as tuxedos and evening gowns—is not required at Symphony concerts. In fact, most people only wear formal clothing to our Opening Gala. At our other concerts, most concertgoers wear business or cocktail attire.
It is really the other way around at other places. The orchestra in my town (my old employer before tinnitus ended my carreer) has a big image of the solo clarinettist in a quite out-doorsy clothing saying something about how you should come as you are and ignore the fact that the whole orchestra looks like penguins.
And in my city they’ve started live-streaming the operas and concerts to big video walls in multiple squares around the city, most of which in low-income areas.
Eh... As a moderately frequent concertgoer, I don't recognise much of this. Possibly regionally specific, but in London, a ticket to a big-ticket repertoire symphony with the LSO or whatever can be had for about £10, and a pretty nice seat for £25-30, which is about what I paid to see Nile and Suffocation, surely more niche than Mahler, and probably half what you need to see a big pop act. (Opera is eye-gougingly expensive, though.) The orchestra dresses formally, the audience doesn't (unless they want to). Silence between movements is observed, however, which sort of freaks me out.
I'm ambivalent about the video game music thing, simply because what works in one setting doesn't necessarily work in another. A game score's primary virtue is to withstand repetition and respond to non-deterministic events (which may be a more interesting way to approach a VGM concert than just a tour of Final Fantasy's 'greatest hits' or whatever; certainly there are precedents in the post-war avant garde for that kind of thing). A symphony proper is designed ground-up for the sort of setting in which you are likely to hear it - an acoustically-tuned concert hall, with a highly-trained band of musicians extracting every bit of dynamic range and expressive potential out of their instruments. There's nothing quite like it when it works (there is also nothing quite like, since I've mentioned it, death metal, or techno, or ...)
The problem with 'high-culture' institutions going for populism is that it can be done in a really shallow, instrumentalist way: the VGM concert as the loss leader for Schoenberg frankly isn't going to do any favours to the VGM. It has to be treated seriously, or it won't even be fun - not used as a gateway drug for what the orchestra/concert hall really wants you to listen to.
I agree. A few years ago I attended a performance of Dvorak's 9th in Dolores Park and it was fantastic. People came out in droves, set up picnics, played frisbee, and had a great time. We need more like that: more clapping, more cheering, more t-shirts and sneakers — none of this stuffy suit-and-tie nonsense. Take a page from jazz, rock, or — really — any other form of popular music. There's certainly room for more focused, intense music appreciation, but that shouldn't be the default; most people don't engage with music like that.
Perhaps, or perhaps the people who go to the symphony do so because they enjoy the snobby atmosphere and wouldn't go if the concert hall looked like a Southwest flight.
Meanwhile the Southwest flight people won't go to the symphony either, because they don't care. Unless, of course, it's video game music.
To add to this, the musicians are enjoying this as well. As time passes and games stay with us longer, the perceptions of them will change, just as Shakespeare has.
Case in point: I was lingering around with a friend well after the "Music of Zelda" performance, when a group came out towards the parking lot. Struck up a conversation with them, and found they were all part of the NSO's flute section. One had built a harmonica into a Zelda NES cartridge, and brought that to the show with her, along with the Zelda t-shirt she was wearing under her suit. She grew up playing the same games.
The comparison of sangria versus Mouton Rothschild wine has nothing to do with "classic" versus "modern" and more to do with art appreciation versus entertainment. There is a rich tradition of art music appreciation that has grown in depth and nuance over centuries. This tradition and culture grew in respect and aesthetic value over time, yet today a smaller proportion of the population holds the same respect and aesthetic values.
There is nothing wrong with being entertained by orchestral video game music, but to an initiate in the world of classical art music it is disappointing if listeners don't want to engage with orchestral music more beyond reliving their gaming experiences. There are so many more thoughts and feelings an orchestra can inspire in a listener if they invest in absorbing that tradition.
