Access Type
Open Access Thesis
Date of Award
January 2025
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Music
First Advisor
Joshua S. Duchan
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the presence of Western historical music in contemporary video games. Through a combination of music-theoretical analysis, iconography, and Peircean semiotics, the author demonstrates that the nondiegetic soundtracks of fantasy role-playing video games utilize elements of major style periods in music history—including the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical eras—to enhance existing representations of time and place in their visual environments. This phenomenon is particularly apparent in three games, which serve as case studies: Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), and Elden Ring (2022). Ultimately, the project contributes research to both ludomusicology and historical musicology, as it reveals that historical music serves an essential contextualizing function in role-playing video games and, by extension, that those same games can be sites of productive discussions about archetypal genres and styes from a wide range of periods throughout Western music history.
Recommended Citation
Sheehan, Laney Abigail, "Playing Through Music History: The Contextualizing Function Of Western Historical Music In Fantasy Role-Playing Video Games" (2025). Wayne State University Theses. 1011.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_theses/1011