(This is a revised version of my original post. I added a paragraph about aerial dancing, and — to avoid making two parenthetical remarks in a row — I moved the paragraph about Mason Bates to a different place.)
I’m late in getting to this, thanks to some traveling. But I’m asking a vital question. Both because the SHIFT festival was a major move for two top DC institutions. And because the marketing lessons here can be helpful to everyone.
What SHIFT is:
A festival of orchestras, coproduced in DC by the Kennedy Center and Washington Performing Arts.
Four concerts. Called SHIFT, because (like the festival it’s partly modeled on, Spring For Music in New York) it’s designed to show that orchestras are different now.
Or, to quote the festival’s program book, to show
≥the dynamism of four exceptional American orchestras…[how] through creative engagement and artistic daring they’re distinguishing themselves as leaders…[how they’re] SHIFTING our perceptions of what an orchestra is by doing amazingly innovative things in their communities…
Plus more, scattered through separate sentences floating in a full page of fine print. All, for me, s little gushy. Can’t believe the purpose of the festival couldn’t have been said more strongly in one clear paragraph.
But later for that. The festival wants to shift our perceptions of what American orchestras are.
So in more detail…
SHIFT was four concerts, given at the end of March and beginning of April. All tickets were $25, and the orchestras encouraged to do programming they loved, programming typical of them at their best, programming that would be key to them and their dreams.
The orchestras were the Boulder (CO) Philharmonic, the North Carolina Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, and The Knights (a Brooklyn collective born from changes in classical music).
And one measure of success…
…is of course the box office.
The Boulder Philharmonic had a triumph, nearly filling the Kennedy Center concert hall (more than 2000 seats), with an audience that roared with delight.
The North Carolina Symphony — doing music by composers with ties to North Carolina — had rows of gaping, empty seats, the house not nearly half full.
And The Atlanta Symphony (doing a full-evening oratorio by Christopher Theofanidis) and The Knights (with a program featuring the very sweet and very capable San Francisco Girls Chorus) fell in the middle. They drew what seems to be emerging as the new normal for orchestra concerts in DC — houses more or less half full.
There were also what the festival called “residencies,” community and outreach events. But later for those. The concerts of course were the main events. So did they fail or succeed?
A little of both, it seems clear. So for future planning — SHIFT will come back next year — it’s important to look at the biggest success and the biggest failure.
Why did Boulder sell so well, and North Carolina so poorly?
One analysis
I should say, full disclosure, that I’m not the ultimate expert. I couldn’t even go to three of the concerts. Family obligations and my Juilliard teaching kept me away from Boulder, North Carolina, and Atlanta. Though I did go to the Knights, a sweet but oddly disjointed affair, which I’ll talk about in another post.
But I’ve talked to people variously involved. And just by using common sense I can make a guess about Boulder and North Carolina.
To explain my guess, I’ll do an elevator pitch for those concerts.
First Boulder. They played three contemporary pieces, all about nature (about Rocky Mountain National Park, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the prairie). The composers were Stephen Lias, Jeff Midkiff, Steve Heitzen, not names that I’d guess would be known to many of us in the DC classical world.
But clearly the names didn’t matter, partly because hardly any classical composer has an audience, and partly because of everything else about the concert.
What mattered, I’m guessing, was first the nature theme, which of course resonates wonderfully with Boulder, a city in the Rocky Mountains, whose people famously love the outdoors.
Plus one of the nature pieces had video along with it. And then the grand finale was Appalachian Spring, which had aerial dancers, aka acrobats. Of course it’s a nature piece, too, but…acrobats!
So the elevator pitch is easy to make:
Mountains! Nature! Video! Acrobats!
Cut to North Carolina. They did two works by the dean of North Carolina composers, the late Robert Ward, also not a name to strike any sparks, though he’s known for his early 1960s opera The Crucible, based on Arthur Miller’s play.
Then they did pieces by Mason Bates, Caroline Shaw, and Sarah Kirkland Snider, all of whom turn out to have a North Carolina connectionI. Who knew? Of course they’re best known as leading younger composing stars (to whatever extent, without much audience, any classical composer can be called a star).
Certainly they’re bigger names than Robert Ward, or the composers Boulder played.
But look how little that mattered. Composers really don’t have an audience.
(Added later: A word about aerial dancing. As a friend said, after reading this post, aerial dancing isn’t just scrobatics. It’s a serious art. And Appalachian Spring was written as a dance score, so aerial dancing is more than a crowd-pleasing add-on. Which I might have made it seem, by putting “acrobats” in my elevator pitch. But — with this explanation added — I don’t mind saying “acrobats,” because an elevator pitch is partly about perception. Also because, as I’ll say a bit later, I deliberately exaggerated the contrast between the two concerts, to make my point unmistakable. Plus the Washington Post review said the dancing made people gasp with amazement.)
So back to the elevator pitches. This is what North Carolina’s would have to be:
Music by North Carolina composers.
Boulder wins!
I don’t know in any detail how these concerts were marketed. But, whatever was done, Boulder gave much more to work with.
Not that the North Carolina music might not have been worthy. In fact, some of the buzz I picked up called this the best concert, musically, of the festival.
But it’s not promotable as North Carolina music. To be brutally honest, no one — or anyway no one outside North Carolina — is likely to care. North Carolina composers! Doesn’t light any sparks.
Boulfor special
(Special note for the Kennedy Center: Mason Bates has been your composer in residence for two years. With no disrespect to him or his music — he’s someone I’ve known cordially for years — you might ask what it means that the concert featuring him drew the smallest SHIFT audience. Something maybe isn’t working in your composer in residence promotion.)
Looking toward next year
I don’t mean to imply, by the way, that we need acrobats to sell tickets to orchestras. If that’s true, we’re dead. There are many other ways to make an orchestra concert seem interesting.
So of course this was an extreme comparison. But sometimes extreme examples are helpful to clarify things at the start of a discussion.
They make the basic point crystal clear. And the basic point here is that people need a reason to come to a concert. A reason that echoes beyond the walled city of classical music.
So since SHIFT returns next year, here’s a suggestion for my friends involved in producing it. Do an elevator pitch for each proposed event. At first do it just for yourselves, not for public consumption.
But take the pitch seriously. And be merciless about the results. If, for any event, the best pitch you come up with — looked at in the cold light of reality — won’t sell tickets, don’t do the concert!
Plan something you can sell. Or at least put the concert with a smaller draw in a smaller hall.
And yes, this isn’t how classical music usually works. I’m suggesting you should avoid the time-honored classical thing, which is to plan the concerts your heart yearns for artistically, and only then think how you’ll market them. What you love may not be what the world loves.
Think of marketing right from the start, so at the very least you won’t be surprised.
(Cautionary example! In a previous post I talked about how smart Zuill Bailey is when he books classical soloists and chamber groups. Always he’s thinking how many tickets each artist or ensemble will sell. He mentioned another chamber music presenter who doesn’t think about that. Someone who books the artists they want, pays the fee the artist normally gets, then accepts whatever the ticket sales are. “Why do you do that?” Zuill asked, explaining his more grounded approach. The other presenter, baffled, said, “Hasn’t it always been done that way?” No wonder classical music is in trouble.)
Footnote 1
Wouldn’t help to make the NC elevator pitch “Exciting new music.”
First because all the SHIFT events featured new music. And also because not many people equate new classical music with excitement.
But, above anything else, this pitch won’t work because just saying something is exciting doesn’t make it so.
Think of the orchestras that — haplessly — use exclamation points when they tweet upcoming events. “Tomorrow’s concert — Mozart’s G minor symphony!” Routine announcement. The exclamation point doesn’t make it any less routine. .
If you want people to believe something is exciting, say something — something specific — that’s exciting about it.
Next:
Some conceptual problems.
Here — from the cover of the SHIFT program book — is some marketing language. Prominent marketing language. The first thing you see, in big type, when you look at the program book.
SHIFT your expectations.
SHIFT your senses.
SHIFT your spirit.
What does that mean? What’s it even about? If you know the backstory — if you know the festival is all about changes in orchestras — then, fine, you’ll understand what you’re reading.
But if you don’t know that? Look at Nissan’s “shift” advertising, which I believe is the most famous marketing campaign ever to focus on the word “shift.”
You watch their car commercials, and you hear about the car. Only at the end, do they tell you to shift your thinking — after they’ve given you reasons to do it.
That’s how really top marketers work.
And anyway, the whole orchestra SHIFT promotion, starting with the very word SHIFT, and continuing down through those words on the program book cover…it’s all a bit vague, overthought, overhyped.
Why not just one strong, clear sentence, driving home what the festival is? Why couldn’t they call it “Orchestras Unleashed”? (Or something like that.)
To me that’s far more effective. A far better elevator pitch. Far more likely to get people to come.
