Notes to the Instructor

We will examine a recent composition License: © Catherine Likhuta. Used with permission.

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of hers that tells a deeply personal story—that of her mother’s struggle with the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis.

Likhuta’s Inspiration

Likhuta was born in Ukraine, where she studied music at the Kyiv Glière Music College and the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine. She then moved to Australia to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of Queensland. Likhuta is also an accomplished pianist, and she frequently premieres and records her own works, which are heard all over the world.

Like Berlioz, Likhuta chose to provide the listener with a description of her music. We will therefore allow her to explain its contents and purpose in her own words:

Lesions was commissioned by Paul Dean for Ensemble Q and was written for Paul Dean, Trish O’Brien and Peter Luff.

The term “lesions” refers to regions in organs and tissue which have suffered damage through injury or disease, such as a wound, ulcer, abscess or tumour. I first heard this term in 2004, when my mother (age 42 at that time) was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Multiple Sclerosis.

While she had suffered from many disturbing, unexplainable and painful symptoms for sixteen years prior to that, the diagnosis of MS did not bring us any relief or closure.

Virtually every family has a loved one who is suffering or suffered from an incurable illness. While this is a very heavy subject, I believe it is definitely worth talking about, for two simple reasons:

1. To show those who are affected that they are not alone and that there are millions of people in the world who are going through similar struggles;

2. To remind those lucky few who have not been affected that we have to keep looking for cures every day.

Lesions is written in four parts that represent four most common stages of dealing with incurable illness: Sadness, Anxiety, Denial and finally Acceptance. The absence of a pause between the last two movements has an extra-musical meaning: though denial and acceptance are antithetical states of mind, many patients find themselves stuck between these two for a long time, sometimes for the rest of their lives. The new reality is too difficult to accept, yet the symptoms are just as difficult to deny.

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As Likhuta explains, Lesions is more than just

a piece of music. It also fulfills both therapeutic and advocacy roles. Writing this piece provided

relief for Likhuta, as she was able to translate her

difficult experience into expressive sound. At the

same time, she hopes that it will bring comfort to

others in a similar situation. Lesions, however, is not meant only to provide solace: Likhuta hopes

that it will also inspire action on behalf of those

who suffer from currently incurable illnesses.

It might seem odd that such a personal creation

should result from a commission—the process

by which a performer, producer, or organization Image 6.21: This photograph hires a composer to create a new musical work. of Likhuta and her mother When a work is commissioned, the composer is was taken just before the often provided with specific guidelines concerning latter was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

instrumentation, length, and level of difficulty. Source: Catherine Likhuta Sometimes these requirements impede creativity, Attribution: Catherine Likhuta but the best composers have always been able to License: © Catherine Likhuta. Used with permission

suit their style and ambitions to the performers

and situation at hand. In this case, the commissioning musicians were longtime collaborators of Likhuta’s, and they were able to work together to bring her vision to life.

Likhuta has told us which emotions her music expresses, but she does not provide any details about how she captures feelings in sound. She presumes—

correctly—that most listeners will easily perceive and understand the emotional states. Here, however, we will explicitly consider how these abstract emotions can be represented in musical terms.

Capturing the Stages of Grief in Music

Lesions

Composer: Catherine Likhuta

Performance: Paul Dean, Peter Luff, and Trish

O’Brien (2017)

Time

Form

What to listen for

This section at first seems calm and resigned,

but grows in volume and intensity; the motif

0’00”

Sadness

introduced at the beginning will return

throughout the work

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The tempo immediately accelerates at the

2’38”

Anxiety

beginning of this section, which is generally

unstable and unpredictable

The energy of the work peaks in this section,

5’17”

Anger

which contains dissonant harmonies and

aggressive rhythms

This is the only section that is not preceded by a

pause; the motif from “Sadness,” now with a new

7’43”

Acceptance

character, transforms into a waltz before finally

fading away

The first section, “Sadness,” is characterized by a repeated motif in the clarinet and cello. Over the top of this, the horn enters with a mournful melody. At first, the music is calm and stately. The melody, however, becomes increasingly agitated as it is passed from the horn to the clarinet. The volume increases and the rhythm loses its stability, until eventually we hear cries of anguish from the clarinet. When the opening motif returns, it is with a sense of resignation.

The second section, “Anxiety,” opens with a related motif, but the tempo is faster and the rhythm more agitated. This section is characterized by frequent change, as if the protagonist cannot get settled into place. Background motifs continually emerge, only to disintegrate and transform. There is no sense of key or tonal center. Instead, the pitches float uncomfortably in space.

“Denial,” the third section, opens with a series of dissonant chords, after which an aggressive motif in the cello establishes a frenetic tempo. The energy continues to build, and the music is frequently interrupted by pauses and rhythmic shifts.

When the motif from the opening of the piece returns, marking the beginning of the “Acceptance” section, it has been transformed: It is now loud, strong, and insistent. This statement is followed by a new, waltz-like melody in the clarinet that returns us to the opening motif, now restored to its original character. Following the emotional journey of the piece, however, the motif means something new. It communicates sadness, yes, but the self-conscious sadness of one who has come to terms with loss.

This is the first textbook ever to include the music of Likhuta—and it may be the last. She is still near the beginning of her career, and although she has been very successful, it is difficult to predict which composers or works will enter the permanent concert repertoire and which will not. There is no doubt that Lesions is an excellent piece of music that deserves to be heard for a long time. However, countless such pieces have flashed into existence over the centuries, only to disappear when they fail to attract the attention of an influential performer or publisher. Permanency is largely a matter of chance. This visit with Likhuta, Page | 202

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therefore, is a valuable reminder that, for every “famous” composer or work of the past, there are thousands of wonderful compositions and creators awaiting (re)discovery.

ANOUSHKA SHANKAR, RAGA MADHUVANTI

We will conclude this chapter with a consideration of how cultural context can facilitate musical storytelling even in the absence of a specific text. Every example that we have considered thus far has been accompanied at some level by a description. In the case of Berlioz, we had a long prose explanation from the composer himself. In the case of Mussorgsky, references to the titles of paintings.

In the case of Vivaldi, a poem. The titles of the two Chinese examples refer us to a historical event on the one hand and a poem on the other, while Likhuta explains how her composition connects with lived experience. This final example also has specific meaning, but it is only available to those initiated into the musical tradition from which it comes. While anyone can enjoy the sounds of “Raga Madhuvanti,” its meaning is unveiled only when one positions it correctly within the web of North Indian musical and artistic practice.

Before we can approach our example, we need to know something about North Indian classical music. It is important to note that this text can provide only a shallow and perfunctory glimpse of a tradition that requires a lifetime of dedication to master. Like their Western counterparts, North Indian classical musicians immerse themselves in their tradition for decades before claiming any sort of authority. But as with European classical music, a listener does not need to master the theoretical nuances in order to enjoy a performance.

Raga Theory

The North Indian classical music of today combines relatively modern instruments and practices with a theoretical system that dates to the 9th century.

Here, we will focus on the concept of raga, which is roughly analogous to the scale.

Unlike the scale, however, which provides a composer or performer only with a set of pitches and some information about their hierarchy (the first note of the scale, for example, is the most important), a raga carries a great weight of information, both musical and extramusical (having to do with non-sounding elements). Ragas are sometimes used as the basis for fixed compositions, but more often they are explored in an improvised performance—a practice that we will explore below.

It is impossible to determine the precise number of ragas in existence. About five hundred seem to be in use at any given time, while an individual musician might master a few dozen.

We will use Raga Madhuvanti11 as an example. Raga Madhuvanti contains seven distinct pitches, just like the Western scale. However, the pitches found in Raga Madhuvanti are not found in any Western mode. If we were to imagine starting from a major scale, the third pitch would be flat but the fourth would be sharp, Page | 203

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creating a large gap between them. In addition, the pitches contained in a raga vary depending on whether one is ascending or descending. The most important scale degree in Raga Madhuvanti is 1, while the second most important is 5.

This video begins by demonstrating the ascending and

descending forms of Raga Madhuvanti. It then demonstrates

11.

some of the typical melodic fragments before concluding

with a sample song.

This is already more information about performance practice than one can derive from a Western scale, but we have only begun. Each of the pitches indicated above must be precisely tuned, for North Indian music employs microtones, or pitches that fall between the keys on the piano. These must be learned by ear—

and are unique to a given raga. Each pitch must also be approached and ornamented in the correct manner, for this is a rich vocabulary of slides, vibratos, and trills. Raga Madhuvanti also contains prescribed resting places for the melody as it develops. Any melody played in

Raga Madhuvanti will be further shaped by a

vocabulary of typical phrases that identify

the raga. Finally, one cannot incorporate any

additional pitches without destroying the

raga.

But we have still only begun. It is now time

to move on to the extramusical characteristics

of Raga Madhuvanti. To begin with, Raga

Madhuvanti is used to express gentle, loving,

and romantic sentiments. In particular, it

communicates the emotion that one feels

for one’s beloved. It is also considered sweet

and playful. The root of the name, “madhu,”

translates to “honey.” The character of the raga

is captured in poetry and paintings known

as ragamalas. The practice of personifying Image 6.22: A ragamala portraying Raga Todi, dating from

musical ragas through verse began in the 14th 1591. In this image, she holds a century, which in turn inspired the miniature rudra vina, which was the most paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries. important melody instrument from the 16th through the 19th

There are no classical representations of centuries but which has now Raga Madhuvanti, which was developed in been replaced by the sitar. The the 1930s, but we can still link it to art. Ragas presence of the instrument suggests the sound of the raga,

are organized into families, known as thaat, even though it is unheard.

and Madhuvanti belongs to the Todi thaat. Source: Wikimedia Commons Ragas in a family share a variety of musical Attribution: Anonymous License: Public Domain

and extramusical characteristics. Raga Todi is

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portrayed as a beautiful woman, the wife of Raga Hindol, who is separated from her lover. She is always surrounded by deer, and focuses her attention on the buck, who represents masculine virility.

At this point we’ve wandered a bit far from our topic—but all of this is relevant to the understanding of Raga Madhuvanti, which is traditionally considered to possess a spiritual existence independent of any performance or description.

When we say that Raga Madhuvanti was “developed” in the 1930s, that is not quite correct. It might be better to say that it was “discovered,” for most musicians would agree that ragas exist whether or not they are named and performed. When a musician begins to perform a raga, they embark upon the lifelong task of becoming acquainted with it, as if it were another human being. Every encounter reveals new facets of the raga, which cannot be fully captured in any single performance.

Finally, Raga Madhuvanti, like all ragas, is associated with a specific season and time of day. Raga Madhuvanti is an evening raga that should be performed during the fourth quarter of the day—or, roughly, between 4 and 8 pm. It is also considered appropriate for the summer season. At one time, these associations were taken very seriously. The North Indian classical tradition developed in the courts, where musicians played ragas that were suited to the moment. A morning raga for the monsoon season, for example, would be heard only on a monsoon morning. In the courts, musicians played constantly, and were therefore able to maintain correlations between ragas and time markers. With the rise of concert life in the 20th century, however, this became impossible, and North Indian classical musicians today generally perform ragas without concern for time or season.

Nevertheless, these associations linger.

Tala Theory

This has been an overview of raga theory, which concerns the melodic and extramusical contents of a performance. Tala theory, which concerns rhythmic content, is equally complex, but we will largely pass over it here due to the fact that it is difficult for untrained listeners to perceive the rhythmic nuances of North Indian classical music. We will note only that a tala is a pattern of beats used in the performance of a raga. The number of beats in a tala can range from three to 128, although most contain between six and sixteen beats. Beats can be strong or weak, and each is characterized by a specific percussive sound. A tala, therefore, is best thought of as a cycle of timbres. This is simple enough, but a drummer will almost never play the cycle unadorned. Instead, they will improvise complex rhythms over the tala, which exists only in the imagination of the performers and listeners.

Ragas and talas are not paired up one-to-one, but only specific talas may be used with a given raga. We will be hearing a performance of Raga Madhuvanti paired with Rupak Tala, which contains seven beats divided into three groups containing three, two, and two beats respectively. North Indian classical musicians learn talas by reciting the syllables associated with each beat, which in turn represent that sound of the drum and indicate how it is to be struck to create that sound. The Page | 205

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syllables for the seven beats of Rupak Tala12 are Tin Tin Na Dhin Na Dhin Na. The most common percussion instrument in North Indian classical music is the tabla, which is a pair of small drums—one a bit larger than the other—that are played with the hands. “Tin” indicates a resonant stroke with the right hand, while “Na”

is a damped stroke with the right hand and “Dhin” is a resonant stroke with both hands. An accomplished player will be careful to use the correct fingers with the appropriate force in exactly the right spot on the drum head.

This video includes a demonstration of Rupak Tala. The

tabla player only performs the basic 7-beat tala once. He

12.

then begins to introduce variations. However, you can track beats of the tala by tapping or clapping.

Instruments and Transmission

We are finally ready to consider a modern performance of Raga Madhuvanti.

We will begin with the instruments, one of which—the tabla—has already been introduced. All North Indian classical music is performed over a drone, which usually consists of the two most important notes in the raga. In the case of Raga Madhuvanti, as noted above, those are the first and fifth scale degrees. The drone is most often performed on a tanpura. This long-necked lute is almost completely hollow and therefore extremely resonant. It has no frets and cannot be used to play melodies. Instead, the performer lightly plucks each of the four strings in turn to create a sustained drone. The tanpura is most

often played by an apprentice of the soloist.

The sitar is capable of producing its own

drone, but it is a much more complicated

instrument and is used primarily to perform

the raga. Today, the sitar is the most common

North Indian melodic instrument. It was

made famous in the second half of the 20th

century by the virtuoso Ravi Shankar, who

influenced The Beatles (see Chapter 8) and

frequently performed at popular music

festivals (including Woodstock, discussed

in Chapter 7). The sitar, however, is not a

particularly ancient instrument, dating only

to the 18th century.

Like the tanpura, the sitar has a hollow

Image 6.23: The tanpura is held

vertically by the player, who

neck and is highly resonant. Both instruments

plucks the strings one at a time.

also produce a light, metallic buzzing sound

Source: Wikimedia Commons

that is essential to the timbre. Unlike the

Attribution: User “Martin spaink”

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

tanpura, the sitar has large, arched frets.

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Melodies are played on the strings that run across them. These strings can either be pressed down, shortening the length of the string, or pulled to the side, increasing the tension on the string. Both actions change the note produced when the string is plucked, and they can be combined to produce the effect of sliding between pitches.

Sitars in fact have three different types of strings. The top three are used to play the melody. Below these are three or four strings that are used to produce the drone. Most interesting, however, are the twelve to fourteen sympathetic strings that run down the neck behind the frets. These strings are tuned to the pitches of the raga and resonate when the same pitches are played on the melody strings, thereby contributing to the vibrancy of the instrument’s sound. They can also be strummed.

Mastering the sitar is comparable in difficulty to mastering the nuances of the raga and tala systems. Traditionally, aspiring musicians committed themselves Image 6.24: Anoushka Shankar is one of the most famous living sitar players.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Harald Krichel

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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to a guru, or teacher, at a young age. The student would move in with the guru and become part of the family, completing household tasks in return for musical guidance. Although this system has largely been replaced by private lessons and music schools in the European model, both of the musicians we will discuss here learned their craft immersively in the traditional way. One is Ravi Shankar, who was apprenticed to sarod player Allauddin Khan, and the other is Anoushka Shankar, who learned from her father.

The Shankars

Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) is remembered

as the performer who popularized North

Indian music in the West. He began his

regular tours of Europe and the United States

in 1956. At concerts, he focused on educating

audiences about his instrument—the sitar—

and the North Indian classical tradition,

winning fans in the process. In the 1960s he

began to form relationships with popular

musicians, including George Harrison of The

Beatles. He was invited to participate in both

of the major popular music festivals of the

1960s: the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and

the 1969 Aquarian Exposition, better known

as Woodstock (see Chapter 7). His influence

can be heard on a number of rock albums from Image 6.25: This photograph the era, including The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s captures Ravi Shankar performing Lonely Hearts Club Band (see Chapter 8).

at the Woodstock festival in 1969.

Source: Wikipedia

Ravi’s daughter Anoushka was born in Attribution: User “Markgoff2972”

London in 1981, when Ravi was sixty-one License: CC BY-SA 4.0

years old. She began training with him at the

age of seven, and was soon appearing beside him onstage playing the tanpura.

