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Baroque pop is a pop rock music subgenre spurred by recording artists from the United States and United Kingdom who infused rock and roll with elements of classical music. Its height of success was in the late-1960s, with many prominent artists emerging and/or incorporating the genre into their repertoire.

Baroque pop's mainstream popularity faded by the 1970s, partially because punk rock, disco and hard rock took over; nonetheless, music was still produced within the genre's tradition. Philadelphia soul in the 1970s and chamber pop in the 1990s both incorporated the spirit of baroque pop while the latter contested much of the time's low fidelity musical aesthetic.

Terminology

In classical music, the term "Baroque" is used to describe the art music of Europe approximately between the years 1600 and 1750, with some of its most prominent composers including J. S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi. Much of the instrumentation of baroque pop is akin to that of the late Baroque period or the early Classical period, chronologically defined as the period of European music from 1690 to 1760 and stylistically defined by balanced phrases, clarity and beauty, using instrumentation similar to modern orchestras.

"English baroque" is also used to describe British pop and rock music that made use of this style of instrumentation.

Characteristics

Baroque pop, stylistically, fuses elements of rock with classical music, often incorporating layered harmonies, strings, and horns to achieve a majestic, orchestral sound. It was intended to be a more serious and mature outgrowth of rock music. Baroque pop may be distinguished from progressive rock, which also uses classical instrumentation, by its generally simpler song structures closer to standard pop song writing, and also by its more mainstream lyrical content as opposed to the generally conceptual lyrics associated with later progressive rock.

History

Origins (1960s)

Baroque pop originated in the 1960s after pop musicians and record producers — such as Phil Spector and the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson — began using the harpsichord as a focal instrument in their work. The Boston Globe's Matthew Guerriri speculates that it had been an enduring instrument for its buzzing, stinging timbre, which flattered "the treble-heavy pop soundscape" at a time when AM radio was the dominant form of musical consumption. Harpsichords were also widely available in recording studios, and had been in use in popular music since as early as the 1940s. Slate's Forrest Wickman credits Wilson and the Beatles' George Martin as some of the men "most responsible" for the move into baroque pop.

By early 1966, various groups began using baroque and classical instrumentation, described as a "baroque rock" movement by author Bob Gendron. The Zombies' single "She's Not There" (1964) is often cited as an early example of the subgenre. Although the song had many of the harmonic qualities of later baroque pop, it did not use classical instrumentation. "She's Not There" would inspire New York musician Michael Brown to form the Left Banke, whose single "Walk Away Renée" (1966) is usually considered the first recognizable baroque pop single. Guerriri named it the style's "quintessence", where in Britain, it "bridged the passage from rock into psychedelica for numerous groups: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, the Kinks."

Classical influence can be found on the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with "A Day in the Life" and "She's Leaving Home" and the White Album (1968) with the parody "Piggies". These influences can also be heard on the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed (1967), the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle (1968), the Kinks' The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) and the Bee Gees' Odessa (1969); in singles like Honeybus' "I Can't Let Maggie Go" (1968).

A number of folk artists incorporated baroque influences and classical orchestration into their albums, most notably Judy Collins on In My Life (1966) and Wildflowers (1967), and Joan Baez on Joan (1967) and Baptism (1968).

Dissipation

Baroque pop soon declined after the 1960s. In the 1990s, chamber pop would derive from the "spirit" of baroque pop, characterized by an infusion of orchestral arrangements or classical style composition. It is generally within an indie setting, and can be seen as a reaction to the lo-fi production that dominated in the 1990s. In his book Pop Music, Pop Culture, author Chris Rojek cites Coldplay's 2008 track "Viva la Vida" as a baroque pop song.

Notes

1. Examples range from the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" (1964) and "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" (1965) to the Righteous Brothers "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (1964) and the Mamas & the Papas' "Monday Monday" (1966).
2. The Beatles benefited from the classical music skills of Martin, who in 1965 used a string quartet in his production of "Yesterday", and for "In My Life" recorded the piano solo at half tempo and then sped it up, effectively producing a more Renaissance-Baroque era harpsichord sound. Among the orchestral arrangements appearing on the Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds (1966), the instrumental breaks in "Here Today" are said to have been directly based on Bach. The Beatles' album Revolver (1966) included baroque instrumentation on songs such as "For No One" and "Eleanor Rigby".
3. Gendron's "baroque rock" examples also include "Walk Away Renée", Spanky and Our Gang's "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" (1967), and the Stone Poneys' "Different Drum" (1967) – all of which used harpsichord and strings — along with the Rolling Stone's "Lady Jane" (1966, harpsichord and dulcimer) and the Lovin Spoonful's "Rain on the Roof" (1967, harpsichord-sounding guitars).
4. Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967) has a baroque-style organ melody influenced by Bach pieces such as "Sleepers, Wake!" and "Air on the G String". Contrary to popular belief, however, the song is not a direct copy or paraphrase of any music by Bach, although it makes clear references to both pieces.

References

1. ^ "Baroque pop". AllMusic..
2. ^ Stanley, Bob (September 21, 2007). "Baroque and a soft place". The Guardian. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
3. ^ "Chamber pop", Allmusic, retrieved 7 September 2011.
4. ^ Essentials of music: Baroque composers.
5. Oxford Music Online 2
6. "Sunshine Pop", Allmusic, retrieved 13 November 2011.
7. ^ Guerrieri, Matthew (January 22, 2016). "Via Spector and serendipity, the harpsichord invaded pop". The Boston Globe.
8. Wickman, Forrest (March 9, 2016). "George Martin, the Beatles Producer and "Fifth Beatle," Is Dead at 90". Slate.
9. ^ J. S. Harrington, Sonic cool: the Life & Death of Rock 'n' Roll (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003), p. 191.
10. "Pet Sounds"All Music, retrieved 6 August 2011.
11. Pollack, Alan W. (1994). "Notes on "For No One"".
12. Pollack, Alan W. (1994). "Notes on "Eleanor Rigby"".
13. Gendron 2002, pp. 174, 343.
14. Gendron 2002, p. 343.
15. Andrew Jones, Plunderphonics, 'pataphysics & pop mechanics: an introduction to musique, ISBN 978-0-946719-15-0, p. 214.
16. "What Bach Piece is "A Whiter Shade of Pale?"". Archived from the original on 2001-06-16. Retrieved 2006-09-21.
17. R. Unterberger, S. Hicks and J. Dempsey, Music USA: the Rough Guide (Rough Guides, 1999), p. 32.
18. ^ Rojek, Chris (2011). Pop Music, Pop Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 46.

Bibliography

• Gendron, Bernard (2002). Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-28737-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

• 20th-century music genres
• Pop music genres