MUSIC & VIDEO GAMES

Over the past half-century, video game music has established itself as a shared musical experience on a global scale. Embedded in the life stories of several generations—often from childhood—it accompanies both intimate narratives and collective adventures. By profoundly renewing the way we listen to, compose, and physically engage with sound, it has opened up an unprecedented field of artistic exploration at the intersection of musical creation, technology, and play.

Long confined to a few functional beeps, video game music has grown alongside technology, evolving into a prolific, demanding, and inventive field of creation. It summons the symphony orchestra just as readily as the most experimental electronics, dialogues with jazz, rock, and popular music, and, above all, invents a unique form: music that is not merely listened to, but experienced and performed. Here, the listener becomes an actor—and sometimes even a musician—at the heart of a soundscape in constant evolution.

Presenting the Video Games & Music exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris is a declaration that this music belongs to our contemporary cultural heritage. It is an acknowledgment of the major role played by its composers in recent musical history and a measure of the profound influence video games have had on the soundscape of our time. It also fulfills an essential mission: to break down barriers between genres, foster dialogue between “high” and popular art forms, and embrace works that convey our relationship with the world in new ways. Finally, this exhibition creates a rare space for intergenerational connection, bringing together those who rediscover, in a few notes, the memories of adventures lived with a controller in hand, and those who are discovering a music intrinsically linked to contemporary technological, artistic, and social challenges.