14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Gamers Can Gain a Classical-Music Education
Classical music is something that can truly cross worlds. Readers have noted its contributions to television (''What's Opera, Doc?' and Other TV Classics,' Letters, April 10), but it has also enhanced video games. The latter has been a valuable source of employment for modern composers who have written new orchestral music for such games as 'Halo' and 'Final Fantasy.' But traditional canonical classical pieces have also elevated a variety of games and helped modern youths' musical education.
Sometimes they are simple plain references: Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Flight of the Bumblebee' plays as you search a giant hive for magical honey in 'Ultima VII.' Others are deliberately dissonant: Much as peaceful doves flutter about in John Woo action films, strains of Schubert's 'Ave Maria' wail after Agent 47 as he stalks his targets in the 'Hitman' games. In 'Fallout 3,' you can retrieve a Stradivarius from a nuclear bunker and a character will reward you by playing violin pieces over the radio, a little consolation of civilization to sustain you as you trek the radiation-scoured wastelands.