Anoushka gave her first solo performance at the age of thirteen, making her first studio recording shortly thereafter. Although she is certainly a master of the North Indian classical tradition, Anoushka has been primarily interested in cross-cultural collaborations, and has released a series of albums that explore the connections between different musical traditions. Like her father, she has also maintained connection with the world of popular music. Her most frequent collaborator is singer Norah Jones—who also happens to be her half-sister.

Raga Madhuvanti

We will focus on Anoushka’s rendition of Raga Madhuvanti, made live at a Carnegie Hall concert in 2000. Ravi’s recording will serve for comparison, for Page | 208

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although both are performances of Raga Madhuvanti, they are quite different and cannot be considered to represent “the same piece.” In the North Indian tradition, the roles of composer and performer are essentially indistinguishable.

A player “composes” in the process of performing a raga, improvising melodic motifs and shapes. At the same time, the identity of the raga is paramount, and two performances of the same raga are therefore expected to communicate similar emotional and expressive content.

Both recordings are considerably shorter than a traditional performance, which might extend to an hour or more. This is typical of the modern era, for audiences desire variety and expect to hear several ragas on a concert. Both recordings, however, exhibit the traditional structure of a raga performance, which is in two large parts.

In the first part of a performance,termed the alap, Anoushka introduces the notes of Raga Madhuvanti.13 This is done slowly and deliberately over the course of nearly ten minutes. She establishes the notes in order, ornamenting them with characteristics slides and melodic fragments. Because the notes of the raga must be presented from lowest to highest, her playing begins in the low range and gradually extends into the high. Once Anoushka has established all of the notes, she gradually introduces a regular pulse into the music. This pulse quickens, and she begins to play with increased rhythmic activity. As a result, the alap, which begins in a meditative mood, concludes with breathtaking excitement.

Alap of Raga Madhuvanti

13.

Performance: Anoushka Shankar (2001)

Our recording of the alap closes with applause from the audience, but this is not the end of the performance. However, musicians in the North Indian classical tradition don’t think of “performance” in the same way as Western classical musicians.

There is seldom a clear beginning to the rendition of a raga, which instead emerges gradually from a process of strumming and tuning (activities that a Western player might describe as “warming up”). A performer will often continue to adjust their tuning throughout the alap. These habits reflect the continuity between “practice”

and “performance” that is characteristic of the North Indian classical tradition. Every rendition of a raga—whether executed in privacy or before an audience—brings the performer and listener one step closer to really “knowing” it.

The second part of the performance is called the jhala. 14 Its beginning is marked by the entrance of the tabla, which establishes the tala (rhythmic cycle). In this case, we are hearing the seven-beat Rupak Tala, as described above. The role of the sitar also changes at this point. While Anoushka has been freely improvising thus far, now she plays a fixed melody called a gat. Such melodies are usually traditional, and they can be heard in many different performances of the same raga. For the Page | 209

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remainder of the jhala, Anoushka improvises using fragments of the gat according to the rules associated with Raga Madhuvanti. One can recognize the gat from time to time as Anoushka works it into the fabric of her playing. As in the alap, she increases the rhythmic complexity and virtuosity of her improvisations as she builds to the exciting conclusion.

Jhala of Raga Madhuvanti

14.

Performance: Anoushka Shankar (2001)

Comparing Performances

A brief consideration of Ravi’s performance of Raga Madhuvanti15 reveals the flexibility that characterizes the North Indian classical tradition. His alap is very brief: less than two minutes, in comparison with Anoushka’s ten. He establishes the pitches of the raga much more quickly, and his playing is lively from the start.

At the beginning of the jhala, he plays a completely different gat, which then leads into an extremely long improvisation—twenty minutes—that, because it is founded on a different gat, sounds nothing like Anoushka’s. In short, the two recordings of Raga Madhuvanti have very little in common. They are not, in a Western sense, recordings of the same piece of music.

This performance of Raga Madhuvanti by Ravi Shankar

offers an excellent opportunity to determine what constitutes 15.

the essential character of a raga. As the listener will easily observe, it is quite different from Anoushka’s performance.

They are, however, recordings of the same raga, which brings us back to the question that opened this chapter: How can sound tell a story? An experienced listener will hear these two performances as both communicating aspects of the essential character of Raga Madhuvanti. Neither of these performances tells a specific story, containing a narrative, events, or characters (like we encountered in Berlioz’s Fantastical Symphony). However, each is decidedly dramatic, insofar as it engages with and elucidates the extramusical character of the raga. A listener will know that Raga Madhuvanti is associated with the evening and that it expresses romantic love. They might also be familiar with the poetry or paintings that have captured and contributed to the raga’s character. Each performance, therefore, adds to the grander narrative of Raga Madhuvanti—a narrative that stretches across generations and continents.

This example also presents an opportunity to discuss the non-universality of programmatic musical expression. Do you hear these performances as expressing the sentiment of romantic love? Do you hear them as playful? Do you connect them Page | 210

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with the evening, or the summer? Do you even hear them as communicating the same emotional content as one another? The answer may very well be no. Most music communicates meaning within a cultural context. In this case, that meaning is determined by the listener’s familiarity with North Indian classical music, with the raga system in general, and with Raga Madhuvanti in particular. A lifetime of exposure to this music will lead one to make the correct emotional connections.

Those emotions, however, are not inherent in the music and not obvious to every listener. This is true of every musical tradition.

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER LEARNING

Print

Cone, Edward T., ed. Fantastic Symphony: An Authoritative Score. W. W. Norton

& Company, 1971.

Church, Michael, ed. The Other Classical Music: Fifteen Great Traditions. Boydell Press, 2015.

Brown, David. Mussorgsky: His Life and Works. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Lau, Frederick. Music in China: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Robbins Landon, H. C. Vivaldi: Voice of the Baroque. University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Ruckert, George E. Music in India: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture.

Oxford University Press, 2003.

Taruskin, Richard. Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Online

Catherine Likhuta’s website: http://www.catherinelikhuta.com/

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Unit 3

MUSIC FOR ENTERTAINMENT

7Listening at Public Concerts

Esther M. Morgan-Ellis and Louis Hajosy

INTRODUCTION

Most of us know what a concert is, even if we’ve never been to one. They are common across categories of music and always follow the same basic formula: members of the public assemble at a given time and place to hear a soloist or ensemble present a prepared program of music. Concerts always tend to be presentational in nature (that is to say, there is a clear divide between performer and audience member), although behavioral norms vary across genres. Attendees at a Christian rock concert might get involved with worship, while hip-hop fans might dance, country fans might sing along, and audience members at an orchestral concert might sit in quiet contemplation or follow along with the printed score (a book of music that contains all of the orchestral parts). For the most part, concerts are intended to entertain ticket holders and to turn a profit for the artists and producers who present them.

In this chapter, we will examine four specific concerts that were staged in Europe and the United States between 1808 and 1969. We will consider the purpose for each concert, learn about the composers and producers involved in its presentation, and listen closely to a single musical work or performance. Each of these concerts was unique, and they span the gamut in terms of venue, audience, and repertoire. In order to set the stage for our encounter with concert culture, however, a brief overview of music as public entertainment is in order.

Despite the ubiquity of concerts today, musical performance as a major commercial venture has a relatively short history. In Europe, professional music first thrived in courts and churches. The wealthy staged elaborate musical presentations—such as the opera Orpheus (1607) at the court in Mantua, discussed in Chapter 4—for their own private consumption, but tickets were not put on sale. The Catholic church employed professional singers—such as Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594) at the Sistine chapel, discussed in Chapter 11—to provide music for worship services, but the music they produced was not intended to have entertainment value.

The first musical presentations for which members of the public could buy tickets were operas, which became available when the St. Cassiano Theater opened Page | 213

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in Venice in 1637. Opera quickly became big business. Large crowds flocked to theaters to see the glamorous singers, fabulous costumes, and astonishing stage sets. However, there was one problem: In most places, the church authorities prohibited the performance of opera during the season of Lent. Lent, which constitutes the forty days preceding Easter, is the most solemn period in the church calendar. Members of most European Christian communities—most importantly, Catholics—were expected to abstain from frivolity and pass their time in spiritual contemplation. Opera was simply too exciting and fun.

Concerts, therefore, were first introduced as a solemn alternative to opera. The most successful early concert series was launched in Paris in 1725. It was titled the Concert Spirituel, and—as the name suggests—offered uplifting entertainment that would not offend the Catholic Church. These early concerts included a great deal of variety. In addition to choral works with a sacred message, the program was likely to include concertos, arias, and improvisations. Most of the music would have been recently composed and, despite the advertising, was not explicitly sacred. In order to replicate the thrills of opera as closely as possible, each concert began the same way as an operatic performance: The first thing on the program was always a sinfonia for orchestra in three parts, or movements, ordered fast-slow-fast. Over time, this became the symphony, perhaps the most important genre of composition for orchestra.

Image 7.1: This poster advertises a 1754 performance in the Concert Spirituel series. The program included a symphony, sacred Catholic music for choir, two violin concertos (one performed by an 11-year-old girl), and Italian songs. This type of variety was typical of early public concerts.

Source: Wikipedia

Attribution: Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer and Gabriel Capperan License: Public Domain

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During the 18th and 19th centuries, concerts became more and more important in European life. At the same time, orchestral music grew in prominence, and came to be understood as being more dignified and serious than opera. The idea of a concert as commercial entertainment, however, was never confined to the orchestra. In the 1830s, for example, the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt began to give solo piano recitals across Europe (his career and music are discussed in Chapter 9). In the last 150 years, the concert model has been increasingly adopted by traditions outside of Europe. The first Chinese orchestra, the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra, was formed in 1879, while Indian classical musicians, who had formerly been employed by courts, began to stage public concerts near the turn of the century. These developments reflected a growing reliance on capitalistic economic models throughout the world, as musicians began to rely on ticket sales rather than aristocratic patronage.

The modern concert economy works in tandem with the recording industry, which has helped performing artists to gain international fame since the early 20th century. When you choose to buy tickets to a concert, it is usually because you already know and enjoy the music you are going to hear. This is a change from the earliest concerts, which were understood as an opportunity to introduce new music to the public. Such was the case with our first example.

1808: A CONCERT BY LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

The Composer

In 1808, the German composer and

pianist Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

was at the height of his career. He was living

and working in the city of Vienna, which at the

time was emerging as the musical capital of

Europe. He had moved there in 1792 at the age

of 21 to study with the famous composer Franz

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Unfortunately,

Haydn had just departed to present a concert

series in London, so the two composers ended

up having very little contact. By the time

Haydn returned, Beethoven was already well

established as a virtuoso pianist and composer Image 7.2: The portrait of Beethoven was completed by

of piano music.

Josef Willibrord Mähler when the

In 1798, however, an unforeseen health composer was about 25 years old.

concern threatened to end Beethoven’s career: Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Joseph Willibrord Mähler

He began to go deaf. While loss of hearing License: Public Domain would be a hardship for anyone, for Beethoven

it was catastrophic. As a pianist, he relied on his hearing to play with orchestras.

And as a musician, hearing was the sense that he valued most. Growing deafness Page | 215

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Image 7.3: This Viennese vista was painted by Bernardo Bellotto shortly before Beethoven was born.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Bernardo Bellotto

License: Public Domain

took its toll not only on Beethoven’s professional life

but on his social life as well, and he began to avoid

gatherings of people out of fear that his disability

would be detected. In an 1802 letter to his brothers,

Carl and Johann, Beethoven wrote about the shame

he felt related to his hearing loss: “How could I

possibly admit such an infirmity in the one sense

which should have been more perfect in me than in

others, a sense which I once possessed in highest

perfection, a perfection such as few surely in my

profession enjoy or have enjoyed - O I cannot do it.”

This letter is known today as the Heiligenstadt

Testament, due to the fact that it was written while

Beethoven lived in the town of Heiligenstadt and

was meant to serve as a last will and testament. It Image 7.4: Although the Heiligenstadt Testament

contains a great deal of insight into the composer’s remained private during state of mind during these difficult years, including Beethoven’s lifetime, its the fact that he considered ending his life out of posthumous discovery revealed his tormented

despair at his deafness. However, as Beethoven state of mind following his wrote, “only art it was that withheld me,” for “it diagnosis.

seemed impossible to leave the world until I had Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Ludwig van Beethoven

produced all that I felt called upon me to produce.” License: Public Domain Page | 216

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It would seem that his intense need to compose music compelled him to carry on, in spite of his enormous loss.

The Heiligenstadt Testament remained unknown until it was found among Beethoven’s papers following his death, for he never dispatched it to his brothers.

However, it has since played an important role in cementing the public perception of Beethoven as an archetypical Romantic artist who became great through personal suffering. Before the 19th century, composers were seen as craftspeople.

They created a product that was useful in everyday life, but they were not held in particularly high regard. Haydn, for example, although considered a great composer today, held the status of a servant for most of his lifetime (see Chapter 8).

In the early 19th century, however, things changed. The European public began to perceive prominent composers as “geniuses,” and they treated them with heightened respect. Where Haydn had been a servant, Beethoven was invited to dine with wealthy aristocrats and treated as their equal, or even superior. This change was brought about by economic and social transformations. A growing middle class meant that more people had the leisure time and financial means to consume art music, while a new set of Romantic values prioritized individual emotional expression. The public became particularly interested in portrayals of heartbreak, illness, and personal struggle—the same experiences that were understood to inform great artistic expression.

Beethoven suited the new requirements

to a tee. He not only suffered deafness, but

also endured repeated rejection from women

(he never married) and a tempestuous

family life. One of his tragic love affairs was

captured in another letter, written in 1812

and addressed to a lady identified only as

the “Immortal Beloved.” A few years later

he lost his brother Karl to tuberculosis,

despite his efforts to provide the best

medical treatment. Following Karl’s death,

Beethoven embarked on a bitter court battle

to win custody of his brother’s son. After

many years he prevailed, but the pressure he

put on the child to follow in his own footsteps Image 7.5: This 1820 portrait by was so great that the boy attempted suicide. Karl Joseph Stieler captures the Romantic view of Beethoven. The

This is not the only example of Beethoven’s composer looks annoyed to have bad behavior. He was generally rude and been interrupted at his solitary inconsiderate of others, and was frequently work. His hair is messy and his dress is informal. His surroundings

evicted from his various lodgings for noise reflect the high value placed on violations. He also practiced poor hygiene nature in this era.

and frequently appeared disheveled in Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Joseph Karl Stieler

public. All of this, however, was not only License: Public Domain Page | 217

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forgiven but praised. Beethoven’s antisocial behavior contributed to his reputation as a genius.

Scholars have long described Beethoven’s career and output in terms of three periods: an early period, during which he primarily composed for the piano; a middle period, during which he focused on triumphant, large-scale works for public performance; and a late period, during which he became very experimental (indeed, some critics theorized that he had lost his mind). The 1808 concert that we about to explore marks the climax of Beethoven’s middle period. At this time, his struggle with hearing loss was known to the public, and he had become famous across Europe for his dramatic and ambitious symphonic works.

The Concert

Beethoven’s most famous concert took place on December 22, 1808, at the Theater an der Wien (Theater on the Banks of the Vienna River). For Beethoven, this concert was an invaluable opportunity to make some money and to premiere some of his recent compositions. However, circumstances in Vienna at the time made putting on a concert very difficult, and Beethoven faced a number of challenges in staging this event, which in the end was not particularly successful.

To begin with, competition from opera meant that a concert could only succeed if the opera houses were closed. That explains the date of this concert, Image 7.6: This painting of the Theater an der Wien was completed in the early 20th century by Carl Wenzel Zajicek.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Carl Wenzel Zajicek

License: Public Domain

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which Beethoven scheduled to take place during the Catholic season of Advent (the four weeks leading up to Christmas). Unfortunately, the timing also had two undesirable consequences. Because there was a rush to present concerts during Advent, Beethoven found himself in competition with a much more prominent event taking place on the same night, and as a result he was not able to hire the top Viennese musicians. (Others simply refused to work with him due to his corrosive personality.) Another challenge came with the weather, for the hall was freezing cold on the night of the performance.

Even during Advent, it was difficult to put together a public concert. To begin with, there were no permanent orchestras in Vienna, so the concert organizer would have to recruit each individual musician, organize the rehearsal schedule, and arrange for payment. Booking a hall was also difficult. Beethoven was only able to do so because he happened to have a personal relationship with the director of the Theater an der Wien, for whom he had done various favors over the course of the year. Finally, putting on a concert required special permits from the government, which exercised tight control over public gatherings.

Under these adverse circumstances, it comes as no surprise that the December 22 concert did not go off without a hitch. Beethoven had to settle for second-rate performers, including an inexperienced soprano who struggled to overcome her nerves. However, most of the difficulties were of his own doing. To begin with, the concert was four hours long, which even in 1808 was considered trying. Beethoven saw the concert as an opportunity to share as many of his new works with the public as possible, so he did not restrain himself in assembling the program. In fact, Beethoven completed the final piece on the program only a few days before the concert, which created a further problem: His orchestra did not have time to learn it properly, and the performance fell apart so badly that Beethoven (who also served as conductor) had to stop and restart the work.

In keeping with the common practice of the time, Beethoven brought together works from a variety of genres for his concert. He also met expectations by starting with a symphony and including sacred vocal music. The most unusual aspect of his concert was that it featured music by only a single composer.

The evening began with his Symphony No. 6, also known as the “Pastoral” Symphony. This programmatic five-movement work portrays a visit to the countryside and takes about 40 minutes to perform. Next was Ah! Deceiver, the concert aria with which the young soprano struggled. This was followed by the Gloria from his Mass in C major and his Piano Concerto No. 4, with Beethoven as soloist.

The second half of the concert began with Symphony No. 5. After the Sanctus from the same Mass, Beethoven performed an improvised fantasy at the piano.

Due to his progressing deafness, this was to be his last public performance as a pianist. The concert concluded with his new Choral Fantasy, an ambitious work for orchestra, choir, and vocal soloists.

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the composer and critic J.F Reichardt, put it:

“There we sat, in the most bitter cold, from

half past six until half past ten, and confirmed

for ourselves the maxim that one may easily

have too much of a good thing, still more of a

powerful one.”

Symphony No. 5

Despite its many shortcomings,

Beethoven’s 1808 concert is remembered

as one of the most remarkable of its era.

December 22 marked both Beethoven’s last

performance as a pianist and the premiere

of many influential works. Symphony No. 6

later inspired Berlioz when he wrote his own Image 7.7: This engraving captures the premiere of

programmatic symphony, the Fantastical Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Symphony (discussed in Chapter 6). The 1824.

Choral Fantasy foreshadowed Beethoven’s Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Bettmann

Symphony No. 9, which transformed the genre License: Public Domain with the addition of choir and vocal soloists.

And Symphony No. 5, which we will examine in some detail, has become perhaps Beethoven’s most famous composition.

Symphonies developed along with concert life. Due to their role as concert openers (and sometimes closers), 18th-century symphonies were usually lively and cheerful. They were almost always in the major mode. They were also fairly short, and composers tended to write a lot of them (Haydn composed 106). By the end of the 18th century, symphonies had four movements: a brisk opening movement, a slow second movement, a third movement inspired by dance, and an exciting finale.

While Symphony No. 5 is in many respects typical of the genre, it has a number of remarkable characteristics. Like other symphonies, it has four movements as outlined above. Unusually, however, these movements are linked by a single musical motif that is introduced at the beginning of the work: an ominous four-note pattern that was described by Beethoven’s first biographer as fate knocking at the door. This “fate motif” returns throughout the first movement and then in the subsequent movements as well—an unusual characteristic, since the movements of a symphony were usually kept independent from one another.

The technique by which a composer develops a large-scale work out of a single musical motif is known as organicism. While Beethoven was not the first composer to work in this way, he took the technique further than any had before him. Organicism was highly regarded in the Romantic era, when listeners wanted art to mirror nature. Just as a tree might grow from a tiny seed, Beethoven’s symphony grows from the opening “fate motif.”

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Symphony No. 5 is also notable for its drama and serious tone. Beethoven was responsible for elevating the symphonic genre, transforming symphonies from entertainment into the loftiest artistic expression. This is evidenced by his output: Beethoven wrote only nine symphonies, but each took years to complete and set new standards for length and complexity. Symphony No. 5 is in the key of C minor, which sets it apart from the cheerful curtain raisers of earlier composers, and the opening “fate motif” makes it clear that this is not just light entertainment. From the start, listeners felt as if the symphony was trying to communicate something.

It seemed rife with conflict and action. To understand what it might communicate, however, we will have to look at the music.

Sonata Form

The first movement, like that of all symphonies (and most other instrumental works) of the time, is in what is known as sonata form. Sonata form developed gradually during the course of the 18th century. Nobody invented it: Instead, a variety of composers experimented with formal design until a consensus emerged.

By the 19th century, the components of the form were firmly in place, and listeners knew what to expect from a first movement. This gave the composer a lot of power, for Beethoven was able to tell a story by satisfying or frustrating the expectations of the audience.

A movement in sonata form has at least three parts: an Exposition (heard twice), in which contrasting themes are introduced; a Development, in which those themes are explored and transformed; and a Recapitulation, in which the themes from the Exposition are heard for a second time. The form also includes two optional parts. Some sonata-form movements open with an introduction, which is usually slow and stately. And many sonata-form movements conclude with a Coda, in which anything can happen. (The term “coda” is derived from the Latin word for “tail.”) Key areas are very important in sonata form. The Exposition starts with a Primary Theme in the home key, but moves to a different key for a Secondary Theme and Closing Theme. The Recapitulation, on the other hand, is entirely in the home key. The Development can move through a variety of key areas.

Minor-mode sonata form movements—such as the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5—are particularly interesting, because the composer has options for the key of the Secondary Theme. While the Primary Theme in the Exposition must be in minor, the Secondary Theme can be in minor or major. In other words, the Secondary Theme can have a sad/serious character or it can be cheerful/relaxing. If the Secondary Theme is presented in major in the Exposition, it can also be major in the Recapitulation—but the listener can’t be sure until they hear it!

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Movement I

Symphony No. 5, Movement I

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven

Performance: Dallas Symphony Orchestra,

conducted by Jaap van Zweden (2012)

Time

Form

What to listen for

Exposition

The first thing we hear is the four-note “fate”

Primary

0’00”

motif, which will return throughout the

Theme

movements

Secondary

This major-mode theme starts with the same

0’43”

Theme

motif, but its character is at first calm and restful

Closing

This theme is jubilant—it seems to have recovered

1’05”

Theme

from the angst of the Primary Theme

Repetition

We hear all of the preceding music for a second

1’23”

of

time

Exposition

Development

This section is dominated by the four-note “fate”

2’45”

motif, which we hear countless times

Recapitulation

Primary

The Recapitulation opens with the “fate” motif,

4’01”

Theme

which comes crashing back in the full orchestra

The Primary Theme is mostly identical to that

4’17

heard in the Exposition, with the exception of this

dramatic oboe solo

Secondary

This theme is still in the major mode, suggesting

4’49”

Theme

that the movement might have a happy ending

Closing

This theme is also in the major mode, suggesting

5’15”

Theme

that the movement will conclude in major

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Coda

The Coda turns almost immediately to minor; like

5’31”

the Development, it is dominated by the “fate”

motif

This entirely new theme suggests labor and

6’01”

struggle

6’33”

The movement ends almost exactly as it began

Beethoven used all of the sonata form tricks in the first movement of Symphony No. 5. The Primary Theme is stormy and anxious, not only because it is in C minor.

The initial sounding of the fate motif by unison strings is obviously threatening, while the quick tempo and violent changes in dynamic that follow do nothing to calm the mood. The Secondary Theme, however, is in E-flat major, and it offers a moment of peace. Perhaps there is a chance to escape the storm.

In the Development, Beethoven was free to use any of the themes from the Exposition. However, he only explores the fate motif, which is heard dozens of times in all ranges and at all dynamic levels. Finally, he uses the fate motif to crash back into the Recapitulation. Following the Primary Theme, however, this is a plaintive, unmetered oboe solo that was not heard in the Exposition. This comes as a startling surprise, for the Recapitulation should not include any new musical material. What does it mean? Beethoven’s audience must have wondered. The Secondary Theme, which could return in major or minor, is in C major, and the Recapitulation concludes in C major. This seems to suggest a “happy ending” for the movement.

However, Beethoven is not finished. A massive Coda—which listeners would not necessarily have expected—immediately returns us to C minor. A new, pounding theme is introduced. After about a minute, we hear the fate motif one last time, followed by the first measures of the Primary Theme and a final cadence.

The happy ending has escaped us, and we find ourselves back in the terrifying sonic world of the opening measures.

The story told by the first movement of Symphony No. 5 is certainly not a happy one. Despite moments of respite (the Secondary Theme), the listener is haunted throughout by the fate motif, and the devastating conclusion to the Coda reveals that we have not escaped it. Indeed, we are left right where we started.

However, the symphony as a whole tells a more uplifting story. The second movement—a theme and variations—is calm and beautiful. It offers repose after the stormy opening. The third movement uses the fate motif as the basis for an aggressive march. The movement concludes, however, with a mysterious passage that ultimately transitions triumphantly into the fourth movement, which is in a resounding C major.

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Movement IV

Symphony No. 5, Movement IV

Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven

Performance: Dallas Symphony Orchestra,

conducted by Jaap van Zweden (2012)

Time

Form

What to listen for

Exposition

This theme opens with a triumphant statement

Primary

in the brass that ascends through the pitches of a

0’00”

Theme

major triad before returning to the tonic; next, the

violins repeatedly play an ascending major scale

Although transition themes are not always

Transition

0’30”

memorable, this one features a powerful motif in

Theme

the low brass

Secondary

This theme is more relaxed than the Primary

0’53”

Theme

Theme; it has a dance-like lilt

Closing

1’17”

The energy builds again with this theme

Theme

Development

3’27”

This section is dominated by the Secondary Theme

This passage quotes Movement III; in it, we hear

4’51”

the short-short-short-long rhythmic motif that

dominated Movement I

Recapitulation

Primary

This presentation is nearly identical to that in the

5’20”

Theme

Exposition

Transition

This presentation is similar to that in the

5’50”

Theme

Exposition, but it does not change key

Secondary

This presentation is nearly identical to that in the

6’16”

Theme

Exposition

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This presentation is similar to that in the

Closing

6’40”

Exposition, but it is extended and builds into the

Theme

Coda

Coda

The Coda begins with material from the Secondary

7’06”

Theme

7’33”

This passage contains new thematic material

8’12”

At this point, the tempo greatly accelerates

We hear a fast-paced version of the motif that

8’35”

opened the movement; the Coda ends with a series

of accented chords

To see how the story ends, we will take a close look at the fourth movement, which opens with a brilliant trumpet fanfare. The Exposition maintains a sense of joy and excitement throughout, but the Development introduces conflict as sections of the orchestra wrestle the themes through minor keys. The Development concludes with a repetition of the minor-mode march theme from the third movement. This was highly unusual for the time, and must have shocked Beethoven’s audience.

Once a movement was over, they didn’t expect to hear its themes again. The march theme, which is presented in a quiet pizzicato by the strings, introduces a sense of uncertainty and discomfort, but it once again transitions into a triumphant Recapitulation. This time, the Coda—which accelerates to a breakneck tempo—

provides the joyful ending that we were denied in the first movement.

Listeners in 1808 did not just hear Symphony No. 5 as a piece of music for orchestra. They heard it as an autobiographical account of Beethoven’s personal struggle with hearing loss. The opening motif represented his own tragic fate, and the first movement expressed his suffering. The final movement, however, portrayed his victory over fate. He had struggled with his disability and had emerged triumphant. This narrative trajectory from darkness to light would later be imitated by other composers, including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Symphony No. 4) and Dmitri Shostakovich (Symphony No. 5, discussed in Chapter 10), each of whom also sought to tell a musical story about overcoming adversity.

1924: AN EXPERIMENT IN MODERN MUSIC

When bandleader Paul Whiteman put together his 1924 concert entitled An Experiment in Modern Music, he was trying to do much more than make money.

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He was on a mission to legitimize his field of music: jazz. However, he wasn’t concerned with promoting the interests of jazz’s African American originators.

Instead, he sought to convince white audiences that jazz—a suspect genre, due to its origins in the black community and associations with drinking and dancing—

could be transformed into legitimate art by white composers and musicians such as himself. His concert, although profoundly racist in intent, is remembered for introducing one of the most beloved concert pieces of the 20th century: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Paul Whiteman and George Gershwin

Although few recognize his name today,

Paul Whiteman was the most famous and

successful bandleader of the 1920s. He

specialized in what was known as “sweet

jazz,”1 a kind of lively dance music intended for white consumers. Most modern listeners

would have a hard time identifying his music

as jazz. Instead, we tend to reserve that

term for the more rhythmically interesting

performances put on by African American

dance bands of the era—a type of music

known at the time as “hot jazz.” 2 To hear the contrast, one might compare Whiteman’s

biggest hit, “Whispering” (1920), with “East

St. Louis Toodle-Oo” (1927) as recorded by

Duke Ellington and his Washingtonians.

Whiteman’s recording is notable for its lively Image 7.8: This 1934 photograph depicts Paul Whiteman with his

tempo, square rhythms, precise pitches, and characteristic mustache and instrumentation (his band included a violin extra-long baton.

section). “Whispering” is suitable dance Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Unknown

music, to be sure, but it lacks the spontaneity License: Public Domain and excitement of “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.”

Whiteman’s biggest hit, “Whispering” (1920), exemplifies 1.

his “sweet jazz” sound.

Duke Ellington’s 1927 recording of “East St. Louis Toodle-

2.

Oo” provides a good example of “hot jazz.”

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Despite his massive success, Whiteman still faced considerable opposition as a jazz musician in the 1920s. Many white people were deeply worried about the dangerous effects that jazz might have on society. The rhythms of jazz prompted dancers to do things with their bodies that were not considered appropriate, while its association with nightclubs meant that it encouraged other immoral behaviors as well. However, the biggest concern—if often unspoken—was with the increasing influence of African American music on mainstream culture. To make jazz acceptable, therefore, Whiteman understood that he needed to make it white.

The purpose of Whiteman’s concert was to illustrate the evolution of jazz from a rough and untutored product of African American culture into a sophisticated form of concert music. In order to tell this story, however, he needed a special piece with which to end his program—a piece that would combine elements of jazz with the European concert tradition, thereby synthesizing the two traditions and proving the potential for jazz to become art. He decided to approach one of the leading popular song composers of the day, George Gershwin, and requested that he write and perform a jazz-inspired piano concerto.

In 1924, George Gershwin (1898-1937)

was still a young man, but he had already

made a name for himself as a Broadway

songwriter. Gershwin was born into a family

of Russian Jewish immigrants who had

settled in Brooklyn. He revealed a talent for

music when his parents bought a piano for his

older brother, Ira. While Ira had little interest

in playing, George was fascinated with the

instrument and demonstrated an uncanny

ability to pick out familiar tunes on the keys.

He subsequently took lessons in piano and

composition.

In 1913, Gershwin left school to take a job

as a song plugger with the music publisher

Image 7.9: This undated

photograph depicts George

Jerome H. Remick. At the time, the principle

Gershwin around the time that he

product of the popular music industry was

composed Rhapsody in Blue.

sheet music, which allowed Americans to

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Unknown

perform songs with piano accompaniment in

License: Public Domain

their own homes. (Phonograph records were

just beginning to sell in large numbers.) Music

publishers, therefore, did whatever they could to build public interest in their products. Consumers were most likely to buy the sheet music for a song that they had heard and enjoyed at a theater or in a nightclub. The role of a song plugger, therefore, was to ensure that the songs published by a given company were heard as frequently as possible. Gershwin’s job was to promote Remick songs to professional singers. Each day, performers would visit the publishing house to try Page | 227

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out the latest products, and Gershwin would play new songs for them on the piano.

If he was lucky, the performer would add a Remick song to their act, thereby providing valuable advertising for the sheet music.

Although Gershwin was good at his job,

he was not content to play songs written by

other people. He began composing his own

songs, and had his first big hit in 1919 with

“Swanee.” As was always the case, “Swanee”

began to sell when it was picked up by a star

performer—in this case, the hottest singer of

the decade, Al Jolson. The song was perfect

for Jolson, for he specialized in blackface

performances of numbers written from an

imagined African American perspective.

“Swanee” joined a long tradition of songs

that expressed a nostalgic longing for the

South. Indeed, Gershwin took the name

“Swanee” from the famous Stephen Foster

song “Old Folks at Home” (1851)—an early

Image 7.10: The cover of the

“plantation song” that used dialect to

sheet music for Gershwin’s 1919

indicate the race of the narrator. Although

hit “Swanee.” A photograph of Al

Jolson, the singer who made it

the text to Gershwin’s song is not in dialect,

famous, appears on the cover.

its stereotyped references to banjos, Dixie,

Source: Wikimedia Commons

and “Mammy” made it clear that the

Attribution: George Gershwin and Irving Caesar

License: Public Domain

narrator was black. None of this proves that

Gershwin harbored any racial animosity of

his own. Instead, it exemplifies how common racist stereotypes were in mainstream entertainment of the era.

Following the success of “Swanee,” Gershwin quickly made a name for himself as a leading composer of Broadway musicals. He worked primarily with his brother Ira, who wrote lyrics. Gershwin moved to Hollywood in 1936 to write music for film musicals, but died suddenly due to a brain tumor in July of 1937, when he was only 38 years old.

The Concert

Whiteman’s Experiment in Modern Music took place on February 12 at Aeolian Hall in New York City. He intended for the concert to be a significant social and cultural event, so all of the prominent performers, conductors, and critics of classical music were invited. This was not Whiteman’s regular audience of enthusiastic young dancers, but rather an audience of skeptical highbrows whom he hoped to win over. The afternoon began, therefore, with a lecture, in which Whiteman explained how his project would benefit the art music community and bring more listeners to the opera house and concert hall.

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The program itself was divided into two

parts. The first ostensibly illustrated the

evolution of jazz, while the second presented

various syntheses of jazz and classical music,

culminating in the premiere of Rhapsody in

Blue. The concert opened with a section entitled

“The True Form of Jazz.” Unsurprisingly,

however, Whiteman’s idea about what

constituted “real jazz” was poorly informed.

The first number on the program was

“Livery Stable Blues,” 3 a piece that has gone down in history as the first ever to be recorded

and marketed as jazz. The record, made in

1917 by the Original Dixieland Jass Band

(the spelling of “jazz” was inconsistent in

early years), had been enormously successful,

thereby launching the jazz craze in Northern Image 7.11: The exterior of cities. However, there was nothing particularly Aeolian Hall in 1916.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

“original” about the band or the record. To Attribution: Unknown begin with, all of the members of the band were License: Public Domain white, while the style in which they played

had most certainly originated in the black communities of New Orleans. (The band leader, Nick LaRocca, created controversy in the 1950s when he continued to aggressively push the ridiculous claim that he had personally invented jazz.) Although the members of the band came from New Orleans, they had settled in Chicago and made a living playing music for dances, and they made their first records in New York City—environments far removed from the birthplace of jazz. Finally, the song itself was a particularly hokey example of Dixieland jazz.

In it, the instrumentalists imitate various barnyard animals, thereby perpetuating stereotypes of black music as primitive and ridiculous.

“Livery Stable Blues” appeared on the B side of the Original 3.

Dixieland Jass Band’s first record, recorded in New York City in 1917.

We will not examine the entire program in similar depth. Whiteman did not offer a particularly insightful survey of jazz history, and his concert was clearly designed to showcase the various capabilities of Whiteman’s band above all else. It also served, as we have seen, to erase the black origins of the style that Whiteman was trying to legitimize.

The second part of the concert began with Victor Herbert’s A Suite of Serenades—

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Image 7.12: The Original Dixieland Jass Band, right around the time they released their first record.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Unknown

License: Public Domain

not particularly jazzy, the suite allowed the band to show off their ability to play highbrow music. The suite’s four movements—Spanish, Chinese, Cuban, and Oriental—reveal that the fascination with exoticism in music that we saw at work in Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker had not died away. This was followed by Rhapsody in Blue, while Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1—a piece that we all recognize from high school and college graduations—ended the program.

Rhapsody in Blue

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue almost never came to be. The composer’s initial response to Whiteman’s request that he write a jazz-inspired concerto had been quite sensible: He said no. After all, Gershwin was a popular song composer, and a busy and successful one at that. He knew that he didn’t have the time to take on the project, and he wasn’t sure that he would be able to do it well. However, just five weeks before the concert was to take place, Ira read an announcement in the New York Tribune that his brother was hard at work on a piece to be premiered as part of the program. After that, Whiteman was able to convince Gershwin to join his project, for he would have been publicly embarrassed if he did not produce the concerto that had already been advertised.

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The Compositional Process

Luckily, Gershwin got some help from

collaborators. Most importantly, while he

composed a version of the concerto for

two pianos (solo and accompaniment), he

did not have to orchestrate it. That work

was done by Ferde Grofé, a composer who

was employed by Whiteman to produce

arrangements for the band. Grofé was

intimately familiar with the ensemble, so

he was able to create parts that showed

Whiteman’s players to their best advantage.

Because he had to use the musicians at hand,

Grofé’s initial orchestration was a little

strange: He created parts for clarinet, various

saxophones, trumpet, horn, trombone,

tuba, string bass, percussion, piano, banjo, Image 7.13: Ferde Grofé had a long and eight violins. After the work proved and successful career as a composer successful, Grofé reorchestrated it, first for a and arranger.

small theater orchestra (1926) and then for Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Bain News Service

full symphony orchestra (1942). When you License: Public Domain hear Rhapsody in Blue today, you might be

hearing any of these versions, although the

last is the most common.

Grofé’s contribution was the most

important—especially since the young

Gershwin did not yet have the skills

necessary to write for a 23-part ensemble like

Whiteman’s. However, he was not the only

collaborator to leave his mark on the concerto.

The famous opening clarinet glissando was

in fact the idea of the man who first played it,

Ross Gorman. Although Gorman first added

the glissando in rehearsal as a joke, Gershwin

liked it and asked him to keep it for the

performance. Finally, the concerto was given

its name by Gershwin’s brother Ira, who had

recently seen an exhibition of paintings by

James McNeill Whistler and was inspired by Image 7.14: Clarinet player Ross Gorman is responsible for the

his color-centric titles (e.g. Nocturne: Blue glissando that opens Rhapsody in and Silver).

Blue.

The process by which Rhapsody in Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Bain News Service

Blue came into being is interesting because License: Public Domain Page | 231

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it sheds light on the collaborative nature of artistic production. We like to think of the composer as a puppet master, controlling all elements of the creation of a new work, but that is almost never the case. It is much more common for musical works to develop through a process of give and take between various creative personalities. This is particularly true in the world of musical theater and opera, where Gershwin himself felt most at home.

All the same, it was Gershwin who came up with the melodies and decided how to use them. In 1931, Gershwin described how the idea for the concerto came to him:

It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer – I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise. [...] And there I suddenly heard, and even saw on paper

– the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.

To create the concerto, it seems that Gershwin turned to his store of tune ideas left over from previous projects. This was a typical way for popular song writers to work. As Gershwin was developing songs for the musical theater stage, he would write dozens of melodies, although only some would end up in the final compositions. He never discarded a melody, however. Instead, he set it aside for future inspiration. This approach would have helped him to put together his concerto relatively quickly, since he wasn’t starting from scratch: He already had the five themes that were to constitute the new work.

The Themes

For the sake of facilitating discussion of the music, analysts have named Gershwin’s five themes, and they are known today as the “ritornello,” 4 “train,” 5

“stride,” 6 “shuffle,”7 and “love”8 themes. A ritornello, as you might recall from Chapter 4, is a theme that returns frequently throughout a work. The other themes are named after associations: the train theme has the propulsive rhythms of a train, the stride theme has the characteristics of stride-style piano playing (a descendent of ragtime piano playing), the shuffle theme would have been suitable for the contemporary dance of that name, and the love theme is slow and romantic.

4.

The “ritornello” theme.

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5.

The “train” theme.

6.

The “stride” theme.

7.

The “shuffle” theme.

8.

The “love” theme.

Rhapsody in Blue

Composer: George Gershwin, orchestrated by

Ferde Grofé

Performance: Michael Tilson Thomas with the

Columbia Jazz Band (1976)

Time

Form

What to listen for

Part 1

Clarinet solo featuring the famous ascending

0’00”

Introduction

glissando

Ritornello

0’09”

Played by the clarinet

theme

Stride

0’40”

Heard in the muted horns

theme

Ritornello

Played first by a muted trumpet, then the entire

0’54”

theme

ensemble

This melodic fragment comes from Gerswin’s hit

“The Man I

1’10”

song “The Man I Love”; it is heard throughout

Love” tag

the concerto

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In these passages, the soloist demonstrates their

1’24”

Piano solo

virtuosity

Ritornello

1’46”

Heard in the solo piano

theme

2’18”

Piano solo

Ritornello

This fast-paced version features various sections

2’45”

theme

in turn

Part 2

Heard first in the muted trumpets, then

3’09”

Train theme

saxophone

Stride

3’29”

Heard first in the clarinet, then the full ensemble

theme

Shuffle

Heard first in the saxophones, then the

4’12”

theme

trombones, then the full ensemble

4’55”

Piano solo

Stride

5’10”

Heard in the solo piano

theme

Ritornello

Heard first in the piano, then in the ensemble

6’24”

theme

with virtuosic piano accompaniment

Shuffle

7’14”

Heard in the solo piano

theme

Part 3

8’12”

At this point, the tempo greatly accelerates

Heard first in the strings, then in the full

8’27”

Love theme

ensemble, then in the solo piano

Part 4

The virtuosic passage builds energy and

11’02”

Piano solo

transitions into the finale

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The brass play a fast version of the theme, which

11’54”

Love theme

is at first in the minor mode

Stride

Following a dramatic build-up, the full ensemble

12’50”

theme

plays this theme

Ritornello

13’16”

Heard in the full ensemble

theme

“The Man I

12’28”

Heard in the solo piano

Love” tag

All five themes are in major, but feature the added scale degrees—a flat third and seventh and a raised fourth—that are often heard in jazz. (This set of pitches is referred to as the blues scale.) The themes also contain syncopated rhythms, unexpected accents, and surprising shifts between duple and triple subdivisions.

All of this, combined with the orchestration of the accompaniment, brings the sound of “jazz” to the concerto. What draws Rhapsody into the “classical” world is its length, internal variation, and formal complexity, for Gershwin used these themes to craft a 16-minute work that explores a variety of emotional states.

Although it is performed without any pauses, Rhapsody in Blue is in four distinct parts. The opening section features the ritornello theme. A second section brings in the train, stride, and shuffle themes. A third, slow section focuses on the love theme, and an exciting finale revisits the stride and love themes before concluding with the ritornello theme.

Reception

Following its premier, many critics accused Rhapsody in Blue of not having form. What they meant, however, was that it didn’t meet their expectations for concert music. Writing in 1955, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein suggested that Rhapsody was not a real composition because it lacked the sense of inevitability that is communicated by Beethoven’s music. While a work like Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 seems to move inexorably forward from beginning to end, Bernstein argued, the sections of Rhapsody could be reordered, rearranged, or even eliminated without damaging the overall work. Indeed, Rhapsody has been published, performed, and recorded in many different versions of various lengths, while Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is a fixed work for a specific cast of players. Gershwin, however, was coming from a different musical world, and his values were not those of Beethoven (although he certainly knew much about the classical tradition).

Despite some pushback from critics, Whiteman’s Experiment in Modern Music was a hit. After repeating the concert in various upscale New York venues, Page | 235

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Whiteman took it on a national tour. ( Pomp and Circumstance, which reviewers found anticlimactic and gratuitous, was eliminated from the program.) The recording of Rhapsody in Blue sold millions of copies, and the work soon became a concert standard for piano soloists. In 1980, United Airlines negotiated for the use of Rhapsody in advertisements, and in 1999 the work was featured in the Disney film Fantasia 2000. Although Rhapsody’s enormous popular success caused early critics to be suspicious of its status as art, it is recognized today as one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. However, we should not forget the disturbing racism of the concert project that brought this piece into existence.

1933: A CENTURY OF PROGRESS

Just a few years later, race became the

focal point of another important concert.

This time, however, the object was to

celebrate the accomplishments of African

American composers and performers in the

overwhelmingly white world of European-

inspired orchestral music. The concert in

question took place as part of the 1933-34

Chicago World’s Fair, titled “A Century of

Progress,” and it is remembered for the first

performance of a symphony composed by an

African American woman, Florence Beatrice

Price.

The Composer

Florence Price (1887-1953) was born to Image 7.15: The poster for the upper-class parents in Little Rock, Arkansas. 1933-34 Chicago World’s Fair, “A At the time, the population of Little Rock was Century of Progress.”

one-third African American and the city had a Source: Wikipedia Attribution: Weimer Pursell

thriving and self-sufficient black community. License: Public Domain Her father was the city’s only black dentist,

while her mother was a successful real estate investor. Both of Price’s parents had been born free, and both had enjoyed the advantages of a good education. As such, they considered themselves responsible for furthering the uplift of the black community in Little Rock by promoting education and the arts.

In 1903, Price left Little Rock to study music at the New England Conservatory, where she quickly rose to the top of her class. She was invited to study with the most exclusive composition teacher, and graduated in just three years with diplomas in piano teaching and organ performance. Upon completing her education, she returned home to carry on the uplift mission of her parents. She taught music at black colleges near Little Rock until 1910, when her father died. After a further Page | 236

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two years teaching at Clark University in Atlanta, Price returned to Little Rock to marry the city’s leading black lawyer. In keeping with social expectations, she gave up her college teaching career to raise children, but she also took the opportunity to return to composition.

The Prices settled in Little Rock, despite the fact that life was becoming increasingly difficult for the black community there. Jim Crow laws instituted in the 1890s had greatly reduced the opportunities for African Americans, and lynching became increasingly common. In 1927, the Prices determined that they could no longer tolerate the oppressive social climate and moved to Chicago, joining the wave of black Americans who left the South during the Jim Crow era.

In Chicago, Price quickly became involved with various organizations concerned with the advancement of African Americans and women in music. These included the Chicago Music Association (the local branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians) and the Chicago Club of Women Organists, of which she was the first black member. As her husband’s career floundered, Price became the primary breadwinner. In addition to her serious concert music, Price composed popular songs, church music, and educational pieces for piano students, and during the Great Depression she took a job as a theater organist, accompanying silent films.

Her husband did not adapt to his change in fortunes well, and soon became abusive.

Price secured a divorce and custody of their two children in 1931.

Despite financial and personal struggles, the 1930s would see Price emerge as a composer of national significance. In addition to Symphony No. 1, Price composed other large-scale symphonic works, including her Piano Concerto in One Movement (1934) and her Symphony No. 3 (1938-40), both of which were premiered by major orchestras and praised by critics. In 1935 she returned in triumph to Little Rock, where she gave a concert of her piano music to benefit the underfunded black high school from which she had graduated. And in 1939, the renowned soprano Marian Anderson closed another famous concert, given from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, with Price’s arrangement of the African American spiritual “My Soul’s been Anchored in de Lord.” (Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the Revolution refused her permission to rent Constitution Hall on the basis of her race.) Anderson became a great admirer of Price and sang many of her songs, thereby further raising Price’s visibility at the national level.

All the same, Price never broke into the very highest echelons of American concert life—those guarded by the elite institutions of New England. For a full decade, she wrote regular letters to the director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, asking that he consider programming her music. In the most famous of these, written in 1943, she opened by directly addressing the two nearly insurmountable challenges that had impeded her career throughout her life: “To begin with I have two handicaps

– those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.”

Price went on to clarify that she was not expecting special consideration, but asked only that her work be judged on its own merits. Despite her efforts, however, Price’s orchestral music was not heard on the East Coast in her lifetime.

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The Concert

In 1932, Frederick Stock, conductor of the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was appointed

music advisor for the upcoming Chicago

World’s Fair, “A Century of Progress.” Stock

had already made a name for himself as a

champion of American music. Although the

American concert establishment of the early

20th century was dominated by German-

speaking emigres (Stock himself was born in

Prussia), Stock broke new ground in 1917 by

committing to include music by at least one

American composer in each of his concerts.

He was often ridiculed for doing so, as many

critics still believed that European music was

inherently superior. Stock doubled down with

his vision for the World’s Fair, however,

promising to showcase “Chicago talent first Image 7.16: Frederick Stock, and American talent second” while keeping conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1905

European representation “drastically limited.”

to 1942.

Stock became aware of Price that same Source: Wikimedia Commons year after her Symphony No. 1 took first prize Attribution: Unknown License: Public Domain

in the orchestral division of the Rodman

Wanamaker Competition, which since 1927

had offered recognition to the best African

American composers. Price also earned an

honorable mention in the same division and

won prizes with two of her piano pieces, while

the song prize was secured by her friend and

student Margaret Bonds. In the end, these two

Chicago women walked away with all of the

top honors.

