This dissertation examines the remediation of video game music from their source games to the concert hall. I argue that while not unique in their repositioning from popular to classical registers, the classicalization of video game music offers a contemporary challenge to the current norms of classical music institutions. I argue that there are three, interrelated parts needed to fully understand this phenomenon: (1) the history of these concerts and their producers, (2) the arrangers and their arrangements, and (3) the fans who invest in these recordings and how they listen to and experience these (live) performances. In this dissertation I explore this phenomenon across four chapters variously focusing on these different perspectives. In the first chapter, I examine the history of video game music concerts, from the first Family Classic Concert in 1987 to the present day. In Chapter 2, I examine a corpus of video game arrangements produced by Square Enix to create a multidimensional categorical model for analyzing how video game music is arranged, as well as consider who the arrangers are and why these arrangements are produced. Chapter 3 continues the work from Chapter 2, considering how the formal and generic associations of an arrangement can support its adaptation and meaning. Finally, Chapter 4 theorizes the listening experience of fans through a mode of what I call “replayful listening.” By exploring this phenomenon through historical, cultural, theoretical, and analytical lenses, I reveal the creative and economic dimensions at play in this new form of arrangement. I do this by highlighting the collaborative nature of these concerts and arrangements, drawing special attention to the creative agency of arrangers, but also by examining the (commodified) modes of musical dissemination, e.g., sheet music, live concerts, and audio/audiovisual recordings.

Creator

• Greenfield-Casas, Stefan

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-k49m-bh62

Subject

• Music theory

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_925256
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:16200

Keyword

• Square Enix
• Arrangement
• Video Game Concerts
• Ludomusicology

Date created

• 2022-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright