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Beatles music bridges the centuries: 1700 to 1970
If you listen to these two beautiful Paul McCartney and John Lennon pieces transcribed into instrumental and play them next to some of the most beautiful classical pieces by Vivaldi and Pachelbel from 300 years ago it’s hard to tell they are from different times. Are Paul and John great composers from the past reincarnated? I could almost believe it. I think the Beatles are in the same league as great classical composers, or vice versa. There is that melodic brilliance here that bridges centuries, just like the bridge of decades between the great 60’s music and MLT today.
John Lennon: Across The Universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbt09-gPUZU
Paul McCartney: Here There And Everywhere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sioqsj42w6I
Johann Pachelbel: Canon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRdLZyOU4w
Antonio Vivaldi: Winter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzRfg80FoQs
What do you think? Do you feel the connection?
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17 Replies
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG_AW7P2euk
It’s not Beatles, but I couldn’t resist!
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I think Still A Friend Of Mine is also a timelessly beautiful song in the same standing as these songs. The melody is as wonderful as these by McCartney, Lennon, Pachelbel or Vivaldi. If the melody was arranged for string quartet, it would be as beautiful as these. Supremely sublime.
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I agree, Jung. There’s something about the construction of all these songs that is appealing across the ages. Adding some strings really teases out the similarities.
I’m not well-versed in classical music, but when I first saw and heard those stringed instruments on “Still a Friend of Mine”, I thought of Pachelbel’s Canon.
That reminds me of a video I found years ago that I think you’d enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
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Great and funny video David. I didn’t realize Pachelbels Canon had that kind of influence on so much music out there. It is one of my absolute favorite pieces from the classical baroque period (prior to Bach/Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven times)
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Christopher Peackock is my very favorite modern pianist for contemporary music and I think his piano interpretation of Pachelbels Canon is the most beautful and moving I’ve ever heard.
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My fave modern /contemporary /traditional keyboard /piano player is Sam Reid (Glass Tiger band)… Years ago he had produced a series of cassette tapes/CDs of Nature sounds intertwined with piano & other instruments… The music is quite relaxing… It was available on http://www.willowmusic.com at the time…
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Jacki, I listened to some of Sam Reids stuff on youtube like Vesper Star and Day Dreaming. It is quite nice, very relaxing. He is an accomplished pianist.
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Yes, Jung he is, I’m not familiar with Vesper Star/daydreaming you mentioned though, … Only am familiar with his Sanctuary series stuff…and of course the Glass Tiger stuff….
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Here are a couple more Beatles songs where the classical connection is very noticeable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL0tnrl2L_U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weN-l8SOiFU
I love how Mona and Lisa on their newly released Christmas Album with “Walking In The Air” transformed this contemporary classical song into their own, a truly remarkable rock version that is more brilliant than any of the classical iterations.
Here is a little excerpt from a blog I found:
Classical music is one of the most inspiring. Mozart, Beethoven, and countless other classical composers each created pieces of music that captivated the world’s attention and stood the test of time.
One of the main ways that classical music has impacted today’s popular music is with the chorus. The chorus, or the short melody repeated throughout most songs, was first seen during the Classical era. A vast majority of songs we hear on the radio today are structured to include a chorus. It’s typically the part of the song we remember the most, and we have the Classical era to thank for it!
The Baroque period, which is often associated with classical music, also had a notable influence on contemporary music – particularly the rock genre. Many modern rock songs copy the original intensity and complexity that you’ll observe in music from the Baroque period. Several rock artists, including Led Zeppelin and Muse, have also stated that composers from the Romantic period influenced their music.
An article from Cleveland stated that whether it’s with song structure or content,
“modern musicians definitely have an ear for ‘old’ composers.” -
From an article: Bach and Roll 28 Best Rock and Classical Cross overs:
Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” framed the yawning early distance between rock and classical. But as the below gallery of 28 Best Rock/Classical Crossovers shows, things quickly changed.
Into the ’60s, the Beatles began regularly collaborating with string sections, then Johann Sebastian Bach inspired Procol Harum to create a new single. Soon, Pete Townshend had visions of creating a full-blown rock opera, while Frank Zappa wrote pieces for an orchestra cobbled together from Los Angeles session players.
More rock artists – some of them classically trained – integrated symphonic touches into their albums through the next decade. Bands like Emerson, Lake and Palmer covered classical pieces, lending them a rock flair, while others, like Deep Purple, relied on orchestral sounds to amplify epic tracks. Eventually, a handful of rock legends even saw fit to compose, record and release full-blown classical records (Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello and Billy Joel, to name a few), further blurring the lines between rock ’n’ roll and classical music.