Stock immediately approached Price

about premiering her Symphony No. 1 in

connection with “A Century of Progress.” He

imagined it as part of a program celebrating

the accomplishments of black composers

and performers, with an emphasis on those

with ties to Chicago. It seems that Stock was

also interested in emphasizing the legacy of Image 7.17: Composer and pianist Margaret Bonds in 1956.

African American music, for he specifically Source: Wikimedia Commons programmed works that drew from black Attribution: Carl Van Vechten traditions such as jazz and spirituals.

License: Public Domain

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Before we examine Price’s symphony, we

must address the other components of the

program. We will begin with the composers.

Perhaps the best known in 1933 was Samuel

Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), an English

composer of mixed race. Coleridge-Taylor had

visited the United States several times and

was interested in the use of African American

folk music in concert works. The program

included an aria from his cantata Hiawatha’s

Wedding Feast—a decidedly American topic—

and Bamboula, a piece inspired by African

dance rhythms.

The other featured composer was

John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951), whose

jazz-influenced Concertino for Piano and

Image 7.18: Composer Samuel

Orchestra occupied the central position in the

Coleridge-Taylor around 1905.

program. Carpenter was a white composer, but

Source: Wikipedia

Stock clearly considered his work to display

Attribution: Unknown

License: Public Domain

black musical influence. He was also a Chicago

resident. Carpenter’s Concertino was in the

tradition of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in

Blue, which had been performed the night

before as part of an American program. In

fact, Carpenter even brought Gershwin with

him to the premiere!

The piano soloist was none other than

Margaret Bonds, who had recently won

composition prizes alongside Price. Performing

Carpenter’s Concertino was not Bonds’s only

contribution to the concert, however. She

also spent many long nights helping Price

to copy out the parts to her symphony. Price

had a particularly busy year, and was not able

to abandon her work as a pianist, lecturer,

choir director, and radio arranger in order to

Image 7.19: Tenor Roland Hayes

focus on the premiere of Symphony No. 1. As

in 1954.

a result, many members of the black musical

Source: Wikimedia Commons

community rallied to her aid.

Attribution: Carl Van Vechten

License: Public Domain

At the top of the bill was Roland Hayes, a

well-known tenor who would later become the

first African American to record music from the European concert tradition. Hayes sung one such piece on the Chicago concert: an aria by the French composer Hector Page | 239

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Berlioz. By doing so, he demonstrated that he was the artistic equal to any white singer. His other selections, however, were all linked with black culture. Near the end of the program, Hayes sang two spirituals, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and

“Bye and Bye.” The first had been arranged by the great African American singer and composer Henry T. Burleigh, while the second was Hayes’s own arrangement.

He also sang the Coleridge-Taylor aria.

There was one other piece on the program: John Powell’s concert overture In Old Virginia. Powell (1882-1963) was another white composer, although he was known for incorporating Southern folk melodies—often of African American origin—into his music. Powell was also an outspoken white supremacist and advocate of eugenics. As an active contributor to Virginian political life, he helped to imagine and author the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which set out to define and separate the “white” and “colored” races. According to the Act, even a single drop of non-white blood in an individual’s ancestry qualified that person as “colored,”

meaning that they were subject to Jim Crow segregation and could not enter into marriage with a “white” person. This is but one item among many in Powell’s anti-black legacy, and his inclusion on the “Century of Progress” emphasizes the great deal of progress that was still left to be made.

Price’s symphony was well-received by both the public and the critics. Wearing an elegant, floor-length white gown, she was repeatedly called to the stage by a rapturous audience to take bows following the premiere. The black press generally praised her symphony as a great achievement on behalf of the African American community. Writing for the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, Robert Abbott described what the premiere meant to his readers: “First there was a feeling of awe as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, an aggregation of master musicians of the white race, and directed by Frederick Stock, internationally known conductor, swung in to the beautiful, harmonious strains of a composition by a Race woman.”

White critics tended to praise the music as a fine contribution to the European concert tradition. Eugene Stinson of the Chicago Daily News, for example, described Symphony No. 1 as a “faultless work” that “is worthy of a place in the repertory.”

Symphony No. 1

Florence Price belonged to the cultural movement now known as the Harlem Renaissance, and much of her music exemplified its values. The Harlem Renaissance was driven by African American artists and intellectuals living and working in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, although its influence spread across the nation. These cultural leaders took pride in their ancestry and encouraged the celebration of black heritage in literary and artistic works. By contributing to and elevating a rich tradition of African American culture, they hoped to improve life for the entire black community.

Symphony No. 1 provides a characteristic example of Price’s engagement with her musical heritage. It was not her tendency to directly quote African American Page | 240

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music in her compositions. However, she was deeply influenced by the tonal, rhythmic, and textural characteristics of such music, and she wove these elements into traditional European forms to create sophisticated concert works from a uniquely black perspective.

Because she was working in the European tradition, the overall form of Price’s symphony is the same at Beethoven’s. It begins with a long movement in sonata form. Next is a slow movement, followed by a dance movement, while the finale is fast-paced and exciting. We looked at the first and last movements of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, so we will examine the two internal movements of Price’s Symphony No. 1.

Movement II

Symphony No. 1, Movement II

Composer: Florence Price

Performance: Fort Smith Symphony, conducted

by John Jeter (2019)

Time

Form

What to listen for

This hymn-like theme is played in the brass and

accompanied by an African drum; clarinets and

0’00”

A

flutes echo each phrase in a call-and-response

texture

The strings play a mournful, descending theme

that outlines a pentatonic scale and includes

1’57”

B

bluesy elements, including a slide and unusual

harmonies

3’37”

A

A phrase of the A theme leads into an extended

4’52”

Development

development-like passage in which the A and B

themes are explored and transformed

6’48”

The B theme returns, first in the oboe

This time, an active clarinet line accompanies

9’31”

A’

the hymn-like theme, the phrases of which are

interspersed with bells

The entire orchestra plays the A theme; clarinet

11’22”

Coda

and cello solos lead into the final chord

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The second movement begins with a theme that sounds like it might be a hymn.

Several characteristics of the music combine to create this impression. To begin with, the melody is slow and stately. It is played on brass instruments, which have a long association with the church. Finally, the texture is that of a Christian hymn.

The melody is clearly in the top voice, but all of the voices move in coordination, executing the same rhythmic patterns. This is called homophonic texture.

Despite all of these clear indicators, however, what we are hearing is not a real hymn, but rather a hymn-like theme composed by Price.

Price had several good reasons to base her slow movement on such a theme.

There was a long tradition of including hymn themes in symphonies, especially among composers who wished to demonstrate national pride. Ever since the early 19th century, music of the Christian church has been used to signify national identity by European composers. In addition, Price herself was deeply committed to her religious beliefs and would have been inclined to express herself in the musical language of the church. Finally, her orchestration in this movement reveals the influence of the church organ—an instrument that Price performed on and wrote for.

Price’s hymn theme has several characteristics that betray African American influence. The first is the irregular length of its opening two phrases, each of which is five measures long. Similar phrasing can be found in African American spirituals, which seem to have provided Price with a model. Each of these phrases is followed by a short echo from the winds—an example of the call-and-response technique prevalent in black music. Finally, the hymn is accompanied by an African drum, one of several instruments that Price added to the standard orchestral percussion section. Another is the orchestral bells, which are heard later in the movement.

To complement the hymn theme, Price introduces a contrasting second theme in the violins, which play a descending melody that outlines a pentatonic scale. A pentatonic scale is a five-pitch subset of a major or minor scale; this one includes scale degrees 1 3 4 5 and 7 of a minor scale. Pentatonic scales are typical of indigenous music traditions found around the world, so the missing scale degrees give this theme a folk-like feel. At the same time, bluesy elements identify its character as uniquely African American. A descending slide is reminiscent of blues guitar playing. This is followed immediately by some blues-inspired harmonies, which include extended chords not often heard in European-style concert music and clashes between minor-mode melody and major-mode accompaniment.

The hymn theme returns, but this time it transitions into a lengthy development-like passage that explores the movement’s two themes. First we hear the hymn motif move throughout the orchestra, acquiring various characters and expressions on its journey. Then the second theme returns in the oboe, although a re-harmonization means that it does not sound nearly as mournful. The movement concludes with a dignified return of the hymn theme, which resolves into a peaceful and satisfying final chord.

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Movement III

Symphony No. 1, Movement III “Juba Dance”

Composer: Florence Price

Performance: Fort Smith Symphony, conducted by

John Jeter (2019)

Time

Form

What to listen for

Rondo

The violins play a syncopated pentatonic melody

0’00”

theme A

accompanied by minor-mode harmonies

Rondo

0’18”

The trumpets play a contrasting major-mode melody

theme B

The violins play a minor-mode melody accompanied

0’35”

C

by slide whistle

Rondo

The A theme returns in the winds, now with major-

0’53”

theme A

mode harmonies

Rondo

The trumpets enter with the B theme while the cellos

1’01”

themes

continue to play the A theme

A & B

Rondo

1’10”

The whole orchestra plays the B theme

theme B

1’27”

D

A new melody is heard in the horns

The violins enter with a fragment of the B theme

1’51”

before picking up the D theme

Rondo

The whole orchestra plays the A theme, which is

2’08”

theme A

accompanied by major-mode harmonies

Rondo

2’25”

The whole orchestra plays the B theme

theme B

A surprising harmony begins the transition into

a final triumphant statement of the B theme; the

2’40”

Coda

tempo decreases leading into the final cadence,

which is underscored by rolls on the snare drum

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The third movement is more explicitly African American in character. Price titled it “Juba Dance,” in reference to a traditional dance performed by enslaved people that had roots in African culture. The specific steps of the Juba varied, but it usually contained elements of hand clapping, foot stomping, and body percussion (such as thigh slapping) that became known as “patting juba.” Body percussion played an important role in 19th-century African American music, for it facilitated dancing even in the absence of other instruments. It also replaced traditional percussion instruments, which were outlawed in most of the South; slave holders feared that enslaved people might use drums to communicate between plantations for the purpose of coordinating revolts.

Although other composers had previously used Juba rhythms in their music, Price was the first composer to incorporate Juba influence into a symphony. She considered the rhythmic element in African American music to be of “preeminent importance.” The third movement of Symphony No. 1 opens with a syncopated pentatonic melody in the violins, heard over a steady rhythmic pattern in the lower strings and percussion (we hear African drums again in this movement). The choice of violin for this melody calls to mind an enslaved fiddler, providing dance music on the plantation. The melody itself is intriguing, for it alternates between modes, first seeming to be in the minor mode but later resolving in the relative major. This characteristic is frequently encountered in folk music. Finally, “Juba Dance” requires yet another literal folk instrument: the wind whistle, which has roots in indigenous cultures.

“Juba Dance” is in rondo form, meaning that the opening pair of melodies return throughout. Each time, however, they undergo some sort of change.

Different instruments perform the melodies, and they are accompanied by various countermelodies. In between, contrasting melodic material explores the diverse rhythmic possibilities of African American dance music.

1969: AN AQUARIAN EXPOSITION

Popular Music as Concert Art

All of the concerts we have examined so far have been relatively formal affairs.

They have taken place in concert halls, and the audience members have been expected to sit quietly and give all of their attention to the music. This final aspect is the hallmark of concerts: They are primarily for listening—especially in the world of art music, wherein composers and performers generally expect to have the undivided attention of the audience.

There is a long history of concert presentation in popular music traditions as well. We will focus on those of the United States. In the mid-19th century, for example, the Hutchinson Family Singers became famous for their concerts of songs promoting abolition and women’s rights. Their music was aimed at an educated, middle-class audience; those who wanted more lively entertainment would attend theatrical productions. Although most concerts featured singers, one could also Page | 244

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hear brass band concerts in local parks—or, by the end of the 19th century, even attend one of the lavish concerts put on by the showman John Philip Sousa (see Chapter 12).

For the most part, however, American popular music has historically been found outside of the concert hall. In the early 20th century, one expected to hear the latest hit songs not in concert but as part of musical theater productions, variety shows, and motion picture programs. Likewise, the music played by ragtime pianists and jazz bands was mostly heard in drinking establishments and dance halls. This is one of the reasons that Paul Whiteman’s An Experiment in Modern Music was such a noteworthy event: He expected his audience to sit and listen critically to music that had been consumed primarily in the context of social dancing. Whiteman also sought to blur the lines between popular and art music during a time when the two were considered to be fundamentally different.

Over the subsequent decades, however, this paradigm began to dissolve.

Improvements in recording and broadcasting technology increased the flow of popular music into homes across the nation, and a powerful recording industry soon emerged. In the 1950s, a craze for rock ‘n’ roll swept the youth market. Television played an important role in building enthusiasm for the new musical style, but young people also wanted to see their favorite bands in person. At first, rock ‘n’ roll was primarily dance music. In the 1960s, however, the songs released by popular music labels became increasingly complex and sophisticated. (See, for example, the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, addressed in Chapter 7.) This music—termed rock—was, like classical music, meant primarily for listening.

Rock concerts grew in size and frequency during the 1960s for several reasons.

One was technological. A symphony orchestra can be made louder by adding more instruments; that’s how Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner overwhelmed audiences in the 19th century. A rock band, however, gets louder by using amplification equipment that can produce sound at a higher wattage. The early 1960s saw significant developments in amplification technology that allowed bands to player louder than ever before. This in turn made it possible for rock bands to perform in larger venues, including stadiums and outdoor amphitheaters.

Americans also turned increasingly to popular music as they sought to understand and cope with the turbulent times in which they lived. The 1960s saw domestic upheaval on a level unprecedented since the Civil War of the 1860s.

A series of high-profile political figures were assassinated, one after another: President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and, in 1968, both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The Vietnam War provoked increasingly violent protests, which were to culminate in the Kent State massacre of 1970. The Stonewall riots of 1969 marked the start of the LGBTQ rights movement, while the decade also brought the women’s liberation movement to the forefront of America’s conscious. The civil rights movement saw victories, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but black Americans continued to face discrimination and hate.

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The “classical” music establishment of the 1960s was not well equipped to provide solace or emotional relief to listeners. After World War II, most serious composers abandoned audience-friendly styles in favor of experimental music.

They did so for a variety of reasons: the fear that beautiful music could be turned to evil purposes (see, for example, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in Chapter 10), the conviction that human beings were inherently corrupt and should not use music to express their emotions at all, an intense desire to break completely with the past after the horrors of the war, and sheer fascination with the mathematical and acoustic potentialities of sound. Some composers continued to write beautiful and expressive music that helped listeners to grapple with feelings of loss and disillusionment: Benjamin Britten’s 1962 War Requiem is an excellent example.

For the most part, however, listeners embraced popular performers whose music captured their hopes and frustrations.

As a result of all this, rock artists gained prestige and influence, and the rock concert became a mainstream cultural activity. Economically, 1960s rock concerts served the same purpose as Beethoven’s 1808 concert: They made money for the band and its agents while winning new fans and developing interest in the music.

People also attended for the same reasons (love of music and affirmation of social status), even if they behaved a bit differently. Near the end of the 1960s, concert promoters began to see the possibility of turning even bigger profits by organizing not just concerts but music festivals—multi-day celebrations that would bring together popular bands and attract tens of thousands of patrons.

The first major music festival was the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival in Monterey, CA. This three-day event attracted 50,000 people and was immediately regarded as one of the great cultural landmarks of the decade. Its success inspired a slew of imitations. In 1968, the Newport Pop Festival and the Miami Pop Festival each attracted around 100,000 people, while the next year the Atlanta Pop Festival and the Atlantic City Pop Festival brought in closer to 110,000. However, all of these paled in comparison with the music festival that would go down in history as a watershed not only in the history of popular music but in the history of American culture: the 1969 Aquarian Exposition, better known as Woodstock.

The Festival

Woodstock began as a promotional idea for a new music recording business.

Early in 1969, Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld contacted New York City entrepreneurs Joel Rosenman and John P. Roberts for help financing a small recording studio in the town of Woodstock, NY. Rosenmann and Roberts were skeptical about the studio’s potential for success, but their attention was captured by a passage in the business plan that sketched out a small-scale music festival intended to celebrate the studio opening. They encouraged Lang and Kornfeld to abandon their idea for a studio and instead focus on putting together a festival to Page | 246

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take place in Woodstock. The four young men agreed that the idea was good, and they founded a company, Woodstock Ventures, to facilitate the project.

