Klarinet Archive - Posting 000031.txt from 2009/04

From: Michael Nichols <mrn.clarinet@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:27:03 -0400

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 8:14 PM, Bear Woodson <bearwoodson@-----.net> wrote:

> =A0 =A0Finally one day, one friend brought over the "Emerson, Lake
> & Palmer" "Brain Salad Surgery" album, which had their
> Transcription of the Alberto Ginastera Piano Concerto's
> "Toccata" Movement, which was done with the Personal
> Blessing of Alberto Ginastera himself! I was STUNNED and
> Impressed! To this date, that is the ONLY example of Modern
> Harmony that I know of, in any Big-Selling, Popular Music
> Album!

I think popular music is actually more theoretically informed by
modern art music than is commonly thought. Here are some examples I
could think of:

Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" has made platinum 4 times (best selling
jazz album of all time) and is famous for its use of quartal harmony.
(Especially the opening tune, "So What")

Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze" is built around a dominant 7th/sharp 9th
chord, which suggests bitonality (in this case, superimposed parallel
major and minor chords). Stravinsky used similar chords in "Les Roi
des Etoiles" and "Rite of Spring." Ginastera used a similar chord in
Variaciones Concertantes (final mvt.). Come to think of it,
traditional 12-bar blues is bitonal in this respect as well.

Paul Simon used to write songs with melodies based on 12-tone rows.
He has said that he picked up on the technique from Antonio Carlos
Jobim's music, although Jobim himself was basically unaware of his
(Jobim's) doing this.

A lot of heavy metal songs are written in Locrian mode, not exactly
the scale of choice during the common practice era.

The thing about all of these pop music users of modern techniques,
though, is that they tend to use them in subtle ways that make them
accessible to the ordinary listener. For instance, the modal jazz of
Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner may be built on quartal harmony, but they
use quartal chords in a way that suggests tertiary harmony (which they
can do because of the ambiguity quartal chords create in the
listener's ear). They don't try, a la Schoenberg and Co., to create
disorientingly foreign sounds. It reminds of what Stravinsky once had
to say about orchestration, that the best orchestration is the kind
you don't notice as orchestration.

Actually, in the classical/art music world, the minimalist trend seems
to represent a movement away from theoretical sophistication and a
return to layperson-accessible music (sometimes to the point of being
irritatingly simple).

Speaking of which, the Who's song, "Baba O'Riley" (which many people
know as the theme song to "CSI:NY") is a musical tribute of sorts to
minimalist composer Terry Riley (which is part of the reason why its
accompaniment is so repetitive).

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