A week ago I offered the opening salvo in what I hope will be a series of posts extolling the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness through progressive rock music. Last week’s post mentioned briefly the difficulty in coming up with anything approaching an “all-inclusive definition” of what is or is not progressive rock. The problem is that musical genres are often imposed by music fans or record label marketing departments. Most musicians refuse to think in terms of genres and are often surprised after the fact that their latest album is “the best New Age album ever” or “a definitive work of prog rock yumminess.” Therefore, one set of fans believes it is self-evident that their favorite group is the very epitome of neo-thrash-punk-ska-disco icon while another set vehemently disagrees and swears that the same artist is the best proto-rockabilly-emo-folk band on planet Earth. Each group of fans digs in their heels, the Internet message boards generate more heat than light, and the whole thing ends up degenerating into name calling and hurt feelings.
Several book-length studies have been written on the topic of progressive rock [1] and those books all deal at some point with the volatile topic of defining the boundaries of the genre. I have perused all of the books listed below and wish to offer Edward Macan’s broad outline in his book Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture as the most helpful for our purposes here. Macan moves toward a broad definition of the genre by looking at prog’s musical style, its visual style, and its lyrical style. Along the way he breaks things up thusly [2]:
Musical style
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Instrumentation and tone color – In progressive rock the standard rock band configuration of one or two guitars, a bass guitar, a keyboard/piano, and a drum kit was augmented to include all sorts of non-traditional rock music instruments such as the flute, violin, oboe, harp, church organ, 12-string acoustic guitar, and various percussion instruments. In addition, prog keyboardists such as Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, and Tony Banks were early-adopters of rapidly developing synthesizer technology.
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Classical forms – Many British rock groups such as The Rolling Stones, Cream, The Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin relied heavily on the language of the American blues to shape their sound. Many early prog artists (especially those from Britain) either downplayed or ignored altogether urban American blues influences in favor of the more sophisticated musical devices (i.e. suites, fugue/counterpoint, statement/development/recapitulation, and odd time signatures such as 7/4, 9/8, and 11/16). Prog musicians also preferred the longer, broader sweep of European classical music, largely rejecting the concept of the “three-and-a-half minute pop song.”
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Virtuosity – Since much early prog either downplayed or rejected blues-based musical forms–including jazz–the virtuosity demonstrated by prog musicians had less to do with a jazz-based language and more to do with the classical music-based idea of virtuosity best exemplified by violinist Niccolò Paganini or pianist Franz Liszt.
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Modal harmony – Prog musicians made use of the seven modern modes [3] or other exotic scales (and their corresponding chords) in order to achieve a specific musical mood. Classical composers such as Richard Wagner, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Olivier Messiaen popularized the use of these modes and scales in classical music.
Visual style
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Album cover art – Prog rock developed in the age of the long-playing phonograph record. Many prog rock artists saw album covers as another way to create a mood or (using today’s marketing jargon) “brand themselves” through the use of recurring visual themes, fonts, and iconography on album covers. Prog bands also made use of gatefold sleeve technology in order to expand further the visuals attached to the enjoyment of their music. The full enjoyment of prog rock music involved not just listening to the music but also receiving a satisfying visual experience, as well.
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The concert experience – A progressive rock concert experience often became an extension of the artwork created for the album cover as prog rockers sought to implement parts of the album artwork into their stage show in the form of backdrops, logos, costumes, bass drum heads, etc.
Lyrical style
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Surrealism – Influenced by authors such as T. S. Eliot and Hermann Hesse, prog rock lyricists sought to create lyrics that were vague, sarcastic, ironic, obscure, or that could be understood in more than one way. Many prog rock lyrics featured a distinctively British, Monty Python-esque whimsy.
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Countercultural idealism – Several prog rock lyricists utilized the hippy idealism of the late-1960s to confront and deconstruct the social issues of the day.
