Looking Forward to the Past: Baroque Rock's
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LOOKING FORWARD TO THE PAST: BAROQUE ROCK’S POSTMODERN NOSTALGIA AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY by Sara Gulgas BA Music History and Literature, Youngstown State University, 2011 MA Popular Music Studies, University of Liverpool, 2012 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology University of Pittsburgh 2017 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Sara Gulgas It was defended on February 16, 2017 and approved by Dr. Deane L. Root, University of Pittsburgh, Music Dr. Emily Zazulia, University of California Berkeley, Music Dr. Joyce Bell, University of Minnesota, Sociology Dissertation Director: James P. Cassaro, University of Pittsburgh, Music ii Copyright © by Sara Gulgas 2017 iii LOOKING FORWARD TO THE PAST: BAROQUE ROCK’S POSTMODERN NOSTALGIA AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY Sara Gulgas, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2017 In the mid-1960s, baroque rock music blended the sound of string quartets, harpsichord ostinatos, and contrapuntal techniques with rock instrumentation. This contemporary representation of the distant past presents an ironic anachronism that is humorous in its novel affect while allowing this dissonance to alert the listener about constructions of memory and the perception of time. Some of the biggest names in rock and roll were influenced by the Early Music revival but took a non-linear approach to history rather than undertaking “historically informed performance.” They cultivated what I call postmodern nostalgia: a symptom of crisis and progress that is simultaneously reflexive in its detached interpretation of history and imagined in its participants’ ability to reference a past they have not themselves experienced. Through close examinations of artist interviews, album critiques, publicity materials, and musical analysis, I argue that baroque rock artists utilized stylistic representations of the past not out of a desire to return to a simpler time (as is often the narrative associated with nostalgia), but to react against modernism, mainstream society, and traditional norms. Even though baroque rock artists were engaging with the canonization of baroque music, they were influenced by their own modern-day conceptions of the past. Viewing the movement through the lens of memory politics, hipness, and postmodernism, my research shows that baroque rock artists re-imagined hipness with sounds of the distant past in order to question the truth of nostalgic memory. This study includes backward and forward-looking approaches to history as it documents the cultural, social, and historical implications of an overlooked subgenre that is mentioned but in passing in iv popular music scholarship. Its significance lies in its examination of music’s power to reconstruct sounds of the distant past through an ironic interpretation of historical memory. Memory politics is applied to popular music not to point out that profit can be made by catering to the aesthetics of nostalgia, but rather to question why one is nostalgic at all. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 WHAT IS BAROQUE ROCK? .......................................................................... 3 1.2 STAKES OF RESEARCH .................................................................................. 7 1.3 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................ 10 1.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY AND LITERATURE REVIEW ............................. 12 2.0 THE NEW SENSIBILITY AND POSTMODERN NOSTALGIA ........................ 22 2.1 HISTORY OF BAROQUE ROCK .................................................................. 23 2.2 THE NEW SENSIBILITY AND POSTMODERNISM ................................. 28 2.3 THE POSTMODERN AESTHETIC ............................................................... 31 2.4 THE PERPETUAL PRESENT AND POSTMODERN NOSTALGIA ........ 39 2.5 BAROQUE ROCK’S NEOCLASSIC IMPULSE .......................................... 54 2.6 IRONY AS A FORM OF RESISTANCE ........................................................ 57 3.0 WHAT IS H.I.P? EARLY MUSIC AND THE ROCK REVOLUTION .............. 64 3.1 POSTMODERN NOSTALGIA AND HISTORICAL AUTHENTICITY ... 65 3.2 THE EARLY MUSIC REVIVAL AND BAROQUE ROCK ........................ 72 3.3 REINTERPRETING AND REPURPOSING BACH..................................... 89 4.0 COAST TO COAST AND TRANS-ATLANTIC CONNECTIONS ..................... 99 4.1 HIPNESS, GAME IDEOLOGY, AND RESPECTABILITY POLITICS .. 100 vi 4.2 TRANS-ATLANTIC HIPNESS AND RETROCHIC FASHION ............... 114 4.3 THE BEATS AND THE COUNTERCULTURE ......................................... 125 4.4 TRANSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ........................................................ 131 4.4.1 Los Angeles, California 1964: The Beach Boys ........................................ 132 4.4.2 New York, New York 1966: The Left Banke ............................................ 134 4.4.3 London, England 1967: Procol Harum...................................................... 138 4.4.4 San Francisco, California 1968: Big Brother and the Holding Company....................................................................................................... 143 5.0 CULTURAL ACCREDITATION .......................................................................... 156 5.1 THE MASS MEDIA GRAB HOLD OF THE ROCK REVOLUTION ..... 158 5.2 BACH AS LAUDATORY AND EMBARRASSING.................................... 170 6.0 HIP CONSUMERISM AND BAROQUE BUBBLEGUM ................................... 188 6.1 HIP CONSUMERISM AND MUSICAL PLURALISM .............................. 190 6.2 COUNTERCULTURAL PARADOXES ....................................................... 198 6.3 BAROQUE BUBBLEGUM ............................................................................ 211 6.3.1 Harpers Bizarre ........................................................................................... 213 6.3.2 The Turtles ................................................................................................... 215 6.3.3 The Banana Splits ........................................................................................ 221 7.0 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 238 VIDEOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................... 249 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The cover of The Baroque Beatles Book ....................................................................... 24 Figure 2. Trillo and mordant ornamentation ................................................................................. 44 Figure 3. The Left Banke, “Walk Away Renée,” mm.1-6 ............................................................ 97 Figure 4. Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas, “When I am laid in earth,” mm.1-6 ......................... 97 Figure 5. The cover of the Left Banke’s second album, The Left Banke Too ............................ 121 Figure 6. Customer being fitted outside of I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet ................................. 121 Figure 7. Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” mm.1-4 .................................................... 139 Figure 8. Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 1068, second movement, mm.1-3 .............................. 140 Figure 9. Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” mm. 3-6 ................................................... 140 Figure 10. Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 140, fourth movement, mm.7-8 ................................ 140 Figure 11. Big Brother and the Holding Company, “Summertime,” mm. 2-5 ........................... 147 Figure 12. Johann Sebastian Bach, BWV 847, Fugue No. 2 in C minor, mm. 1-3 .................... 147 Figure 13. Big Brother and the Holding Company, “Summertime,” mm. 7-11 ......................... 147 Figure 14. Johann Sebastian Bach on the December 27, 1968 cover of Time Magazine ........... 171 Figure 15. The initial album cover of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach (1968) ..................... 175 Figure 16. The replacement album cover of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach (1968) ........... 176 Figure 17. Venn diagram displaying the transformation from ironic to serious appropriations of the distant past through baroque rock, psychedelic rock, and progressive rock ......................... 185 viii Figure 18. Death of the Hippie Funeral Announcement (1967) ................................................. 205 Figure 19. Mark Volman (harpsichord) and lead singer Howard Kaylan of the Turtles ............ 216 Figure 20. The cover of the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request .......................... 220 Figure 21. The Atomic Enchilada promotional photograph found in the inside cover of The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands....................................................................................... 221 ix PREFACE I will begin by including a blanket “thank you” to my family, friends, professors, and colleagues at Youngstown State University, University of Liverpool, and the University of Pittsburgh in order to avoid the dissertation equivalent of the “wrap it up” music they play at awards ceremonies to indicate that the