Opera: Pop stars like Damon Albarn finally understand classical music

Rock of ages: A staging of Albarn’s opera 'Dr Dee’ in Manchester  Photo: Donald Cooper / Rex Features


After decades of risible fusions, artists today like Damon Albarn really know how to mix the old and new, says Ivan Hewett .



4:29PM BST 02 May 2012


There comes a point in every pop star’s life when the urge to indulge in drug-crazed parties and one-night stands ebbs away, and a vague yearning for something more solid creeps into their souls. You can spot the signs: the rambling old mansion in the Cotswolds, the modern art on the mansion’s walls, the share in the fashionable restaurant.
But “trading up” isn’t enough. They want to be taken seriously, too, and that means going classical. Of course, classical means “class”, just as much as the sagging beams of the mansion’s dining room. But it means history, too, and the enticing arcana of “harmony and counterpoint”, and things that last longer than a six-week chart topper. Joining it is a bid to join the great sweep of masters and masterpieces rolling down the centuries.
This is why the erstwhile rebel starts taking an interest in Jacobean lute songs, or Sibelius, or oratorios. It’s definitely a white thing, this urge to turn classical, and always has been. It was Gershwin who first wrote a jazz concerto, not Armstrong or Ellington. Miles Davis wanted nothing to do with what he called “dead-ass shit”, and you wouldn’t have caught Little Richard or Ray Charles dabbling in it.
The classical bug bit when pop decided it was time to become “important”. It really got underway with prog-rock bands such as Emerson Lake & Palmer, the Nice, and Yes. If you want a defining moment, it’s the day in September 1969 when Malcolm Arnold, vastly prolific composer of symphonies and film scores, led the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiere of Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra. You only have to listen to the orchestral introduction to realise Sir Malcolm’s contribution went way beyond waving sweatily on the podium, while the immaculately bearded Deep Purple did their stuff. Those tremolando strings, the plaintive little tune decked out in parallel 3rds, the perky asymmetrical melody that follows — all this shows a real craftsman at work (though it’s part of Sir Malcolm’s skill that it doesn’t sound too clever). Then the band’s bass guitarist Roger Glover comes in, plunking away in a kind of sanitised blues bass.
The minute you hear that, you know the bearded guys had nothing to do with the orchestral music; they must have hummed a tune or two and let Sir Malcolm turn them into something respectable. It’s embarrassing, for the same reason the jokes in politicians’ speeches are embarrassing: you know they haven’t written them themselves.
To be fair, this isn’t always true. Rick Wakeman, who was a composer and keyboard player with Yes before leaving for a hugely successful solo career, was a canny composer as well as barnstorming keyboardist. In the opening section of his Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Wakeman borrows Debussy’s antique modalism, and his trick of leading the harmonies towards the flat side of the home key, which gives a pleasing sense of spaciousness. Then comes a thrilling “horror” chord, tricked out in swathes of arpeggios, and suddenly we could be in an exotic ballet by Massenet. Then in comes Wakeman with a busy keyboard riff, and we’re back in the Baroque.
This points to the other reason why pop musicians’ forays into classical music are embarrassing: they have no style. Or rather, they have every kind of style, thrown together in a mish-mash. If there is a dominant tone, it’s a massive, heavily amplified grandiloquence located in some strange musical no-man’s land. The hammered string chords evoke stockbroker Baroque (a style that lives on in many a corporate video), while the swirling piano arpeggios point towards Liszt’s heroics – though on a technical level, they’re usually child’s play.
These brief evocations of Liszt are a nod back to the pop musicians’ own notorious past. With his hordes of adoring female followers and whiff of the diabolical, Liszt was a glam-rock star and “damned soul” rolled into one. If pop-classical fusions always took him as a model, they’d be a lot more fun. But mostly they want to make a “big statement”, and that’s always a killer to spontaneity.
For anyone who really loves classical music, these fusions are depressing, because they spring out of a fundamental misunderstanding. It’s best illustrated by Robin Gibb’s remark about his own Titanic Requiem, given its world premiere some weeks back. “This could have been written 300 ago,” he said, as if that were a recommendation. Has he not noticed that classical music has changed quite a lot in that time? Composing a “classical” piece is not about being “old”, it’s about squaring up to the tradition and its values, and reinventing them. “Tradition must be created anew, or it is dead, dead and thrice dead,” as Stockhausen so rightly said.
Fortunately there’s a new generation of pop musicians that understands that. They don’t look on classical music as the aural equivalent of the country mansion, they see it as an invitation to adventure. They love Beethoven and Bach, but they love radicals such as Varèse and Stravinsky even more. Björk is one of these restless, inquiring souls, as are Jonny Greenwood and Damon Albarn. When Albarn talked to me about his first opera, Monkey, he enthused about a clever technique he’d hit on for constructing melodies.
This week, Albarn’s latest opera, based on the Elizabethan sage and occultist Dr Dee, is released on CD. The subject is an apt symbol for his own interest in classical music, which he sees as an endless trove of “secrets”, waiting to be discovered.
Quite why this awakening should be happening now is an interesting question. One factor is surely that, at certain points, the pop and classical worlds now touch. Classical musicians are bringing their values and techniques to bear on new sounds; pop musicians — some of them — have an urge to go beyond the three-minute song. A common territory is being mapped out, which isn’t just some second-hand evocation of the past. It’s alive, in the here and now.

Damon Albarn’s 'Dr Dee’ is released next Mon on Parlophone. The opera will be performed by English National Opera (0871 911 0200) from June 25












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