There is nothing wrong with being entertained by classical music, but to an initiate in the world of videogame music it is dissapointing if listeners don't want to engage with videogame music beyond reliving their classical experiences. There are so many more feelings an orchestra can inspire in a listener if they invest in absorbing that tradition. :)
There is good music and bad music, genres are just sets of constraints, none is inherently better than other, what matters is how composer use them. Good chiptune can be a better art than mediocre classical piece. And I would argue more "non-classicaly-trained" people know classical music (even by accident), than the other way around. Everybody have heard Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach, and Strauss at some point in life. Most people never heard Flimbo Quest or Zelda soundtrack.
In 100 years there will be people with PhDs arguing over the merits of classical SID chiptunes vs the Amiga era mods.
PS if you're interested in trying something different I reccomend this presentation about chiptunes - it's interestnig and gives you some idea about the genre constraints and stylistic choices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEjcK5JFEFE
Are you saying that video game music has more to offer besides reliving gaming memories? I'm genuinely interested in what is offered. For art music, there are already tons of resources for learning how to appreciate it more deeply.
> For art music, there are already tons of resources for learning how to appreciate it more deeply.
Could you recommend something? I'm sceptical about "dancing about architecture", but I'd like to give it a try. So far I like some classical music (the famous guys mostly, also some stuff from Chopin), but I never was hardcore about that.
> Are you saying that video game music has more to offer besides reliving gaming memories?
Would Chopin's polonaises be less worthy had he wrote them for a video game? There's any genre you can name in videogame music. Even statisticaly there has to be something good there. From non-chiptunes I particulary like OSTs for the first Witcher and Bastion.
And then there are genres that evolved with and for video games (and demoscene), like chiptunes or mods, and there's a lot of good music there, too. In fact chiptunes share a lot of constraints with symphonic music, and the amount of creativity there is great (imagine every classical composer had a private orchestra available for experimenting 24h/7 since he was a kid). For nice compilation of recent chiptunes see https://www.reddit.com/r/chiptunes/comments/pq72m/what_chipt...
I've been using the somewhat annoying term "art music" instead of classical music to unpack carefully and artistically crafted music from music purely for commercial entertainment / not intended for close critique. The instruments used largely don't matter -- Chopin is indeed beautiful in certain chip tune arrangements. I'll make a slight digression here though by asserting that keeping live performers in the loop adds an additional unreplaceable layer to the music, since the performer then gets to interpert the original music and highlight new patterns within the music.
Unfortunately I don't know specific books to learn this appreciation (although I know there are excellent ones out there) -- I was raised in this tradition and absorbed it through violin lessons, practice on my instrument, theory class, history class, and listening to a lot of classical music.
I agree. I see performances like these as a way of introducing symphony to a younger audience. Orchestra does sort of having that "stuffy" vibe to it, and when I took music in high school, there wasn't much that was done to change that perception, that was was unfortunately.
I went to both the Final Fantasy and Zelda concerts at Wolf Trap in Fairfax, and I was stunned at just how packed the show was. (It's an outdoor amphitheater.) And the ages. And here is the NSO getting ready to perform, and most of these people are in their teens to 20s. How fantastic is that, to draw in that many young people to see what a real orchestra can do? And not only that, but to witness what goes into making the music they enjoy when they're playing scenes from the game above the stage. Suddenly you're able to place musicians with the sounds you're hearing and the notes being played.
I dare say, many of them, if not most of them, appreciate and enjoy classical orchestra music. It's always been with them. Just they haven't always realized it. =)
It's not that classic things are inherently purer, but they are the best of the best. The classics survive over time while the bulk of their contemporaries are forgotten. Popular art is attractive because it's new, but after a while, most of it becomes tired. Only the best has a depth that people will appreciate many years from now, but it's impossible to judge if something will be a classic until you give it time to prove itself.
This is true and a fair point. You might say that even video games have been around long enough that we can start to name the "classics" (though we might judge more about the game than the music -- maybe this is like how some classical music we perform alone now, originated from opera etc.) On the other hand, the article does mention newer games like Halo and Mass Effect. So it would be more sensible to complain about hearing Mass Effect when you wanted Mozart.
