Reimagining the Classics: 4. Prog Rock Part 1
by David Barker
It is almost a year since my last contribution to this series, and those who had been reading them may have thought I’d given up. Instead, part of that time was occupied reading an excellent book A New Day Yesterday by Mike Barnes, which has been the inspiration for this.
It might be argued that this is where I should have started this occasional series of articles, as the genre of progressive rock is probably where rock music comes closest to classical music in scale and ambition. The best known prog rock band is probably Pink Floyd, due to the phenomenal success of their 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon, which has been in the album charts for almost 1,000 weeks (non-consecutively), and as recently as 2020, was still selling almost 10,000 copies a week. However, I’m not aware of any classical music that Pink Floyd directly employed in their music, so they won’t feature in this article any further. Looking in the opposite direction, the London Philharmonic has recorded an album of Pink Floyd music.
Prog rock (progressive rock) was a major force, especially in the UK music scene, in the late 1960s and through into the 1970s until the arrival of punk. Indeed, one might see punk as a revolt against what some saw as the overblown and pretentious music of the prog rockers (but then again, others would see punk as a genre populated by those who couldn’t sing or play an instrument).
For those of you who missed the prog rock era (or those who were there but, for reasons best left unsaid, don’t remember it), let me give you a brief outline. The typical prog rock track, if such a thing could be said to exist, was almost the antithesis of the standard three minute pop song. It was likely to be anywhere up to twenty minutes in duration (some occupied one entire side of an LP), not have the verse-chorus-verse etc structure or a catchy simple (singable) melody, and feature complex and extended solos from various instruments, especially the newly developed synthesisers. “Song” themes were more likely to be boy meets wizard or philosopher than boy meets girl. The “concept” album, where all the tracks have a common theme or are part of a storyline, was not a new idea, but became a major part of the prog rock movement. Many prog rockers were classically trained, hence their ability to imagine/write structurally ambitious music and play it, but also (importantly for this article), be aware of classical works that could be adapted for a rock band.
Now this article won’t be a complete history of the use of existing classical works in prog rock, but I’ve done my best to track down as many as I can. Hopefully there will be some that you recognise, and others that you don’t and tempt you to have a listen on one of the streaming platforms. Also, and very importantly, I’m not recommending all these as great pieces of music, because frankly, some are terrible (but perhaps worth a brief listen for that reason). Because there are so many instances, I will split this article into three sections.
If one person could be said to be the poster boy of classically inspired prog rock, it is Yorkshire-born keyboardist Keith Emerson (1944-2016). As part of the bands The Nice (1967-70) and Emerson, Lake and Palmer (1970-79 plus a few revivals), he was pivotal in the use of numerous classical works in the bands’ output, despite not having any formal training in classical music beyond learning piano to Grade 7.
Both Emerson’s bands were predominantly three piece – keyboards, bass and drums – though in the first year of its existence, The Nice also had a guitarist. Nevertheless, Emerson was the centre of attention; one could almost see the bass and percussion as the basso continuo, except each had their own time in the spotlight. However, the responsibility for presenting the melodies was principally Emerson’s.
The Nice are regarded as one of the pioneering bands in prog rock, influencing the direction that the genre would go over the following decade. Their first album, The Thoughts of Davjack Emerlist, (which is simply the composite of parts of the four members’ last names), released in early 1968, includes an instrumental piece titled Rondo, based on Dave Brubeck’s Blue Rondo à la Turk, but also has an organ solo (from Emerson) that borrows from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
The band then released a single which was an instrumental version of America from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story; it also included fragments from Dvořák’s New World Symphony, though these are definitely harder to pick up. It was a protest against the assassination of Martin Luther King and the proliferation of guns in the United States, specifically targeting the Second Amendment, which was included in the title of the song. The poster accompanying the single, which reached No. 21 in the UK, showed the band members with children sitting on their knees, images of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King superimposed on the children’s faces. Record stores in the USA refused to stock the single because of this, and matters were made even worse by Emerson burning an American flag on stage at the Royal Albert Hall. Furthermore, Bernstein never gave permission for the band to adapt his music, so any sales in the USA were likely to result in legal action. If I was to create a “playlist” for you of prog rock-classical music borrowings, this would certainly be on it; Emerson’s keyboard contributions are spectacular.
The band’s second album, Ars Brevis Vita Longa, released later in 1968, doubled down on the use of classical music. Intermezzo is an arrangement of that movement from Sibelius’ Karelia Suite, and is less successful than the America adaptation. It makes the marching rhythms in the original seem rather four square, and it goes on (and on and on). The Sibelius version takes around four minutes, while The Nice’s version takes nine – gotta have time for those keyboard solos!
Far better is Brandenburger, based on the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. It is the fourth (of six) movements of a work which shares the album’s title and occupies the entire second side of the LP. At half the length of Intermezzo, it doesn’t descend into trippy noodling, and Bach’s wonderful rhythms work so much better. Yes, there is the inevitable keyboard solo, but it is briefer and feels right. This is another for the playlist, but the album itself failed to chart.
The band’s third album, Nice, (or Everything As Nice As Mother Makes It in the USA), was released in 1969, and has one track, Diary of an Empty Day, which uses a classical source, Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. This is less an arrangement of Lalo’s work, and more a piece inspired by its rhythms and chord progressions. The album was the band’s most successful in the charts, reaching No. 3 in the UK.
In 1970, Keith Emerson had had enough, and wanted out. He talked to several prominent musicians about forming a new band, among them Jack Bruce of Cream, but to no avail. However, when The Nice were on tour in the US as support for King Crimson, he struck up a friendship with Crimson’s vocalist and bassist Greg Lake, and they decided to go out on their own, and once Carl Palmer, drummer of Atomic Rooster, was enlisted, Emerson, Lake and Palmer was born. ELP will be the subject of the second article on prog rock.
But before we leave The Nice, there was a “posthumous” album, appropriately titled Elegy, of live recordings and tracks not included on the first three albums, released after the band broke up without any input (other than performance) from Emerson. It included America but also Pathetique, based on Tchaikovsky’s symphony (rather than Beethoven’s sonata), specifically the third movement. Like Brandenburger and Intermezzo, it is an arrangement with its origins very much on display. Not as good as the former, but certainly better than the latter, I won’t put it on my playlist, but it is worth a listen.
There is yet one more entry in this genre from The Nice: a single released in 1970, which only appeared on an album in 1990, Five Bridges, two decades after the band split up. Country Pie/Brandenburg #6 was a live performance, covering the 1969 Bob Dylan song, and employing elements of the sixth Brandenburg Concerto. If you think that it sounds like a rather unlikely mix, you’d be right. Unsurprisingly it failed to sell, and neither Dylan or Bach emerge unscathed.