We’re delving into those moments when some of rock’s most inventive artists attempted to truly integrate classical instruments, structures and motifs into their music.
Beatles – Yesterday, 1965
Jeff Beck – Beck’s Bolero, 1967
Procol Harum – Whiter Shade of Pale, 1967
The Nice – Rondo, 1967
Frank Zappa – Lumpy Gravy, 1967
Moody Blues – Days of Future Passed, 1967
The Who – Tommy, 1969
Deep Purple – Concerto for Group Orchestra, 1969
Emerson Lake and Palmer – Picture At An Exhibition, 1971
Yes – Fragile, 1971
Led Zeppelin – Kashmir, 1975
Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody, 1975
Beach Boys – Lady Linda, 1979
Elton John – Live in Australia with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, 1986
Paul McCartney – Liverpool Oratorio, 1991
Elvis Costello – The Juliet Letters, 1993
Billy Joel – Fantasies and Delusions, 2001
Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) – Ca Ira, 2005
Sting – Songs from the Labrynth, 2006
Peter Gabriel – Scratch My Back, 2010
…etc -
Lol… I must digress and say quite honestly, I’m not a fan of classical music…. To be fair, it’s primarily because I was raised in a house whom the liking/appreciation for classical music was… Non-existant… Rather country, rock n roll, southern rock, gospel, bluegrass, blues and jazz, disco-ish stuff were our music tastes and what I was exposed /grew up enjoying… Also, I don’t really have the patience and attention span to sit and appreciate classical stuff…. I like what I grew up with… Although I have always liked the classical stuff Schroeder does in Snoopy TV specials/comic strips… Lol.
For me, Classical Music is a musical taste acquirement… You either like it from get go, or not or you may grow to like it somewhat…. That’s my opinion.
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Hi Jacki. I totally understand where you are coming from. 🙂 Classical music my mom and dad played in the house use to drive me crazy until much later in my adulthood, I got into Beethoven. It is definitely an acquired taste, just like Country, Metal, Jazz etc. I guess what I’m trying to show is, there is classical music elements in modern pop/rock music we all here love like in the Beatles Yesterday or Eleanor Rigby, or MLT Still A Friend of Mine. I’m not saying MLT intentionally tried to blend classical into their music either, but if you like the Beatles and the 60’s style of Pop/Rock music for example, there is classical elements there whether intentional or unintentional in my opinion. The video Tomas posted last week, really drives that point about the lines between Classical and modern pop/rock being blurred, in fact modern pop/rock beginning with the Beatles and many of the 60’s rock legeds could be argued to be a continuation of what Bach, Mozart, Beethoven were creating 200 to 300 years ago. I posted that awesome video Tomas posted here. If you have time, I highly recommend watching this video. Even just the first 5 to 10 minutes of it. It’s very illuminating!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=ZQS91wVdvYc&feature=emb_logo
I’m not trying to push classical music onto anyone here, and I hope my posts did not come across that way, just pointing out the parallel between classical and modern pop/rock.
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Hi Jung: Thankyou for your reply and understanding where I’m coming from… Lol… Yes, when I have more time, I’ll listen/watch Tomas’ video link in more detail…. ☮️
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Sometimes I feel like a beautiful moment in music can be timeless. It magically escapes the laws of physics into another realm. When I saw this clip in the movie “Copying Beethoven”, it resonated with that idea of timeless moment of beauty in music or art captured forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KIhCBsydbE
The piece Beethoven is believed to have written here is his String Quartet No.15, Op.132 [3rd movement]. Beethoven composed this piece to be a thanksgiving to God when he recovered from a terrible illness that he had thought might kill him.
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In Classical music, there is a term coined the “Three B’s” to define the greatest musical heights ever achieved are occupied by the composers whose names coincidentally all start with a B, that is Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.
From Wikipedia:
“The Three Bs” is an English-language phrase derived from an expression coined by Peter Cornelius in 1854, which added Hector Berlioz as the third B to occupy the heights already occupied by Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. Later in the century, the famous conductor Hans von Bülow would substitute Johannes Brahms for Berlioz. The phrase is generally used in discussions of classical music to refer to the supposed primacy of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms in the field.
I am convinced now that the Three B’s after the 1960’s have become:
Bach, Beethoven, and Beatles
What do you think?
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Works for me, Jung. Brahms is best known to the masses for a lullaby, and frankly lullabies tend to put me to sleep.
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Lullabies put me to sleep too David 🙂 After Beethoven, only other composers that interested me was Schubert and Chopin. After the mid 1800s, classical evolved into more technically complex music of Rachmaninoff and the like, but were inferior musically to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Melody became inferior and became more and more abstract. Beatles restored the music with structure and melody of the great classical composers again.
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