Some people act like "classic" things are inherently purer or even different than modern ones, but for example Shakespeare has vulgar jokes and was performed to earn money, just as modern entertainment has "baser" content and motivations. It doesn't mean both can't also teach us about timeless themes, the human condition, etc.
Eh, I doubt that even this snob needs to be told that - opera (which was instrumental in the development of the forms that define the classical repertoire) is replete with sex, violence and bawdy humor and the giants of the repertoire are very colorful characters.
My hunch is that his anxiety has more to do with the constant fear of "the new" in orchestra halls, where anything less than 100 years old is looked at suspiciously.
As a nerd for all kinds of musical genres, including "classical", this kind of anxiety is evident just about everywhere in some shape or form - indie rock, metal, rap, country, etc, etc. Every genre is constantly changing and crossbreeding, and everywhere there are purists trying to hold on to their image of the genre and performance scene when they fell in love with it.
A lot of video game music was created by people trained in classical music. The Nintendo themes, a lot of Square / Enix games, etc. etc.
There are plenty of videogamers who take music damn seriously. The OC Remix guys are absolutely superb at what they do for example.
For less of a "Classical" feel, there is MAGFest (Music and Gaming).
In any case, you will find plenty of "serious" musicians trying to celebrate video games and music. I think that symphony orchestras have begun to realize how much video gamers enjoy music and are learning to merge the two fields. But Video Gamers have known this fact for many years already!
Ultimately, I welcome our classical music brethren to the party.
Personally I am jealous of my friends in Tokyo who can attend performances of relatively lesser known but musically interesting soundtracks such like Xenogears [1] or SaGa Frontier 2.
Man. Most of my favorite video game soundtracks are from JRPGs and I'm very envious of live performances of these soundtracks in Europe and Japan. I'd love to hear Xenogears, Chrono Trigger/Cross, and FFXIV live one day.
So I think that price tag is actually for musicians to pay to play in the orchestra putting on the performance. (I'm guessing it might make sense for some people since they'd get some professional instruction?)
Yes, that's what the page says: the 20000 yens are for participants, as in instrument players. It also says information such as list of "songs" and tickets purchase will be given later.
did not pay enough attention when I was reading then. That's even more strange, to pay in order to play in an orchestra ? Most musicians already have a hard time making a living...
I thought this was going to be about hiring a symphony orchestra to do video game sound tracks. A few years ago there was an article in one of the game development magazines suggesting hiring an orchestra in Eastern Europe for that purpose. There was a cost analysis showing that it was cheaper than having someone do it in-house, one simulated instrument at a time, all mixed together.
Back when I was in the band (in high school), my conductor loved playing Hans Zimmer and John Williams and we played them pretty much every year, and in marching band we mostly did halftime shows based on popular movies or musicals. I don't see much difference between performing the soundtrack of Jurassic Park or Jaws and performing music from Zelda.
I personally know at least one person performing in orchestras professionally who grew up with video games and would be excited to play music from her favorite games.
I find it sad that people often talk as if everybody who attends classical concerts of the dress-up variety is a cultural snob. Not to deny that many snobs flock to such gatherings, but I find it very unfair to have everybody painted with the same brush.
At 20 years old, I am not your typical orchestra attendee. I don't get to go often either, but when I do, I always thoroughly enjoy it. I enjoy the music (though alas, I still understand much too little of it) just as much as the atmosphere: fancy clothes, a beautiful building, the hushed silence during the performance.
I do not deny that a casual clothes performance of video game music can be fun, entertaining, good listening. I do not even say that it is necessarily worse than a classical piece (though I also agree with cicero's and mazelife's previous comments - and yes, I like more contemporary music too). What I do say is that you can't really compare the two. OK, both are music, and both can be played by an orchestra. But for one, their style is very different - one meant to be listened to with full concentration, the other as a background track to something more important. Quite aside from that, how you experience a piece of music very much depends on the atmosphere; it is precisely the fancy clothes and old buildings that build up the whole "feel" of a classical concert, just as the dancing, clapping crowd and light shows determine the atmosphere of a rock concert.