Why tour at all? Why take what is clearly designed specifically for your own community in all its unique glory to another place? Art in place!!! no cookie-cutter programs — no crafted artistry — NO ONE CARES, but not because they are awful, ignorant or stupid people. But because they have relationships with different PEOPLE in different places. Make personal connections. Make it authentic and relevant. people will come. People know when you want to be their bestie and you MEAN it! Love on people through music. It is your language, not your justification for existence.
And of course this is what you do with your River Oaks Chamber Orchestra.
There are many ways to succeed, and not everyone has to follow your model. But they should know what it is, because there’s something just about anyone can learn from.
We can use all the marketing techniques we want to bring new people in – but unless our product excites them in some way, they’re not going to come back or tell their friends about it. The problem is we give them the same material over and over and expect a different result – insanity. Consumers can see right through marketing techniques and they are not fooled. They trust word of mouth via friends and social media. People want new ideas and new music. We need to program more music by living composers – the kind of music people like – whatever that is. We need to try different artistic approaches and not shoot down any ideas. Reign in the gatekeepers and just throw different ideas on the wall and see what sticks.
Wouldn’t that be great? Program more living composers, including women, and at the same time rejuvinate the classical scene? Programmers, is this so hard to do? Anyone? I’d like to hear from festival and orchestra programmers. Please tell me what’s up!!!???
At this point , we have nothing to lose. Don’t be afraid of the classical base. They like new stuff too. They like big band swing and Elvis as well as classical. Don’t underestimate them or the younger audience. I hear that octogenarians are now lining up to see hip hop infused Hamilton.
Ms.Kravinska seems quite confused as to her audience types, their desires and the state of the music world .
Ariel, why not say a little more about why you think Liza is confused? And about what you think the audience types are. And, of course, what the data might be that supports your opinion.
I respect the strength of your feelings, but I’m seeing a lot of change in and around classical music. A lot of new things happening, involving all kinds of new people. Where this goes in the future we’ll have to see, but in my experience what Liza is talking about would certainly work. Since you think it wouldn’t — and since, if you’re right, this is important information for all of us to have — I’d be grateful if you’d give some examples of Liza’s ideas not working. Places they’ve been tried, and failed. Thanks!
“We need to program more music by living composers- the kind of music people like – whatever that is . ” an absurd observation.unless one is writing for a Broadway audience
were one hopes a tune or some contrived social observations will carry the day for the masses. and bring great success. A creative composer does not write “the kind of music people like” .but writes what is necessary to complete a thought as music ,when done
the composer hopes it pleases . .on living composers Ms. Kravinska might give a listen
to Penderecki … try the St. Luke Passion ….it isn’t the composers as much as it is the audience , they don’t aspire to much , so you get the latest sensational Broadway shlock and your one foot in the grave octogenarians .All the marketing tricks are pointless if your
audience has a gamut of emotion to the art from 0 to 1 and back again and must be constantly reminded how to behave as a civilized beings during a musical performance.
Hi Ariel,
Thank you for your more thoughtful comment. It deserves a thoughtful response, so here goes.
First of all, it’s Kravinsky, not Kravisnka. 🙂
Second of all, as a classically trained composer, pianist, and violinist who studied music composition, theory, and history at Oberlin College, I can understand and sometimes appreciate composers like Penderecki. However, I know many people would consider his music too disturbing and spooky to appreciate it. So many, that we don’t find many orchestras programming it today. Instead they program Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms over and over and over and over again. With a few pops programs as a token nod to what the audience might like. Or they might program one or two occassional living composers from the “Yale alumni school” Sybil described. Having gone to Oberlin, I could have been part of the – as Greg puts it – “20th century orthodox classical” school of composers, and earned your approval,
But I don’t really like that kind of music – and it’s not because I’m not educated or curious enough about classical music, It’s just my aesthetic sensibility. My educated point of view.
At the same time, because of the friends I hung around with at college, I learned to appreciate hip hop, before hip hop was even taken seriously by the mainstream pop world. It was so different from anything else I had heard, and there was creative poetry and rhythm and beats mixing. When the Oberlin musical establishment treated them like they didn’t deserve to exist, they struck me as the ones with no musical adventure or curiosity. (I hear things have changed since the 80’s).
It’s great that living composers like Penderecki have recognition. Same with Bates and Shaw. But we need to program MORE living composers with MORE variety of styles. I hear that only about 2% or so of mainstream orchestral programming involves living composers. That is not smart, especially since I know the classical base is also interested in new ideas. Ideas they like.
