Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard Read Free Page A

collaboration (indicated by “w/” inside the parentheses)
    In the parentheses following an album title are the label information and release date. The original label and year of release come first; the reissue (or most recent reissue) label and year, when applicable, come after the semicolon (a year without a label indicates that the original label also reissued the record).

    20 TH CENTURY COMPOSERS
    There’s long been a clear separation in Western culture between so-called “high art” (characterized by classical music) and low art (as in folk, or popular, music). It’s made for a long-standing love-hate relationship between the two. Pop music fans see classical music as elitist; classical music audiences consider pop unrefined. At the same time, pop looks to classical music for what it can adapt and popularize, in hopes that some of the respect will rub off, and classical music looks to pop for freshness and informality, hoping to uncover and use pop’s secrets to widespread success.
    While ideas of high and low are very powerful social constructs, the actual division on a qualitative level is largely artificial and subjective. The differences between a symphony orchestra and a jug band are more about the training, professionalism, and cultural background of their members (and listeners) than about the music’s inherent worth. To a large degree society’s consciousness of “high” versus “low” indicates the insecurity of the middle class, who have traditionally overvalued the aristocratic culture they have striven to join and disparaged the folk culture from which they came. Passing freely between high and low – and often settling in an area somewhere between the two – are rock musicians with classical training, formal composers with their “ears to the street,” and many unprejudiced listeners who simply enjoy a wide variety of musical styles.
    This chapter focuses on some of the 20 th -century musical personalities who are generally categorized as composers of high art and yet have exerted a sizable influence on recent rock music. Interestingly, all of these musicians were to some degree marginalized in the classical world (usually by choice), a fact that no doubt makes them all the more attractive as cult figures in the rock world.
    Some notes on terminology: New explorations in music that would traditionally have been labeled as classical make the word somewhat inaccurate, and perhaps terms such as concert music, art music, and serious music are better (though far from ideal – many rock and jazz musicians also play concerts and consider themselves serious artists). Whatever the reality, all these terms continue to be used to denote a tradition that, for better or worse, is regarded as distinct from popular music.
    Some modern music in the high art tradition is called avant-garde, or experimental. These terms are often used interchangeably, but are subtly different: “Avant-garde” is a general term for music on the cutting edge of culture; “experimental” refers specifically to music that is itself an experiment. For example, a piece of aleatory music is experimental because it is based on chance procedures, and therefore will turn out differently each time.
    Other terms used here that are interchangeable in general usage, though distinct in more specific ways, include atonal music, serialism, and 12-tone music. Each describes a major trend in 20 th -century composition away from traditional tonality. For centuries, Western music has been written around a central note, or tone, and the seven other tones that appear in the note’s scale. Atonal, serial, and twelve-tone music are not centered on a single tone but freely use all twelve notes available in an octave. A further development, microtonal music, rebels against the entire European system of equal temperament (from which both the 8-tone and 12-tone scales derive) and explores (as non-Western music has always done) the infinite number