Lang already had some experience with the business end of music festivals, having co-organized the Miami Pop Festival in 1968. The Miami Pop Festival was small, attracting about 25,000, but it prepared Lang to anticipate the many logistical concerns that the team would face. And the festival at Woodstock wasn’t supposed to be that much larger: The organizers hoped to attract 50,000 people at the most.

Things went wrong from the start. First, the organizers needed to find a location. It was important to them that the setting for the festival be attractive and bucolic, far away from the noise and pollution of the city. They wanted to sell the idea of an escape to nature, where participants could enjoy “3 days of peace & music.” Lang and Kornfeld initially planned to hold the festival in Wallkill, NY, but local residents balked at the idea of a hippie invasion and were able to prevent them from securing the site. Next, they tried to book a venue in Saugerties, NY, but again the deal fell through,

Rosenman and Roberts, growing impatient with the other pair’s failure to confirm a location, leased a 300-acre industrial park in Wallkill for the festival. The town’s residents, however, launched a fierce attack against the project, and in July the Town Board passed a law requiring a permit for gatherings of more than 5,000.

Later in the month, the Wallkill Zoning Board

of Appeals banned the concert altogether on

the grounds of sanitation concerns.

Finally, Rosenman and Roberts were

introduced to dairy farmer Max Yasgur, who

agreed to lease his 600-acre farm outside of

Bethel, NY. Again, however, the organizers

were met with local resistance, and they were

unable to secure building permits from the

Town Board until August 2—less than two

weeks before the advertised start of the festival.

This left the organizers in a very difficult

situation, for they simply did not have time to

erect all of the infrastructure that is necessary

for a large outdoor festival. However, people

were coming: The conflict between the festival

organizers and the authorities in Wallkill had

been widely reported, with the result that far Image 7.20: This early more people knew about the festival than might advertisement lists the wrong location—Wallkill, NY—and omits

have otherwise. About 186,000 advance tickets many of the bands that eventually had already been sold, and the organizers had signed on to play.

reason to believe that a far greater number of Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Chic Chicas

people were planning to attend.

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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The organizers decided to focus their resources on the most important piece of infrastructure, the stage—for what is a music festival, after all, without a stage for the performers. This meant that fencing (to keep out unticketed patrons) and ticket booths (to sell those tickets) were left unbuilt, and Woodstock became, practically speaking, a free festival. (Woodstock Ventures did eventually turn a profit, but most of this came from a documentary made at the festival and released in 1970.) Although the organizers expected crowds, nobody could have imagined that people would flock to the festival in the numbers that they did. The morning of Friday, August 15, saw traffic jams that extended all the way back to New York City. Many people abandoned their cars and walked the final miles to the festival site, while the performers and sound crew had to be brought in by helicopter.

Eventually, a state of emergency was declared in Sullivan County to deal with the unprecedented influx of people. The Governor of New York even threatened to call in the National Guard, but Roberts convinced him not to. All told, nearly 500,000

people attended the festival: ten times more than the organizers had anticipated.

It is on these half a million people that we will now focus. Why did they come?

And why did so many of them come? It is certain that visitors to Woodstock made the pilgrimage for many different reasons. Some were attracted by the rural setting (previous festivals had mostly been in cities). Some were intrigued by rumors about the legal wranglings that had kept the festival out of Wallkill. Some were excited by the lineup of star performers. Whatever their individual reasons for attending, however, almost all of the visitors to Woodstock were seeking some kind of relief in the midst of growing social unrest. Many were disillusioned by President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy, which had so far failed to bring the violence in Vietnam to an end. Others still grieved for Kennedy and King, whose murders came as a devastating blow to the civil rights movement. Woodstock, however, was not about politics—it was about music and community.

Naturally enough, the festival organizers and local government officials were worried about what might happen when nearly 500,000 people came together on a mere 600 acres. Similar gatherings had been marred by violence, and festivals were likely to attract troublemakers. Astonishingly, there were no violent outbreaks of any kind. This is even more remarkable when one considers the fact that the festival’s troubles did not end with traffic. Because of the rush to construct the stage, other facilities were inadequate or non-existent. Camping was crowded, and few visitors were well-prepared. At first there was no food available on site at all; later, festivalgoers waited in line for hours to buy hot dogs.

In addition, it rained. Wind and rain on Sunday afternoon brought the festival to a halt for several hours. Stage hands rushed to cover expensive sound equipment, while audience members huddled under plastic sheets. The fields turned to mud.

All of this could easily have led to discontent and rioting—but instead, the visitors peacefully waited out the storm until the musicians could return to the stage.

The Sunday storm also had a significant impact on Woodstock’s musical legacy.

The festival headliner, Jimi Hendrix, was supposed to close out the program on Page | 248

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Image 7.21: This photograph of the opening ceremony at Woodstock gives an idea of how enormous the crowds were.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Mark Goff

License: Public Domain

Sunday night. Because of storm delays, however, he did not take to the stage until 9 am on Monday morning. His set is remembered as the highlight of the festival.

In particular, his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” has become an iconic cultural artifact representing not only Woodstock but the entire 1960s. However, by Monday morning, only about 30,000 people remained in the audience—everyone else had gone home.

We will consider Hendrix and his performance in detail, but first it is necessary to survey the musical program in general. The first band to sign a contract was Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose fame quickly attracted other major artists to the festival. Other big names included Santana, Janice Joplin, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Also on the program was the North Indian musician Ravi Shankar (discussed in Chapter 6), who had also played for enthusiastic crowds at the Monterey Pop Festival.

Just as interesting is the list of musicians who did not appear at Woodstock—

especially those who are discussed in this book. Bob Dylan actually lived in Woodstock, but had planned a trip overseas to perform at the Isle of Wight Festival.

Simon and Garfunkel were working on a new album. And The Beatles had already given up live performance for good.

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Jimi Hendrix’s Set: “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Purple Haze”

Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) was the most accomplished and influential guitar player of the 1960s. He entranced audiences with his virtuosic feats and inspired a new generation of performers to treat their instruments as tools not only for the production of melodies and harmonies but for the sculpting of sound. His influence was particularly strong on Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page, all of whom responded to his unique ability to combine incredible musicianship with an innovative use of amplifier distortion and other effects to create sounds hitherto unheard. He experimented with a range of timbres that often crossed over into the world of pure noise, but which defined his playing and enlivened his studio albums—all five of which reached the Top 10 in the Billboard charts.

Image 7.22: This photograph of Jimi Hendrix was taken during a 1967 performance in Helsinki.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Hannu Lindroos

License: Public Domain

Henrix was born in Seattle, WA, where he began playing the guitar at the age of 15. He was particularly influenced by Elvis Presley and blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, and he spent his spare time learning their tunes by ear.

Hendrix had a difficult childhood. His father was serving in the US Army at the time of his birth. Following his discharge at the conclusion of World War II, the family struggled financially and both parents took to abusing alcohol, resulting in Hendrix’s mother’s death at the age of 33. Hendrix himself joined the Army after Page | 250

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getting into trouble with the law as a teenager. He trained as a paratrooper, but his unprofessional behavior (he played guitar constantly, slept at his post, and failed to report for inspections) led to an honorable discharge on June 29, 1962, just over a year after he had enlisted.

Freed from his military obligations, Hendrix took to music as a full-time pursuit.

He first moved to Clarksville and then to Nashville, TN, where he had access to a variety of performance opportunities. Hendrix found work playing with bands that toured the Chitlin’ Circuit, which was a collection of Southern and Midwestern music venues that were friendly to African American performers during the Jim Crow era.

All the same, Hendrix found his career opportunities limited by his race. In addition to the fact that he faced discrimination at performance venues, he also found that mainstream ideas about black musicians prevented him from playing the music he really loved. In Tennessee, Hendrix mostly played rhythm ‘n’ blues, the most prominent genre of popular music associated with the black community.

However, he felt an affinity for rock music and considered himself to be a rock guitarist. It was therefore difficult for him to fit into the American music scene.

Image 7.23: Hendrix became known for his flamboyant stage antics, including playing the guitar with his teeth.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Marjut Valakivi

License: Public Domain

In 1966, Hendrix solved this problem by moving to London. There, he put together a rock trio with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. They called themselves the Jimi Hendrix Experience and immediately made a splash on stage and in the recording studio. We have already seen how 1960s music was dominated by British bands in what has been termed the British Invasion. In a Page | 251

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way, Hendrix himself became a British Invasion artist. His fame in the UK allowed Hendrix to remake his image and return to the United States under his own terms.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience made their US debut at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, where Hendrix astonished music fans and performers alike with his ability as a guitarist (and his stage antics: he set his guitar on fire).

He was therefore a natural choice for Woodstock, where he was paid the top fee of $18,000. Hendrix came to the festival with his new band, Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, although they were famously mis-introduced by the announcer as the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The band included several of Hendrix’s associates from Tennessee, including bassist Billy Cox and second guitarist Larry Lee. Additional percussion was provided by Juma Sultan and Gerardo “Jerry” Velez.

However, Hendrix almost didn’t go on stage. He was upset by media reports suggesting that the festival was in shambles, and discouraged by the number of attendees: Hendrix didn’t like playing for large crowds. As of Saturday afternoon, he was still refusing to perform, but his manager finally talked him into fulfilling his contract. It took the band hours to make their way to the festival by car, where they found that no dressing rooms had been constructed. The newly-formed band was also under-rehearsed. According to Sultan, “We did not have a plan, we didn’t know what he was gonna play.” Although the set was recorded, two of Hendrix’s numbers from Woodstock have never been released—his estate has declared that they do not meet the required performance standard and has persistently refused to allow publication.

Despite shortcomings, the two-hour performance has been described in transcendent terms by those who were there. Sultan provides the perspective of a band member: “It felt like three minutes, I walked out there, the sun was coming up and there was a sea of people, all this good energy, they were coming with the sun and light, it was overpowering. We could have played for hours more. . .” We will consider an eight-minute segment from near the end of Hendrix’s set containing

“The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Purple Haze.”

“The Star-Spangled Banner”

Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” 9 has been remembered as the culmination of Woodstock—a seemingly improvised expression conjured in the moment to express the hopes and fears of the crowds that had gathered there.

In reality, Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner” was neither an improvisation—a rendition created in the act of performance—nor was it original to the festival. In fact, he had performed the national anthem more than thirty-five times in the month prior Woodstock, and would continue to include it in his concert appearances for the remainder of his career, making for a total of over sixty performances. What the audience heard was his carefully-considered arrangement of the national anthem for solo electric guitar.

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“The Star-Spangled Banner”

9.

Composer: John Stafford Smith/Francis Scott Key

Performance: Jimi Hendrix (1969)

Before we can address his arrangement, however, we need to consider the equipment that Hendrix used to create his sounds. At Woodstock, Hendrix played a white 1968 Fender Stratocaster (serial no. 240981) that collectors call the “White One,” owing to its Olympic White finish. Though he ate and wrote right-handed, Hendrix usually played guitar left-handed, strumming with his left hand. As seen in the documentary Woodstock, he played the “White One” (and most of his other guitars) upside down, restrung with light-gauge Fender “Rock ’n’ Roll” strings for left-handed playing. Hendrix’s Woodstock amplifier was a UK-built, 100-watt Marshall Super Lead, model 1959, known as the “Plexi” amp, which drove four 4-12 Marshall speaker cabinets that had been specially constructed for the festival.

Between his guitar and amplifier, Hendrix used a series of three effects devices.

First came a Vox wah-wah pedal, his use of which is particularly audible in the

“Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” introduction. The “small Fasel inductor coils in the Italian-made original were an important part of Jimi’s distinctive tone,” explains Paul Balmer. Next, there was a red Arbiter Fuzz Face,

a primitive but effective mini amp, acting as a preamp stage [to overload the Marshall’s front end,] generating a rich harmonic distortion. [Its]

germanium transistors were either two NKT275s or [two] AC128s.

This detail was important, as was the matching of these wayward early transistors: a good, well-matched pair sounded terrific, but if poorly matched, they sounded like a mistake. . . .

The other [effect] on the Woodstock stage [was] a Uni-Vibe (an early four-stage phaser effect first developed in Japan by the Shin-Ei company): the second “volume pedal”-like device seen in the film footage at Woodstock is part of this Uni-Vibe rig.

Hendrix positioned “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the climax of his set. He began the anthem’s four minute and thirty-eight second-long performance in a relatively subdued manner, with minimal ornamentation of the melody in the course of its first two phrases (that is, through the word “gleaming”). The first instance of what could be described as text painting occurs at the end of phrase 3, on the word “fight,” at which point the undulating melodic motion in his descending run can be heard as a Vietnam-era representation of the conflict that Francis Scott Key had witnessed more than 150 years earlier. From this point, the performance intensifies, and Key’s text provides ample opportunity for Hendrix to dazzle the crowd. At the beginning of phrase 5 (on the word “rockets”), he employs the wah-wah pedal for the first time, launching into a programmatic depiction of a Page | 253

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fierce battle. Here, too, he first uses the Strat’s whammy bar, to great effect. (This

“tremolo arm” is attached to the guitar’s bridge, allowing the player to produce vibrato. Because he typically played a right-handed guitar upside down, Hendrix, as clearly shown in Woodstock, developed a unique technique.) As the battle rages on, an even longer programmatic passage can be heard at the end of the fifth phrase, following the words “bombs bursting in air.” By the end of the sixth phrase (with the words “flag was still there”), the battle has drawn to a close, and the time has come to bury the dead.

At this point, Hendrix interpolates the first half of “Taps.”10 “Taps” is a solo bugle call that, in its official version, is performed by members of the US military at military funerals and on a few other occasions. For older audience members, this quotation might also have been reminiscent of the first two lines in the refrain of the well-known patriotic song “Over There,”11 by George M. Cohan (1878–1942).

Cohen wrote “Over There” in 1917 to inspire military enlistment after the US

entered the First World War. (The song enjoyed renewed popularity in the early 1940s, with the country’s entrance into WWII.) Quoted below are Cohan’s original lyrics for the refrain:

Over there, over there,

Send the word, send the word over there

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming The drums rum-tumming ev’rywhere.

So prepare, say a prayer,

Send the word, send the word to beware

We’ll be over, we’re coming over,

And we won’t come back till it’s over over there.

This moving performance of “Taps” appears on the official

10.

YouTube channel of the U.S. Navy Band.

This early recording of “Over There” was made by soprano

11.

Nora Bayes on July 13, 1917.

Paired with their arpeggio-laden melody, the first two lines of this refrain comprise an obvious example of word painting: Cohan’s melody resembles a military bugle or trumpet call.

Following Taps, Hendrix concluded his rendition of the national anthem with a rousing performance of its refrain. (Textually, as shown in Chapter 9, the final two lines of each of its four stanzas are very similar.) Here, in a vivid example of Page | 254

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text painting on the word “wave,” he uses the guitar’s whammy bar to produce a steadily widening vibrato that clearly depicts a flag waving in the breeze.

Almost immediately, Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner”

was widely criticized. Negative commentators focused on its non-traditional aspects, and some accused the guitarist of disrespecting our national anthem. In late August 1969, less than two weeks after Woodstock, Hendrix addressed the issue during a press conference promoting his upcoming benefit concert for the United Block Association (UBA) of Harlem (New York). Having been asked why he had chosen to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the festival, Hendrix responded, comparing his interpretation to earlier, more traditional ones: Oh, because we’re all Americans. We’re all Americans, aren’t we? It was written and played in a very beautiful, what they call a beautiful state.

Nice, inspiring, your heart throbs, and you say, “Great. I’m American.” But nowadays when we play it, we don’t play it to take away all this greatness that America is supposed to have. We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, isn’t it?

This response is consistent with his others to similar questions about his decision, and taken together, they tend to reveal his iconic performance to be less about partisan politics and more about a longing for peace, a desire that all Americans can embrace. In his September 1969 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, 12 Hendrix

denied that the rendition was “unorthodox,” adding, “I thought it was beautiful.”

Looking back twenty years later, Hendrix scholar Charles Shaar Murray praised the performance as “probably the most complex and powerful work of American art to deal with the Vietnam War and its corrupting, distorting effect on successive generations of the American psyche.”

Hendrix appeared on The Dick Cavett Show on September 12.

9, 1969.

“Purple Haze”

After finishing his rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock, Hendrix transitioned directly into one of his biggest hits, “Purple Haze.”13 This

song will serve as a good example of the psychedelic rock sound developed by Hendrix and his UK bandmates. It will also allow us glimpses of Hendrix the songwriter, the recording artist, and the live performer.

