Flutes, clarinets, and a delicate piccolo flutter like birds trying to find each other across a mountaintop. The trumpet blinks out another proud melody as violins, dark and heavy, cluster like ivy. It's beautiful, dignified American music, but it doesn't signal the lightning bolt from God I've started expecting to smite my strange country – it's a suggestion of alternate history from the Civilization 5 soundtrack, courtesy of lead composer Michael Curran.
Without Curran's contributions, the turn-based strategy Civilization games would not be able to offer these kinds of irresistible daydreams – visions of divine justice, in my case, or just the feeling that you can change the world. It was kismet that Curran got the opportunity to work on Civ, too. He was doing sound design in theater when a friend began working at Firaxis, giving him the opportunity to do a three-month contract for Civilization 3: Conquests – the game's second expansion, released in 2003. After his contract expired, Curran was hired.
