Terms and Conditions

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a close reading of the two terms that are central to the book: “classical music” (also sometimes referred to as “art music”) and “video games.” It explores both scholarly and popular understandings of both terms, pointing to the tendency to view classical music as highbrow art and video games as lowbrow entertainment, and asks why we understand these two pursuits as contradictory. Based on these mutually exclusive definitions, video games and classical music should be fundamentally incompatible, meaning that their combination inherently challenges traditional understandings of high and low art. The chapter concludes by introducing some of the fundamental questions that will be addressed in this book, such as whether video games cease to be primarily entertainment vehicles when classical music enters the mix.