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“Purple Haze”

13.

Composer: Jimi Hendrix

Performance: The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1970)

Like many popular songs, “Purple Haze” emerged out of a collaborative experimental process. In late 1966, Hendrix was still seeking to develop his signature sound. The Jimi Hendrix Experience had landed their first hit on the UK

charts in December, but Hendrix didn’t think that the song, “Hey Joe,” accurately reflected the band’s character, and he promised fans that the next single would be something special. “Purple Haze” began as a guitar riff—a brief melodic fragment that eventually came to be repeated

throughout the final song. Hendrix’s

producer, Chas Chandler, thought that the

riff had potential and encouraged Hendrix

to develop it into a song. According to

Chandler, Hendrix finished writing “Purple

Haze” in a backstage dressing room on

December 26.

On January 11, 1967, Hendrix taught

the song to his bandmates and they made

the initial recording in just three takes. The

process, however, was far from finished.

Chandler and Hendrix continued to discuss

the track over the coming month, returning Image 7.24: The Jimi Hendrix to the studio to record additional elements Experience consisted of Hendrix, whenever they had an idea. Chandler then drummer Mitch Mitchell, and bassist applied various effects to the recording. The Noel Redding.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

final song, therefore, was the product of an Attribution: VARA extended period of studio experimentation, License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Netherlands not a single recording session. This method

of creating music had only recently become available with the advent of multitrack recording, which allows sounds recorded at different times to be combined.

Although the process by which “Purple Haze” came into the world is complicated, at least it can be explained. The same is not true of the song’s lyrics.

When asked what “Purple Haze” was about, Hendrix never gave the same answer twice. Once he said that the song was inspired by “a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.” Another time he claimed that it captured a mythical scene, perhaps

“the history of the wars on Neptune.” Yet another time he said that it was a love song. Some have connected it with an episode from Hendrix’s life, who claimed to have been the victim of a voodoo spell cast by a girl he met while living in New York City. Music scholar Harry Shapiro has argued that the song was inspired by a book Hendrix was reading at the time, Frank Waters’ Book of the Hopi (1963), Page | 256

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which describes Hopi rituals and legends. Finally, listeners have usually assumed that the song describes the experience of taking hallucinogenic drugs—something that Hendrix and other musicians certainly did, but which they could not explicitly reference in songs for fear of being banned from the airwaves.

To further complicate matters, Hendrix once claimed that “Purple Haze”

originally had “a thousand” words, but that Chandler had forced him to reduce the length of the song by cutting verses. (Chandler did in fact help Hendrix to trim his lengthy tracks so that they would be suitable for radio play—a process that they both agreed made the songs better.) However, no additional verses to the song have ever surfaced.

The meaning of the lyrics probably doesn’t matter all that much. Hendrix, after all, was a guitarist, and his songs were primarily vehicles for his virtuosic playing.

It is certainly the guitar part that made this song a hit. The guitar introduction to

“Purple Haze” features a sequence of dissonant harmonies (better heard on the studio recording than in our performance) followed by an angular melody that rises and falls. Next, Hendrix lays out the harmonic progression that will be heard under the verses—the first chord of which has in fact come to be known as the

“Hendrix chord,” due to its scarcity in the playing of others. The guitar is heavily distorted throughout, and Hendrix uses feedback as a musical device.

For reasons of video quality, we will consider Hendrix’s performance of “Purple Haze” not at Woodstock but at the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival. In some respects, a live performance of “Purple Haze” might be considered inferior to the studio recording: The overdubbed vocals are lost, as are the various post-production effects. What we gain, however, is Hendrix’s extraordinary showmanship. To begin with, he doesn’t play the guitar like other people. In addition to holding the instrument backwards, he employs a variety of unorthodox techniques, including playing passages without the use of his left hand. Even more striking is Hendrix’s sexualized handling of the instrument, which he regularly positions between his legs.

The context of a stage performance also gives Hendrix the opportunity to improvise a long, unaccompanied guitar solo at the end of the song. The studio recording likewise ends with a guitar solo, but it is accompanied by drums and bass throughout and characterized by the use of an Octavia effects unit, which produces high, ringing overtones. In this performance, Hendrix appears to have relied on his guitar’s inbuilt sound production capabilities. Although limited in his access to effects, Hendrix was no longer confined to the limited time frame of a pop single.

He takes exactly the same amount of time—two minutes and ten seconds—in both the studio recording and stage performance to get through the scripted parts of the song: introductory riff, verse 1, guitar interlude, verse 2, guitar solo, verse 3. We can assume, however, that Hendrix conceived of the remainder of the song as a space for improvisatory exploration. In the Atlanta performance, he takes another minute and forty seconds to wow the audience with his bombastic playing.

His appearance at the Atlanta Pop Festival turned out to be one of Hendrix’s final live performances. Just over two months later, he was found unresponsive Page | 257

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in a London apartment. His death was attributed to asphyxiation following an overdose on barbiturates. The loss of Hendrix at the age of 27 is considered one of the greatest tragedies in the history of rock music. He was still at the beginning of what promised to be a dazzling career. In fact, he had just opened Electric Lady Studio in New York City and was looking forward to having greater creative autonomy as a recording artist. Hendrix, of course, was not the only victim of the drug-fueled popular music scene. His death reminds us that fame and success do not make life easy.

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER LEARNING

Print

Balmer, Paul. The Fender Stratocaster Handbook: How To Buy, Maintain, Set Up, Troubleshoot, and Modify Your Strat. Voyageur Press, 2012.

Brown, Rae Linda. “Lifting the Veil: The Symphonies of Florence B. Price.” Forward to Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 by Florence Price. A-R Editions, 2008.

Clague, Mark. “‘This Is America’: Jimi Hendrix’s Star-Spangled Banner Journey as Psychedelic Citizenship.” Journal of the Society for American Music 8, no. 4

(2014), 435-478.

Lang, Michael. The Road to Woodstock. HarperCollins, 2009.

Murray, Charles Shaar. Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and the Post-War Rock

’n’ Roll Revolution. St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Roby, Steven, ed. Hendrix on Hendrix: Interviews and Encounters with Jimi Hendrix. Chicago Review Press, 2012.

Schiff, David. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Shapiro, Harry and Caesar Glebbeek. Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy. St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Taruskin, Richard. Music in the Early Twentieth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Taruskin, Richard. Music in the Nineteenth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Online

Jas Obrecht, “Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock Setup: Guitar, Amps, Effects,” Jas

Obrecht Music Archive: http://jasobrecht.com/jimis-woodstock-setup/

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8Listening at Home and at Court

Esther M. Morgan-Ellis and Louis Hajosy

INTRODUCTION

Today, you can enjoy almost any kind of music in the privacy of your home.

In fact, it seems likely that every kind of music is heard through headphones and stereo speakers more often than it is heard live. However, it is important to address the contexts for which music is created, and only certain types of music have traditionally been available for home consumption. In the previous chapter, we examined a series of public concerts and considered musical works that were created for the concert stage. In this chapter, we will focus on musical genres and works that were created explicitly for performance and enjoyment in domestic environments.

We’ve already encountered a few such pieces—Franz Schubert’s “Elf King,” for example (see Chapter 5), which was intended for performance at a living room concert before a small audience. The environment for which this song was created determined many of its characteristics. Because he knew the performance space would be small, Schubert wrote for just two performers. Much later, composers following in Schubert’s footsteps would provide full orchestral accompaniment for their songs, but Schubert used only a piano. At the same time, Schubert’s goals for this song could only be achieved by means of an intimate performance. He sought to communicate an intense drama to a rapt audience. This is not music for a noisy bar or a cavernous hall. Schubert wanted the singer and listener to be physically close and to share an emotional experience.

While we can enjoy public music in private or make private music public (baritone Dietrich Fischer-Diskau’s most famous performance of “The Elf King”

was broadcast on television), the experience is enriched by remembering how the music was meant to be consumed. Knowing about the original performance environment also helps us to understand why certain musical decisions were made. Such considerations will apply to all of the diverse examples in this chapter.

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THE BEATLES, SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS

CLUB BAND

It might seem odd to start with an album by a famous rock ‘n’ roll band who once performed in front of 55,000 fans at Shea Stadium in Queens and appeared frequently on national television. No performers of the era were more public.

However, this album represented a deliberate and explicit break with the concert model, and it was intended to be heard through headphones by attentive, isolated listeners.

Background

Frequently hailed as the greatest album

ever recorded, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts

Club Band (1967) epitomizes a musical work

intended for domestic consumption. In

fact, before even recording the album, The

Beatles themselves knew that its contents

would never be performed publicly. From the

outset, according to producer George Martin,

Sgt. Pepper’s was intended to contain songs

that “couldn’t be performed live: they were

designed to be studio productions.” With their

previous two albums, Rubber Soul (1965) and Image 8.1: The famous album Revolver (1966), The Beatles had matured cover for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely

Hearts Club Band shows The

beyond the rock ’n’ roll of their early period. Beatles dressed as the fictitious (Chronologically and stylistically, Revolver band members in flamboyant, marks the center of the band’s career, and military-style outfits. The crowd behind them includes influential

discussions of their discography tend to place political and cultural figures.

it near the middle of a transitional period from Source: Flickr Rubber Soul to Sgt. Pepper’s.) The Beatles Attribution: Joe Haupt License: CC BY-SA 2.0

represents a continuation and acceleration of

their progression away from Beatlemania and

the British Invasion era.

By the time Sgt. Pepper’s was released, The

Beatles were well on their way to becoming the

most influential band of all time. Along with

Rubber Soul and Revolver, it is remembered as one of the first albums of the album era, a

period from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s Image 8.2: This press photo during which the album, in various formats shows The Beatles in 1965.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

(LP, 8-track, cassette, CD), was the dominant Attribution: EMI medium for recorded music. Increasingly, License: Public Domain Page | 260

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albums came to be seen as more than just cost-effective vehicles for the distribution of hit-single compilations or collections of random songs. Artists had come to view their albums as extended works of art, in which each song was part of a unified whole, and The Beatles were at the forefront of this trend. With Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s, the band, producer George Martin, and engineer Geoff Emerick succeeded in creating albums that were truly greater than the sum of their parts. (At Martin’s request, Emerick was named The Beatles’ engineer in April 1966, just before the Revolver sessions began.) Each album features songwriting that is more sophisticated and explores a wider variety of styles than its predecessor, and each reveals the band’s ever-growing desire to experiment with the latest technological innovations. The impressive production and engineering skills of Martin and Emerick proved invaluable in this latter regard. By approaching the recording studio as another sort of musical instrument, they greatly facilitated The Beatles’ attempts to realize their grand musical ideas. Although it took several hundred hours to record (an exorbitant amount of time by 1960s standards), Sgt.

Pepper’s was a huge hit in the Summer of Love, praised not only for bridging the cultural divide between popular music and high art but also for providing a musical representation of its generation and the contemporary counterculture.

The Beatles began recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on November 24, 1966, in Studio Two at EMI Recording Studios (now Abbey Road Studios), London. Still fresh in their minds were the previous summer’s momentous Image 8.3: This photo shows George Martin working with The Beatles in the recording studio sometime in the mid-1960s.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Capitol Records

License: Public Domain

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events. On June 24, 1966, two days after completing their seventh album, Revolver, The Beatles had begun a tour of West Germany, Japan, the Philippines, and North America. The tour was relatively unsuccessful and plagued by weaker-than-expected ticket sales and run-ins with local authorities and protest groups. It ended with what became the group’s final commercial concert, an eleven-song set at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29. By then, each band member had agreed (probably in St. Louis, on August 21) that The Beatles would never again perform publicly. (They did, however, give one last public performance, from the rooftop of the London headquarters of Apple Corps, Ltd., their multimedia corporation, on January 30, 1969.) Many Beatles scholars consider the band’s August 1966 decision to stop touring to be the most important one of their career. Within days of their August 31

return to London, they parted ways to begin a three-month break.

On November 19, 1966, five days before the Sgt. Pepper’s recording sessions began, Paul McCartney conceived and began developing the idea of an Edwardian-era military band, namely, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, whose members would be The Beatles’ alter egos. The inspiration occurred “suddenly,” during his return flight to London from a short safari vacation to Kenya with his then-girlfriend Jane Asher and Beatles assistant Mal Evans. In the following, McCartney recounts the episode:

I got this idea. I thought, let’s not be ourselves. Let’s develop alter egos.

[Let’s] actually take on the personas of this different band. We could say,

“How would somebody else sing this? He might approach it a bit more sarcastically, perhaps.” . . . It would be a freeing element. I thought we

[could] run this philosophy through the whole album: with this alter-ego band, it won’t be us making all that sound, it won’t be The Beatles, it’ll be this other band, so we’ll be able to lose our identities in this.

[Mal and I] were having our [in-flight] meal, and they had those little packets marked “S” and “P.” Mal said, “What’s that mean? Oh, salt and pepper.” We had a joke about that. So I said, “Sergeant Pepper,” just to vary it, “Sergeant Pepper, salt and pepper,” an aural pun, not mishearing him but just playing with the words.

Then, “Lonely Hearts Club,” that’s a good one. [At the time, there were a] lot of those about, the equivalent of a dating agency now. I just strung those [words] together rather in the way that you might string together Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. All that culture of the Sixties going back to those traveling medicine men, Gypsies. It echoed back to the previous century, really. I just fantasized, well, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” That’d be crazy enough, because why would a Lonely Hearts Club have a band? If it had been Sergeant Pepper’s British Legion Band, that’s more understandable. The idea was to be a little more funky. That’s what everybody was doing. That was the fashion. The idea was just [to] take any words that would flow.

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In late November 1966, when The Beatles began work on their eighth studio album, they had yet to choose its title. During the earliest sessions for what became Sg t. Pepper’s, the band recorded “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane.”

When composing these songs, Lennon and McCartney drew inspiration from their memories of Liverpool, the band’s hometown in Northwest England. For instance, Lennon, as a child, had played in the garden of Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army children’s home (now closed) in Woolton, a Liverpool suburb. And Penny Lane is an actual street in south Liverpool: The song’s lyrics vividly describe its associated characters. Also recorded during these early sessions was “When I’m Sixty-Four,” a song from The Beatles’ formative years and the only one of these three that appears on Sgt. Pepper’s. Succumbing to management and record-company pressure, the band and producer George Martin agreed to release “Strawberry Fields Forever”

and “Penny Lane” as a double A-side single on February 13, 1967. In his Summer of Love: The Making of Sgt. Pepper, Martin calls his agreement to leave these two songs off the album “the biggest mistake of my professional life.”

Despite their exclusion from Sgt. Pepper’s, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and

“Penny Lane” were crucial in setting its overarching theme, one involving the band members’ childhood experiences in Liverpool. (“Strawberry Fields Forever,”

as Martin recalls in Summer of Love, “set the agenda for the whole album.”) In the first week of February 1967, The Beatles recorded what became the album’s title track, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” yet another song evoking nostalgia for earlier times. More importantly, it was also the earliest realization of McCartney’s alter-ego idea from the previous November 19, and he soon proposed that the entire album should represent a performance by the fictional band.

This qualifies Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as one of the first examples of a concept album—an approach to album design that would become increasingly important over the next few years and that persists into the present day. A concept album, like a song cycle (see Chapter 4), brings together a unified collection of songs to tell a story or capture an experience. Although Sgt. Pepper’s does not present a specific narrative, it encourages the listener to imagine that they are present at a live concert—a concert, however, that they soon realize could never take place, due to the diversity of instruments and pervasiveness of studio editing.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

The scene is set by the opening track, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” 1

which opens with ambient noises intended to create the illusion that a show is about to begin. Martin combined crowd noises he had recorded at a theatrical performance with the sounds of an orchestra warming up, which he captured in the studio while recording tracks for use in the album’s final song. Of course, the ambient instrumentals aren’t quite right: We seem to hear strings at the outset, but they are absent from the song itself, which features typical rock band instruments (electric guitars, electric bass, and drums). Our expectations are soon disrupted, however, when an ensemble of French horns joins the soundscape at the conclusion Page | 263

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of the first verse. These are hardly at home in a rock lineup, and it is hard to imagine them being played onstage. The entrance of the horns is greeted by a cheer from the crowd, and crowd sounds punctuate the performance, reminding that listener that they are “present” at a live event.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

1.