As for the classical base, my impressions of who they are come from people I know. My mother was a professional pianist and violinist who loved to play and listen to classical music. She also studied music theory and composition, and even took a composition course in Julliard. But she didn’t like the atonal stuff they insisted she do. I guess I take after my mom, because she loved Elvis, 50’s rock, broadway shows, musicals, and bluegrass. She was open minded and honest with herself. She brought me to the Kennedy Center once to hear music by new composers. When she realized the whole program centered around Schoenberg school of atonal music, she asked me if it was okay if we walked out. I said fine. She knew what she liked – and as an educated classical musician, she wouldn’t have like Penderecki.
My Dad fell in love with my Mom because she was a talented classical performer, and he himself was a classical pianist. He loves loves loves classical music, but would also hate Penderecki. At the same time, he likes big band swing, jazz, broadway musicals, and is always open to new experiences.
As for the less educated classical base, I would describe my mother in law as one of them. She knows absolutely nothing about music, has very little musical education or training. But she loves classical music. She also asked my once why illegal immigrants don’t just sign up to be citizens lol. So I don’t automatically associate love of classical with intellectual or educational sophistication. She does like Elvis and rock, though.
Other classical fans I meet have similar backgrounds, ranging widely in sophistication and education. And the older ones happen to also love jazz and Elvis. And it’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because they come from a certain culture and time. And they don’t want to hear more new music that sounds like – as one of my classical fan friends described, “constipated whales and crazy clowns.”
I too am a fan of classical, and I do think we need to try more new things with an open mind. I compose with the audience in mind. I imagine what they would feel and experience when I compose. And I’m not dumb, uninformed, or shallow. I am open minded, and I respect the audience.
Thanks for listening and responding with depth.
ariel, thanks for this.
I wonder what you’d think of the audiences for indie rock, electronic dance music, and hiphop. All these pop genres have highly artistic people inside them, creating highly artistic music. Which isn’t to say that would describe everything in the genres, but they all have what you might call an art wing. With an audience to match.
If you’re not familiar with this, I’d be curious to know what you’d think if you became familiar with it. If, let’s say, you searched out some rock criticism by Simon Reynolds, and decided, after reading him, whether you as easily would want to describe the audience as running the gamut from 0 to 1. I’d love you to try that. Read Simon Reynolds (or Greil Marcus, about older forms of rock), and let me know what you think. Lots of multilayered thought and emotion going on with those writers. And their readers. And with the people who create and listen to the music they write about.
Of course, you’re free to disagree with that! But if you do, please say why in reasonably specific terms. If Greil writes in a profound way about The Band, for instance, you might refer to songs on their two important albums and say why you think Greil is off-base in the way he praises them.
You might also listen to two or three albums by Björk, and let me know what you think of them. And about the millions of people who’ve bought and listened to them.
My point in urging this on you is to have you experience some evidence that the audience isn’t as shallow as you think it is. And that therefore it’s reasonable to suggest, as I and others have, that there could be an audience for all kinds of contemporary classical work.
As in fact there is. I saw a large audience in New York fill a thousand-seat church twice, for two performances of a program of contemporary classical orchestral music. What drew these people was a piece by Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist in the band Radiohead (a rock band much admired by many classical composers).
But this audience cheered not just the Greenwood piece, but other works, by Gavin Bryars and John Adams. And the Greenwood piece…well, interesting that you mentioned Penderecki, because Greenwood’s music was more than a little like Penderecki’s pre-tonal works, the ones like the famous Threnody that are about texture. Not to say Greenwood was derivative. i’m just identifying his stylistic area. Later on I gather that he and Penderecki formed a friendship of some sort, and Nonesuch released an album featuring works by both of them.
AS for composers, I agree with your general remark. Composers shouldn’t write music deliberately so people will like it. I like Schoenberg’s frequent remark that artists produce art the way an apple tree produces apples. They produce the kind of art they have to produce.
But at the same time, any field of art that doesn’t have a popular wing is in bad trouble. Classical music in past centuries always had that. To make some very broad (but accurate) comparisons, in the 18th century Bach was a scholarly composer without wide fame (except among connoisseurs who somehow happened to run across his work). While Handel was a great popular success. Neither composer set out to occupy the position he ended with. But it was good for music to have both sides.
Mozart and Haydn were similar. Mozart kept writing over the heads of his audience. The reviews of the Don Giovanni premiere in Prague are instructive. While the common view is that Mozart had a success there that he didn’t have with Figaro in Vienna, the reviews find the music somewhat cold and academic. Which is to say more complex than many people wanted it to be. While Haydn, after he left Prince Esterhazy and became an honored freelance composer, had enormous success. Why else would impresarios have commissioned the sets of London and Paris symphonies, if they didn’t think their audience would love that music?
