What’s the music that you’re hearing in Final Score?

Final Score – the Music Game is a multiplayer game on the Roblox platform, that we’ve developed in collaboration with the ELJA Foundation and Accenture Song. You can learn all kinds of things about classical music while you play an exciting and fun game.

What makes this game unique is that all of the music in it was actually played by the Concertgebouw Orchestra. We picked fragments from hundreds of recordings of symphonic works, written by some of the most important composers who ever lived, to help depict the game’s various worlds and situations. You’ll hear melodious symphonies from the early nineteenth century (Beethoven, Mendelssohn) and some wild-sounding pieces from the beginning of the twentieth century (Bartók, Ravel). So what are all the pieces that you hear in the game?

In the Lobby

When you start the game in the lobby, you hear fragments from a famous early-nineteenth-century symphony. Sometimes this is the Sixth Symphony (also called the ‘Pastoral’) by Ludwig van Beethoven and sometimes the Fourth (‘Italian’) Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn.
The ‘Pastoral’ begins light and carefree, as if you’re finally escaping from everyday life. Beethoven described the first movement of his symphony as ‘Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside’. Get out on the paths, head down the lanes! The sunny opening of Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony has the same mood, but more energetic, as if you’re skipping though the game.

There are two more pieces you might hear in the lobby. The first movement of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony has a cheerful, lively introduction, followed by the first theme, a kind of dance where you might lose your way now and then, but you come out right in the end. You also hear the light-hearted Overture to the opera Het pand der goden (The Pledge of the Gods) by Surinamese composer Johannes Nicolaas Helstone. In 2024, the Concertgebouw Orchestra gave the first performance of this opera since 1906.

In Harmony Farms

In the first of three ‘worlds’, Harmony Farms, the dominant sound is the colourful music of Claude Debussy, an extremely innovative French composer who lived around 1900. By the time you start to play, you can use a few vitamins. They come in the form of ‘Fêtes’ (Parties), the second movement of his Nocturnes for Orchestra. Dazzling music that dances in every direction, from exotic to heroic.

Once you’ve penetrated deeper into this world, you hear another famous piece by Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. It’s languid, sensual music in which time seems to stand still. Once you take more dangerous paths, or meet up with enemies, you hear music from the first two movements of Images: ‘Gigue’ and ‘Ibéria’, which are lively, full of suspense and a bit mischievous. You also hear them during the boss fight – and you might hear the third movement too, ‘Rondes de printemps’ (Spring Dances), exciting music with a playful twist. If you win the fight, then you stay with the exuberant sounds of Images – and if you don’t, then you’ll hear a darker side of Debussy: ‘Nuages’ (‘Clouds’) from the Nocturnes or a fragment from The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.

In Fort Issimo

Fort Issimo is an world of desolate mountains and fire-spewing volcanoes. It has appropriately intense music, including lots of brass instruments, sometimes bursting at the seams with emotion. There’s music by Richard Wagner, the German composer of big, elaborate operas about gods, evil dwarves and heroic female warriors. And by Anton Bruckner, an Austrian Wagner fan who wrote some magnificent symphonies.

As you set out searching for adventure in this first world, you hear the gentle, optimistic side of these composers: the beginning of Bruckner’s First Symphony and the Minuet from the Third, and ‘Siegfrieds Rheinfahrt’ (Siegfried’s Rhine Journey) from Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). When there are challenges to be overcome, you’ll get encouragement from heroic music: the third movement of Bruckner’s Fourth and the Overture to Wagner’s opera Rienzi.

If the enemy is near, or if you need to actually fight, then the Scherzo from Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, or a fragment from Lohengrin, Wagner’s opera about a mysterious knight, will spur you on. If you’re victorious over the enemy, there will be celebration all around with the Finale from Bruckner’s Sixth or Wagner’s Rienzi Overture. If you’ve lost – alas – you’ll hear ‘Siegfrieds Tod’ (Siegfried’s Death) from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung or ‘Im Treibhaus’ (in the Greenhouse) from his Wesendonck Songs.

In Mt. Mystic Möll

The next world you enter, Mt. Mystic Möll, Claude Debussy – whose music we heard a lot in Harmony Farms – is joined by the early-twentieth-century Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The serene, mystical mood of this world comes through in fragments from Debussy’s La mer (The Sea) and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra: sometimes undulating dreamily, sometimes tumultuous and full of activity. In Bartók’s music, folk melodies and unconventional rhythms tumble over each other. You’ll hear the sun coming up in ‘Lever du jour’ (Daybreak) from Daphnis and Chloé by the French composer and master orchestrator Maurice Ravel.

You’ll hear some other fragments from La mer and Concerto for Orchestra that are more exciting as we go out seeking more adventure. You’ll also hear more Bartók: fragments from his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, in which melodies cautiously creep around their own shadows. The suspense is heightened even further at big dramatic moments, but there’s still an atmosphere of secrecy…

If you made it through to the boss fight, and if you’ve won it, then you receive a hero’s welcome, to the first movement from Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, or a Hungarian dance by Bartók. If you lost the final battle, you’ll hear an excerpt from Bartók’s Concerto For Orchestra – or the mournful beginning of the symphonic poem Tasso, lamento e trionfo by another Hungarian composer (and a friend of Richard Wagner’s), Franz Liszt.

Special Effects

Like the music, the special effects are not digital creations. They were recorded live by our musicians playing flute, trumpet, trombone, percussion and even a piccolo. You can see how we did it in this video.

The music in Final Score sounds amazing even when you’re not playing the game. Click the button below to see the Spotify and Apple Music playlists of all the music listed above. Still want to find adventure in the game? Use this link to play Final Score on Roblox.