Composers: John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Performance: The Beatles (1967)

Image 8.4: In imagining the Beatles’s alter egos for the album, McCartney was inspired by traditional British brass bands. Here we see a horn player in the US Air Force Band.

Source: US Air Force

Attribution: Christina Brownlow

License: Public Domain

McCartney’s lyrics—belted in a rock style—also reinforce the setting. He begins by providing a brief history of the band, after which he introduces it by name.

Later, with lines like “we hope that you enjoy the show,” “it’s wonderful to be here,”

and “you’re such a lovely audience,” he clearly establishes the premise for the album. To further solidify the idea that we are hearing a live concert, McCartney concludes “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by transitioning directly into the second song. McCartney introduces a fictional singer, “the one and only Billy Shears” (voiced by Ringo Starr), who then launches into “With A Little Help From My Friends” to the sound of applause.

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At this point, the concert conceit begins to evaporate. We no longer hear the sounds of the crowd, and we are gradually invited to forget the surroundings made real in the opening seconds of the album. While Starr’s song is fairly conventional in terms of instrumentation and form, the third song begins the journey that will take the listener far away the concert stage.

“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”

“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” from Sgt.

Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Composers: John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Performance: The Beatles (1967)

Time

Form

What to listen for

Triple meter (through 0’47”); key of A major

0’00”

Introduction

(through 0’31”); Paul’s famous Lowrey organ

part

“Picture . . .”; George enters on tambura at about

0’06”

Verse 1

0’17”

0’19”

“Somebody . . .”

“Cellophane . . .”; key of B-flat major (through

0’32”

Bridge 1

0’50”)

0’43”

“Look . . .”

0’48”

“Gone”; quadruple meter (through 1’08”)

“Lucy . . .” (3 times); key of G major (through

0’51”

Chorus 1

1’08”)

1’07”

“Ahh”

“Follow . . .”; triple meter (through 1’49”); key of

1’09”

Verse 2

A major (through 1’34”)

1’22”

“Everyone . . .”

“Newspaper . . .”; key of B-flat major (through

1’35”

Bridge 2

1’52”)

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1’45”

“Climb . . .”

1’50”

“Gone”; quadruple meter (through 2’10”)

“Lucy . . .” (3 times); key of G major (through

1’53”

Chorus 2

2’10”)

2’09”

“Ahh”

“Picture . . .”; triple meter (through 2’33”); key

2’11”

Verse 3

of A major (through 2’33”)

2’24”

“Suddenly . . .”

Quadruple meter (through fade-out); key of G

2’34”

major (through fade-out)

2’37”

Chorus 3

“Lucy . . .” (3 times)

2’52”

“Ahh”

Chorus 3

“Lucy . . .” (3 times); fade-out begins at about

2’57”

(repeated)

3’02”

3’12”

“Ahh”

Chorus 3

3’17”

(repeated;

“Lucy . . .” (2 times); fades to silence

partial)

By the time they wrote and recorded Sgt. Pepper’s, The Beatles had experimented with both cannabis and LSD, and the extent to which the band’s use of these psychoactive drugs influenced its creation has long been debated.

Of all the album’s tracks, the third, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” is the one most discussed in this regard. Many believe that the first letters of the nouns in the song’s title, L, S, and D, are a reference to lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. Lennon repeatedly denied this, maintaining that the title was derived from that of a pastel drawing by his three-year-old son, Julian, that depicted the boy’s nursery-school classmate Lucy O’Donnell. During an episode of The Dick Cavett Show airing on September 21, 1971, Lennon recalled Julian’s presentation of the drawing to him, which Starr witnessed:

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This is the truth. My son came home with a drawing, and showed me this strange-looking woman flying around. I said, “What is it?” He said,

“It’s Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and I thought, “That’s beautiful.” I immediately wrote a song about it.

Whatever the case, the song itself is a masterpiece of psychedelic rock, due in no small part to its imaginative lyrics, with their “marmalade skies,” “cellophane flowers,” “rocking horse people,” and “newspaper taxis.” In writing them, Lennon was directly influenced by the literary style of Lewis Carroll’s novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), especially the latter’s final chapter (chapter 12),

“Which Dreamed It?”

Image 8.5: The Beatles embraced psychedelia not only in their music but in their image. Here we see a press photo from their Magical Mystery Tour.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Parlophone Music Sweden

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Musically, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” exemplifies The Beatles’ artistic maturation over the period 1965–67. Its three main sections, the verse, the bridge, and the chorus, are in different keys: A major, B-flat major, and G major, respectively. Following a short introduction, this verse–bridge–chorus structure is heard for the first time, and is then repeated. A second repetition begins, but this time, Page | 267

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the bridge is absent: verse 3 leads directly to chorus 3, which is then repeated through the fade-out. Moreover, the song employs mixed meter. The introduction, the verse, and the bridge (except its last measure) are in triple meter, while the bridge’s last measure and the chorus are in quadruple meter, also known as common time.The technique of shifting from triple to quadruple meter one measure before the chorus is also used to connect verse 3 to chorus 3. Each meter-change is accompanied by a noticeable tempo shift.

“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” also reflects The Beatles’ increasing tendency to utilize sounds and instruments infrequently heard in contemporary rock. The song’s introduction, for instance, features a memorable keyboard part, brilliant in its simplicity, played by McCartney on a Lowrey DSO-1 Heritage Deluxe electronic organ. The ear-catching harpsichord- or celeste-like sound used for this part is (probably) a combination of the organ’s harpsichord, vibraharp, guitar, and music-box stops. Then, about halfway through the first verse, Harrison enters on the tambura (tanpura), a long-necked, unfretted lute commonly associated with Indian music. Typically, as heard here, the player

plucks the instrument’s strings (usually four

or five) in a continuously repeating pattern,

producing a buzzing, overtone-rich drone. (In

Western art music, the repetition of a musical

pattern numerous times in succession is called

ostinato . )

Indian music’s influence is again evident

at the start of the first bridge. Here, as author

Peter Lavezzoli explains, Harrison “mirrors Image 8.6: Harrison became Lennon’s [lead] vocal with electric guitar, as interested in North Indian music if he were playing a sarangi behind a khyal after encountering sitar master singer.” The Beatles’ guitarist is known to Ravi Shankar (discussed in Chapter 6). Here, they are pictured with

have “liked ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ President Gerald Ford during a a lot.” In discussing his contributions to its 1974 White House visit.

arrangement, Harrison highlights the song’s Source: Wikimedia Commons Attribution: David Hume Kennerly

integration of non-Western elements:

License: Public Domain

I particularly liked the sounds on it where I managed to superimpose some Indian instruments onto the Western music. . . . I like the way the drone of the tambura could be fitted in there.

There was another thing: during vocals in Indian music, they have an instrument called a sarangi, which sounds like the human voice, and the vocalist and [the] sarangi player are more or less in unison in a performance.

For “Lucy,” I thought of trying that idea, but because I’m not a sarangi player, I played it on guitar. . . . I was trying to copy Indian classical music.

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“She’s Leaving Home”

We will pass over the next two songs, although of course they have many points of interest: “Getting Better” includes the Indian tambura and an unusual early electric keyboard instrument called the pianette, while “Fixing a Hole” opens with the sounds of a harpsichord. “She’s Leaving Home, ”2 however, marks the first wholesale departure from the rock-band sound, for the accompaniment is provided exclusively by strings. The arrangement for four violins, two violas, two cellos, string bass and harp was created by Mike Leander, although George Martin was never happy with it.

Double tracking on the chorus—a technique by which a melodic line is recorded twice—causes the voices of Lennon and McCartney to multiply, thereby providing a marked contrast with the more subdued singing in the verses.

“She’s Leaving Home” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts

Club Band

2.

Composers: John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Performance: The Beatles (1967)

“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” 3

More extraordinary sounds await the

listener in the next song, the lyrics of which

describe the activities of circus performers. In

seeking to evoke a carnival atmosphere, Martin

naturally turned to the instrument most closely

associated with fairgrounds: the calliope, or

steam organ. To bring an actual calliope into the

studio, however, would have been impossible, so

he instead combined recordings of instruments

made on-site with the reedy sounds of the Image 8.7: This British poster studio organ. The timbral pallette is filled out by from 1874 depicts a horse-drawn harmonium and four harmonicas.

calliope.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

These instruments—and others—are heard Attribution: Gibson & Co at the beginning of the track and in two extended License: Public Domain interludes, each of which transports the

listener to the scene being described. The first interlude is in triple time—an unusual feature, since the rest of the song is in quadruple time. The change is explained by the line preceding the interlude: “And of course Henry the horse dances the waltz.”

We are hearing the music to which he is dancing (and perhaps seeing Henry in our minds). The second interlude has been described by Michael Hannan as having been designed “to conjure up the giddy experience of a hallucinogenic carousel ride.” Any listener is likely to confirm this view, for Martin has overlaid a dense tapestry of recorded calliope sounds that fail to line up to the pulse in a meaningful way. The effect is dizzying.

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“Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

3.

Composers: John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Performance: The Beatles (1967)

“Within You Without You”

We must consider, for a moment, the nature of the medium for which Sgt.

Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club was intended. So far, all of the songs we have encountered appeared on the first side of the LP. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”

closed out that side with its “hallucinogenic carousel ride.” Next, the listener would have to take a brief break from listening in order to turn the record over. What they encountered next would represent the most distant point on their sonic journey.

The North Indian instruments heard in “Within You Without You”4 are not new to the listener, but Harrison goes further in his efforts to absorb and reflect Indian musical influence, such that this song represents The Beatles’ deepest foray into the world of Indian music. The Beatles’ fascination (especially Harrison’s and Lennon’s) with Indian music and philosophy began in 1965. Like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the songs “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” from Rubber Soul, and “Tomorrow Never Knows,” from Revolver, contain obvious examples of Indian musical influence. Written primarily by Lennon, all three are firmly rooted in the Western popular music tradition. Their “Indian” elements, though innovative, are essentially superficial, a sort of sonic flavoring, mainly involving the use of non-Western instruments (e.g., sitar, tambura).

“Within You Without You” from S gt. Pepper’s Lonely

Hearts Club Band

4.

Composer: George Harrison

Performance: The Beatles (1967)

“Within You Without You” features a veritable

orchestra of Indian and Western instruments,

including three tamburas, two dilrubas (a bowed

lute), a sitar, eight violins, three cellos, and tabla (a

pair of hand drums). The unusual scales on which

the melodies are based reflect Indian influence,

as does the fact that the entire song is rooted in

a persistent drone. Other Indian-derived elements Image 8.8: The dilruba is a include the slides we hear between pitches and bowed lute.

the use of call and response between solo and Source: Wikimedia Commons grouped instruments. The lyrics convey Lennon’s Attribution: J Singh License: CC BY-SA 2.0

understanding of Eastern philosophy.

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The inclusion, at Harrison’s request, of the images of four Indian gurus on the album’s iconic cover further attests to the culture’s profound impact on the band at this time. The gurus appear there in a collage of several dozen celebrities and historical figures, before which The Beatles stand, posed as the fictional Lonely Hearts Club Band, in their brightly colored Edwardian-era military uniforms.

“A Day in the Life”

Near the end of the second side, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

returns as a reprise. It seems to the listener that this is the end of the concert—a message reinforced by the lines “we hope you have enjoyed the show” and “we’re sorry, but it’s time to go.” The song sounds a little bit different than it did the first time: it’s faster, shorter, and at a lower pitch level. The crowd sounds are back, however, and cheers at the end suggest that the concert has indeed concluded.

Instead, the music transitions directly into a final song—the longest and most complicated song on the entire album. “A Day in the Life”5 begins with the spare texture of guitar and piano, but upon the words “I’d love to turn you on” the listener is gradually overwhelmed by a sound that grows in volume, pitch, and intensity with inevitable force. Although it is hard to identify, what we are actually hearing is forty orchestral musicians each recorded four times, for a total of 160 tracks. (It was during this recording session that Martin captured the ambient “warming up”

noises heard at the beginning of the album.)

“A Day in the Life” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

5.

Composers: John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Performance: The Beatles (1967)

Following the climax of the crescendo, we are returned to what seems to be a totally different song. It certainly bears little relation to what preceded the orchestral noise. This time, the words “I went into a dream” cue the return of orchestral instruments, which now underpin McCartney’s floating vocals.

The next section brings back the opening material, which again spills into a cacophonous orchestral crescendo. This time, however, it is followed up with a piano chord—in fact, a thrice overdubbed recording of three musicians playing three pianos—that slowly fades away over the course of forty-three seconds. The last thing we hear is some incidental studio chatter, which was originally cut into the outer groove so that it would loop indefinitely until the listener lifted the tonearm off of the disc.

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Legacy

Few musical works in history have enjoyed the success of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. After reaching number one on the UK’s “Official Albums Chart”

on June 10, 1967, it remained there for twenty-three consecutive weeks. In the U.S., Sgt. Pepper’s began a fifteen-week run atop the “Billboard 200” album chart on July 1, 1967. Since that time, it has spent hundreds of weeks on both charts.

Meanwhile, critical assessments of the album have remained almost universally positive for more than five decades. (To this day, its few negative critics are attacked as heretical pariahs, often publicly shamed by their colleagues.) As author Jonathan Gould explains, the critics’ seemingly endless heaping of praise on Sgt.

Pepper’s began immediately after its release:

The overwhelming consensus was that The Beatles had created a popular masterpiece: a rich, sustained, and overflowing work of collaborative genius whose bold ambition and startling originality dramatically enlarged the possibilities and raised the expectations of what the experience of listening to popular music on record could be. On the basis of this perception, Sgt.

Pepper[’s] became the catalyst for an explosion of mass enthusiasm for album-formatted Rock that would revolutionize both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far outstripped the earlier Pop explosions triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963.

Sgt. Pepper’s has garnered a vast multitude of accolades . At the 10th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony (in February 1968, honoring 1967 releases), for example, it became the first rock album to be named Album of the Year (for The Beatles and producer George Martin). Sgt. Pepper’s also received three other Grammys that night: Best Contemporary Album (again for The Beatles and producer George Martin), Best Engineered Recording—Non-Classical (for engineer Geoff Emerick), and Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts (for art directors Peter Blake and Jann Haworth). The Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry in 2003, in recognition of its cultural, historic, and aesthetic significance, and in 2012, Rolling Stone ranked Sgt. Pepper’s number one in its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” As of today, it has sold more than thirty-two million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums ever released.

COUNTESS OF DIA, “I MUST SING”

For most of history, of course, intimate music making has required live performers. As a result, various traditions of song accompanied by one or a few acoustic instruments have arisen in various times and places. We will examine several of these, beginning with the first secular song repertoire ever to be Page | 272

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written down: that of the medieval troubadours, who wrote songs in what is now southern France.

Troubadours

In historical terms, troubadours were not professional musicians. They were noblemen and noblewomen who wrote and performed courtly songs for their own entertainment. The term “troubadour” comes from the Provençal language, which was spoken in the Duchy of Aquitaine. It literally means “one who finds,” and was used to describe the work of poets, who were understood not to create their works but to discover them. Troubadours certainly dedicated most of their energy to crafting elaborate verses, but these were always set to music and sung, not recited.

Although troubadours wrote in dozens of distinct genres, they were primarily preoccupied with romantic concerns. The most significant genre of troubadour song was the canso, which expressed the courtly sentiment of fin’amors (“refined love”). Typically speaking, fin’amors was the passion that a knight felt for the lady he served. This passion was romantic and all-consuming, but it could never be satisfied, for the knight was pledged to serve his master and mistress—an obligation that precluded the possibility of intruding upon their marriage. Instead, the knight would suffer in song, lamenting the impossibility of winning the woman he desired but finding solace in dedicating his life to her service.

This ideal of unrequited passion was at the

center of Aquitainian courtly life, as we see

when we examine the biographies, or vidas,

of the troubadours. These short narratives,

which were only loosely grounded in

historical truth, include few details about the

troubadour’s work or life. Instead, they focus

entirely on the noble personages whom the

troubadour loved and on behalf of whom the

troubadour suffered. Take, for example, the

vida of Bernart of Ventadorn, the most famous

of all the troubadours. His rather long vida is

dedicated entirely to his romantic life. It tells

us how he first loved the wife of the Viscount

Image 8.9: The 12th-century

of Ventadorn, about whom he wrote all of

troubadour Bernart of Ventadorn,

as depicted in his vida.

his songs. Upon the discovery of his passion,

Source: Wikimedia Commons

however, Bernart was dismissed and joined

Attribution: Unknown