Good thoughts, Liza.
There are so many examples of success in classical music doing new things. And Hamilton of course stands out as an example of something really new that’s won over audiences of all kinds.
Why the classical world doesn’t change much is a long conversation, of course. but one reason I think is that the people who do the programming for big institutions — along with the people at the top — may not know enough about alternate ways to proceed.
As demonstrated, just maybe, by the Kennedy Center trying things to reach a new audience, and not booking your Go Go Symphony! If they looked around, and asked “Who in DC is doing new things with classical music? And having a huge success?” I’d think they’d find you pretty quickly.
Thanks Greg! 🙂
I really enjoyed reading this article, and most especially the comments. I completely agree with Liza Figueroa Kravinsky: “Reign in the gatekeepers and just throw different ideas on the wall and see what sticks.” For far too long we have been oppressed by the Yale Alumni club who insist on imposing their narrow aesthetic and insisting on its greatness. We very well might have heard a real “shift” in aesthetics if other musicians from outside a narrow radius of New Haven CT were allowed on some of these programs.
P.S. for those readers who are unaware both Bates and Shaw have strong ties to the Yale School.
Though I think they’re both composers who ought to be played. And with no disrespect to Mason, I’d name Caroline as a composer whose music can bring sheer joy to almost anyone. Certainly Kanye West liked it!
I wouldn’t say they’re the problem. It’s the way the whole festival was planned and promoted.
I would love to have a t-shirt that says: ‘Think of marketing right from the start.’
You’d wear it proudly!
And some in classical music would think it really said: “I trivialize art.” Or something like that. Which would really be silly of them.
Greg,
I’m a little baffled by your statement “Composers really don’t have an audience.” Most people I know, myself included, choose which concerts to attend based on a hierarchy of interests or priorities. A star soloist or guest conductor might be number one, but minus the presence of one I think it’s safe to say the composers on the program are the primary factor in deciding to attend a concert. I wasn’t in town for the Boulder and North Carolina concerts but had I been the works by Shaw and Bates would have been the primary reason for attending, and the orchestra second. For me this holds true even for orchestras with high international profiles — there’s not an orchestra in the world that could get me into a hall to hear a Strauss doubleheader of “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” and “Don Juan,” including the Berliner Phil.
I agree with some of your observations regarding the marketing of the festival, but I think there are likely other reasons behind the disparity in the attendance for the concerts, including the two which featured “multimedia” presentations did a lot better in attracting an audience than the two that didn’t.
Pity, that is, because the Saturday night performance by the Knights and the SF Girls Chorus was much better than the dreadful show put on by the Atlanta Symphony the night before. Also, how many mid-week concerts will the average concert-goer commit to seeing, regardless of price, without an A-list soloist or conductor? Finally, I suspect there are major problems with the DC audience’s interest in classical music judging by the number of empty seats at two recent excellent concerts I attended that would have been sell-outs in other cities (Anne-Sophie Mutter’s recital last week) or at least full houses (James Conlon conducting the NSO).
I meant living composers. Not easy to think of one apart from Steve Reich and Philip Glass who have a fan base of their own. Doesn’t mean there aren’t some people, a few, who might gravitate to particular composers, as you evidently do. And I’d be another example. Put a Caroline Shaw or Meredith Monk or Arvo Pärt piece on a program, and I’m eager to be there. (Come to think of it, Meredith and Pärt may have enough fans to sell numerous tickets, under some circumstances.)
And yes, there’s a problem with classical music attendance in DC. Half-full houses are getting frequent, seemingly becoming the new normal. I don’t have stats on that; just my impression from what I and others have seen at the Kennedy Center. This would be part of the general fading of the classical music ecosystem. Something to take very seriously.
To take you up on the invite …. One cannot pass judgement on people who prefer indie rock, electronic
music etc . …it is all a matter of taste and reflects popular culture of the day .That it can be called artistic music is interesting-,can you explain what enables it as artistic music ?
Mr. Reynolds writes as his personal taste dictates, to me it is writing that reflects pop culture banality. The sort of thing one hears on NPR when they are filling time with the latest discovery who has managed to correctly hold a guitar and twangs their way into your heart with great feeling.
Then in the interview we are let known to give validity to their so called musicianship
they were “classically ” trained and name some well known music conservatory to prove their
point .
Greenwood as a composer is not interesting to me as I find him unoriginal .