Interestingly, I find that just about everybody who talks about "all those snobbish classical concert-goers" and talks about how we should stop imposing dress codes for these visits tends not to have been to such concerts him/herself. Maybe if they did they would discover that there is a lot more to classical music than a bunch of old people putting on airs.
Music is for enjoyment, and one of the greatest pieces of advice my former-pro guitarist mentor said was "Audiences don't like it when you play over their head."
I'm all for expanding the universe of good tunes that orchestras can play, especially if that keeps orchestra members able to make money and continue their art. There's a small part of me that can see the perspective of the purist, but it reminds me too much of "formal musical study" of the guitar, which is, essentially, playing a lot of classical stuff that most people aren't interested in hearing! The jazz guys and gals maybe have a bit more approachability, but again, the peak of the genre is very complex and out of the usual scope of "listening for pleasure."
I haven't been to one of these (yet) but I'd surely like the chance to experience it. Also, somewhat relevant, the last time I checked, the "Trans Siberian Orchestra" holiday performances were hanging in and probably making some good money! I know they got my cash one year.
The first thing that came to mine for me was the Final Fantasy 3 (6j) Opera House. I still remember many of the lyrics to that, even after all these years, though I may have been helped by the fact that you had to memorize your lines to move on in the game.
I love Lufia 2. But after the first tune that sounds like a little classical piece, I can tell the music was made for a video game. I prefer to the whole game experience, with the music alone makes it feel something is missing.
That being said, I have no problem with people listening to whatever makes them happy, in whatever setting. Also like in everything, there are tons of generic shit music in games.
Dig a little deeper, there are plenty of modern classical music composers. Just last year I saw the opening of John Adam's Become Ocean and it was fantastic modern classical music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGva1NVWRXk
There's a lot of great game music out there, but the orchestral stuff is generally derivative of Mahler and Strauss. It's a genre that was plausibly modern 75 years ago, but isn't today. I would love to see games expand beyond the cliche orchestral action style, but I understand with so much money on the line that nobody wants to take those types of risks.
Who do you consider to be modern? I'd like to check them out. I haven't investigated classical music in awhile, but the only artist I know of that I've heard be considered modern is Stravinsky, and his most popular pieces are about a hundred years old themselves.
Bartok and Messiaen are probably the next ones to check out after Stravinsky. In terms of harmoic/rhythmic sophistication, Messiaen still sounds as modern to me as the recent/current orchestral composers (Adams, Carter, etc).
It's not really classical music, since classical music is a style that clearly refers to a certain era of music composition + game music is hardly anything similar to classical music in the first place.
"Classical" (big "C") refers to the period, but "classical" (little "c") is often used to refer to the vague, nebulous cloud of music to which it often refers and of which Classical music is a subset. I know that's super pedantic and nebulous, but I've never heard a satisfactory term for the broader category. I've heard "Western Art Music", but that implies that Western music outside of its umbrella isn't art, which is plainly ridiculous. So, I use "classical", because it's the least bad term I've heard.
even more pedantic... modern refers to the early 20th century period, the period we live in is contemporary. so modern classical: stravinsky, contemporary classical: john williams... same applies to design and architecture.
Naming a period in art "modern" is like naming your file "final.doc". You just have to know there will be "copy of final(4).doc" in that directory at some point.
The reason I make the distinction is that there are very specific composition trends and rules that make a musical piece "classical", and contemporary game or movie music is not following those at all.
It's not because music is played in an orchestra that it's the same genre as the popular orchestra music that was played x00 years ago. Unfortunately most people don't make (knowingly or unknowingly) the distinction.