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Resistance and protest – Influenced by the folk protest songs of the 60s (as well as the works of Eliot and Hesse), many prog rock lyricists offered scathing critiques of Western consumerism, imperialism, the growing threat of technology, and Randolph Bourne’s concept of “war as the health of the state.”
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Utopian vision (mythology, mysticism, sci-fi themes) – Prog rock lyricists often drew upon literary sources as diverse as J. R. R. Tolkien (especially his Middle Earth cycle), Eastern spiritual writings such as the Shastric scriptures, and the science fiction writing of authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov to construct an agrarian, vaguely spiritual world that was at once suspicious of technology yet nevertheless intrigued by space exploration and time travel.
In sum, I wish to posit that progressive rock is a style of music based upon the instrumentation of blues-based rock music, yet with the blues elements stripped away in favor of elements found more commonly in classical music. Improvisation takes place, but in manner that is more tightly controlled than in jazz. The common rock instrumentation is augmented with instruments not traditionally found in a rock setting. Progressive rock is concerned with creating a distinctive visual experience through the use of striking album cover artwork that often is transferred over to the concert stage. Finally, the lyrics of progressive rock are frequently topical, spiritual, or narrative in nature. The prog rock lyricist unfolds their ideas–often over the span of 15 to 20 minutes–through the use of literary devices such as sarcasm, whimsy, irony, and obscurantism.
Although this might seem like an exhaustive amount of detail about a musical genre, this barely scratches the surface of what could be said about progressive rock. There is a whole world of prog sub-genres that further muddies the waters over what properly constitutes prog. It isn’t enough to establish that a musical artist is or isn’t prog in the first place. The argument then proceeds as to whether said artist is “Canterbury,” “symphonic prog,” “neo-progressive,” or some other microbrew sub-genre.
I also realize that this post has been rather thin in biblical content. In my next post I will attempt to atone for these transgressions by delving briefly (emphasis on briefly) into a few reasons why a Christian should care at all about this music and hopefully provide some ground rules for the faithful enjoyment of progressive rock.
I will let former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford have the last word on defining progressive rock. In his uniquely British way, Bruford succinctly summarizes the type of person(s) responsible for the engineering the first wave of prog rock greatness.
The release of King Crimson’s album In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969 signalled [sic] the emergence of the mature progressive rock style that reached its commercial and artistic zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of such bands as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, ELP, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air.
Demographically, progressive rock was a music from south-east England, overwhelmingly made by nice middle-class English boys like me. The musicians’ backgrounds were strictly white-collar, and their parents were often downright distinguished. Never working-class, it was rather the vital expression of a bohemian, middle-class intelligentsia. [4]
1. Among the best are Hegarty, Paul, and Martin Halliwell. Beyond and Before: Progressive Rock since the 1960s. New York: Continuum, 2011. Lambe, Stephen. Citizens of Hope and Glory: The Story of Progressive Rock. Stroud: Amberley, 2011. Macan, Edward. Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Martin, Bill. Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968-1978. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1998. Romano, Will. Mountains Come out of the Sky: The Illustrated History of Prog Rock. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat, 2010. Stump, Paul. The Music’s All That Matters. Chelmsford: Harbour, 2010.
2. The following is a summary of chapters two through four of Macan’s book.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_mode#Modern. The names of the seven modern modes are Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian.
4. Bruford, Bill. Bill Bruford: The Autobiography: Yes, King Crimson, Earthworks, and More. London: Jawbone, 2009. p. 115.
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Derek Hale has lived all of his life in Wichita, Kansas and isn’t a bit ashamed about that fact. He and his wife Nicole have only six children–four daughters and two young sons of thunder. Derek is a ruling elder, chief musician, and performs pastoral duties at Trinity Covenant Church (CREC). Derek manages a firmware lab for NetApp and enjoys reading, computers, exercising, craft beer, and playing and listening to music. But not all at the same time. He blogs occasionally at youdidntblogthat.tumblr.com.<>
bill bruford, pop music, prog, prog rock, rock music, tolkien