What you are addressing is a cultural divide .One that has a long history and one that reinvents
itself as the flavor of the day
ariel,
Thanks for taking the time to answer in some detail. But there’s another mile — or, really, just a few yards — that you could go. I suggested you read Simon Reynolds because he gives many reasons for considering the music he writes about to be art. Taste of course plays a part in what music one might like, but it’s also possible to recognize deep artistry in music one doesn’t like. You seem quick to demote all pop music to the status — non-status — of trivially easy, thrown-together work.
I say that because you wrote “The sort of thing one hears on NPR when they are filling time with the latest discovery who has managed to correctly hold a guitar and twangs their way into your heart with great feeling.” It would be easy for you to learn that far more than this is going on. You might, for instance, look at NPR’s excellent music website, and read in more detail about the music you so quickly dismiss. Of course, I don’t know who, exactly, you’re so quickly dismissing. But there may be much more in it that you’re not hearing, because your ear and your thinking have adjusted themselves to the things that classical music does. Which may not be the things that other music does. Would you be quick to dismiss Indian classical music as simplistic, because the harmony (in our western sense) never changes? I’d guess you know that doing that would be a mistake.
I’ve taught at Juilliard for 20 years, and each year have introduced my students — classical musicians — to some of the deeper things in pop. Not many of them needed to be convinced that pop can go deep, but many did learn to listen for things that at first they didn’t notice at all. Such as the complex interplay in a James Brown songs in the way each musician, Brown included, relate to the beat. One hears that they’re all on the same page rhythmically. That their ensemble is very tight, apparently in the same ways that we’d describe tight ensemble in classical music.
I then ask my students to listen from the bass upwards. Or, that is, to take the bass player as the rhythmic center, and then to see how the other musicians, and Brown as a singer, fit in with the bass. My students are surprised then to hear that the other musicians aren’t precisely with the bass at all. They inflect both the beat and its subdivisions in individual ways. While at the same time knowing perfectly well where the uninflected beat. And stating that uninflected beat implicitly in their playing. Which, a very interesting point, is exactly how African drumming works. Very complex individual rhythms, all referring to a basic beat that nobody plays.
Before my students hear James Brown this way, the music sounds repetitive to them. When they begin hearing the many inflections of the basic beat, which change throughout the song, the music doesn’t sound repetitive at all. There’s always something new going on in the rhythm. There are musicologists, I’ve been told, who’ve constructed large-scale structures from inflections of this kind. Which would be the advanced course — showing how the James Brown song has a coherent large structure built from rhythmic inflection. But just hearing the inflection is a good start to learning to hear music in ways that classical music doesn’t talk about.
Another example, a personal favorite, of deep musical thinking comes in a Lucinda Williams song called “Ventura.” The harmony is nothing but four chords that repeat throughout the song. In classical terms, they’re IV, I, II, V.
So two things, for a start, are impressive about that. First, that there’s no V – I cadence, though the key is unmistakable. V progresses to IV. And the tonic chord is simply a momentary incident in the repeated progression.
This gives the song quite a bit of forward propulsion. Keeps the harmony going in a never-ending circle. Which so well fits what the song is about, when Williams, suffering from great unhappiness, sings, in the song’s chorus, “I want to get swallowed up/In an ocean of love.” That unending circle of chords is the ocean.
The second interesting thing is, speaking now as a composer, enormously impressive. The song has what can seem like a very simple structure, a verse and then a chorus. Then another verse, then the chorus, and so on. The chorus is where the melody of the song takes flight. It’s the part of the song a listener most readily will remember.
But since the chords never change, the chorus has the same harmony as the verses. And even so the melody takes flight. I think that would be difficult for any classical composer to pull off, and I don’t think i’ve ever encountered a classical piece that does this. (Well, maybe “A te, o cara,” the tenor’s entrance aria in I Puritani, which with only three chords, I, IV, and V, builds its melody to an impressive climax.) I’d love to give this as an assignment to a composition class. Write a song in which the verse and chorus have the same harmony, but the chorus has a melody that really takes off. I don’t think it would be easy to write.
Pop music is not easily thrown together work … it takes some clever doing to figure out how
to please a vast majority of people who have limited musical knowledge ….whose concepts
of what makes up “classical ” would be the 3 tenors and Nessun Dorma for the millionth time .
Rather then Bellini clap trap I would have a composition class study the last act of The Marriage of Figaro.
nothing like coming face to face with a supreme master . As for the Brown insights spare us ……..
Why the disdain for the Brown insights? Please be specific.