I went to Video Games Live years ago and I have never seen this particular performance venue as full as that night, ever. I think this might be the way to go in the future for the symphony orchestras out there. I go to several performances a year but the audience is clearly greying. I do wonder if the performers feel this is cheapening their art. I still really like the classics but I have few people to talk to them about. Most of my friends play video games however.
I suspect that arrangements or elaborations of other popular music would do pretty well. Video games are easiest, though, because they've often got orchestral or quasi-orchestral music already, along with having tons of easy-to-sell merchandise.
The University of Maryland has a Gamer Symphony Orchestra[1] consisting of students and Alumni that performs multiple times per year and does other pretty neat things. Having several friends in it it immediately came to mind and I wonder if there are similar organizations at other schools. Seems to be growing in popularity.
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I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's great to see a younger and/or less-traditional audience attending symphony concerts. But I wonder what percentage of these first-timers would ever come back for a non-videogame music performance? Because—the title of this article notwithstanding—if these concerts don't do anything to cultivate an audience who actually engages with classical music (or "art music" or "western concert music", call it what you like) then videogames are not going to save the symphony. Not even close.
People in the comments rightly jumped all over the guy in the article who said these concerts were “akin to Mouton Rothschild using its wine to make and sell sangria.” But there is a point buried under all the snobbishness: video game music (and film music) are not supposed to be concert music. In fact a good film composer would probably tell you that if their score for a film is so compelling and interesting that it can be extracted out and plunked down in the concert hall as a fully-fledged work, they're doing it wrong. Film/videogame scores are (by definition) supposed to be subservient to the whole of which they are a part. Thus it's the narrative of the game or movie that drives the formal aspects of the music. This isn't to say that there can't be greatness and even genius in scores, but that it's not being used in service of producing a stand-alone concert work. Which is why even very good scores usually have long passages of music that successfully create an atmosphere for a particular scene, but taken out of that context would sounds rather boring and aimless in a concert hall. Similarly the kind of drama evoked in a concert piece where you have musical themes that are presented and then developed and transformed at length just doesn't work for film scores, where you are working in much shorter time increments (like the length of a scene). This is why even the greatest film scores (Maurice Jarre's score for Lawrence of Arabia and John Williams' score for Star Wars, for example) are known for having a few really memorable, resonant melodies and/or for the way in which they contribute to a memorable scene.
I've gone to film music concerts and enjoyed them, but I'm under no illusion that it's necessarily the most challenging or profound stuff. I'm also aware that it's partly the memories and associations I have with the movies themselves that I am enjoying when I listen to the music. In any case, it's not at all the same experience as a classical music concert. I hope that some of the people who have dipped their toes in the water listening to an orchestra perform "The Legend of Zelda" might be curious enough to go back and hear what other, far more interesting kinds of things an orchestra can do. Because if not, these concerts will be a nice windfall that can help pad an orchestra's bottom line (and god knows they could use the money). But they won't do what orchestras need most, which is to develop a real, life-long appreciation for classical music in younger audiences. Unfortunately this article presents zero statistics one way or the other on that point.
Movies can have amazing music tracks - "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" being my favourite there. But as you say, that music was written for a very different purpose.
Is it just me, or is this guy the epitome of snob/hipster? He goes weekly, probably because he's far above the entertainment choices of the Philistines around him, name-drops an expensive wine so he can denigrate a beverage he deems not classy enough. If too many people start showing up to these performances, he might have to find a more niche form of entertainment so he doesn't have to rub shoulders with the plebs.
To be less snarky, I guess he's just saying he doesn't like it, so that's fine. Ultimately these groups are working to make some money and send whatever artistic message they choose (and they seem happy on both counts), not to satisfy one certain person in the audience.
Some people act like "classic" things are inherently purer or even different than modern ones, but for example Shakespeare has vulgar jokes and was performed to earn money, just as modern entertainment has "baser" content and motivations. It doesn't mean both can't also teach us about timeless themes, the human condition, etc.