By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER


In the video game BioShock turbulent Rachmaninoff-like music plays while an evil composer named Cohen shouts, “Presto, presto” before incinerating a hapless pianist and his instrument. In Battlefield: Bad Company gamers hear a string quintet playing earthy music redolent of Bartok. In Alone in the Dark: Inferno the evocative timbre of the female choral group the Mystery of Bulgarian Voices adds to the suspense as the hero fights for survival in Central Park.

These are just a few of the recent soundtracks written and performed by classically trained musicians who are finding new outlets for their talents in the booming video game industry.

Not long ago such work“felt like a throwaway for composers who couldn’t get work elsewhere,”said Steve Schnur, worldwide executive for music and marketing at the software giant Electronic Arts, said that the primitive beeps and whirs of early games were created hastily and late in the development process. Now musical scores - whether rock, rap or classical - are becoming an integral part of the finished product, often lavishly produced and seamlessly embedded into the story lines and gaming action. At its best, Mr.Schnur said, music “is the reason for the emotional response that games never had 10 to 20 years ago.”

The care now lavished on classical soundtracks is evident not only in the impressive quality of many scores but also in the first-rate performers recruited to record them. Mikael Karlsson’s orchestral music for Battlefield is performed by a 70-piece ensemble (including members of the chamber group Alarm Will Sound and the International Contemporary Ensemble) conducted by Alan Pierson. Wolfram Koessel, a member of the American String Quartet, performs the melancholy cello solos.

Martin Chalifour, concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performs the eerie concertolike solo in “Welcome to Rapture,” part of Garry Schyman’s score for Bio- Shock. In Prince of Persia, Stuart Chatwood plays the oud and other instruments to add an exotic touch to Inon Zur’s sweeping orchestral score.

The field has also attracted major film composers like Danny Elfman, Howard Shore and Hans Zimmer. The composer Michael Giacchino began his career writing for games (including the Medal of Honor series) before branching into film and television. And more composers might follow his path now that schools like the Berklee College of Music in Boston have started game scoring classes.

For composers and performers accustomed to struggling to find steady work even in flush times, there’s good money to be made in an industry that, according to the NPD research group, generated $21.6 billion in retail sales in the United States alone in the 12 months that ended in November.

Tommy Tallarico, a game composer who founded the Game Audio Network Guild to promote the field, said the typical fee for a composer is $1,000 per minute of music, with top names making up to $2,000. For a typical game, which requires one to two hours of music, a composer could make $60,000 to $240,000.

The increasingly nuanced scores reflect“the growing maturity of the games industry, which is getting better at storytelling”and weaving moral dilemmas into game plots, said Sean Decker, general manager at DICE, the division of Electronic Arts that created Battlefield.

Olivier Deriviere, who wrote the music for Alone in the Dark, said complicating the process was that the score was usually created separately from the game’s actual production, making alignment of story and score especially difficult. On the plus side composers have more time to write than their counterparts in the film industry.

Some systems, like the Xbox 360, allow gamers to create custom soundtracks using MP3s. But many players appreciate the attention software companies dedicate to music. In the Virgin Megastore in Union Square in Manhattan, Atticus Wakefield, 10, said,“Music and the sound really give the game more depth and make it much better to play.”

Composers can attract more attention with game scores than with film or concert music, even as they draw new listeners to classical music. Performers also see the potential: the pianist Lang Lang, for example, has indicated he would like to create a game like Guitar Hero.

Mr.Tallarico, who considers games“the radio of the 21st century,”said he created Video Games Live, a multimedia concert series featuring music from popular games, to“prove to the world how culturally significant video games have become.”

Mr.Tallarico became interested in composing after hearing Mr.Williams’s soundtrack to “Star Wars” as a child, which prompted his interest in the symphonic music of Mozart and Beethoven.“If Beethoven were alive today, he’d be a video game composer,”he said.