История рок музыки в Великобритании
Федеральное агентство по образованию Российской
Федерации
Новгородский государственный
университет им. Ярослава Мудрого
Реферат на тему:
Rock music in Britain
Выполнил:
Студент группы 1262
Иванов Я. О.
Проверила:
Александрова Г. П.
В. Новгород
2006 г.
History of British music
Little survives of the
early music of Britain, by which is meant the music that was used by the people
before the establishment of musical notation in the medieval period. Much that
survives of folk music must have had its origins in this period, although the
melodies played by morris dancers and other traditional groups can also be from
a later period.
Some of the earliest
music to remain is either church music, or else is in the form of carols or
ballads dating from the 16th century or earlier. Troubadors carried an
international courtly style across western Europe. It was common in times
before copyright for melodies to be interchangeable, and the same melodies will
often have been used (with differing words) for secular and religious purposes.
Melodies like that of the Sussex Carol or Greensleeves will have had a long
history of eclectic use over the centuries.
During the 15th century,
a vigorous tradition of polyphony developed in Britain, as exemplified in the
music of composers such as Leonel Power, John Dunstable and Robert Fayrfax. The
music of this school was famous on the continent, and occasionally rivaled the
music of the contemporary Burgundian school in expressiveness and renown;
indeed Dunstable is recognized as one of the strongest influences on the early
development of the music of the Burgundians. Unfortunately, however, the vast
majority of British music manuscripts from this period were destroyed during
the Dissolution of the Monasteries carried out by Henry VIII in the late 1530s;
only a few isolated survivals remain, including the Old Hall Manuscript, the
Eton Choirbook, the Winchester Troper, and a handful of scattered sources from
the continent.
16th to 17th Centuries
With the growth in wealth
and leisure-time for the noble classes, tastes in music began to diverge
sharply. While in the early part of the period it is possible for tavern songs
like Pastime with Good Companie to be attributed (apocryphally) to King Henry
VIII, by the middle 16th Century there were distinct styles of music enjoyed by
the differing social classes. Renaissance influences made the acquisition of
musical knowledge an almost essential attribute for the nobleman and woman, and
ability to play an instrument became an almost mandatory social grace.
The Rennaisance influence
also internationalized courtly music in terms of both instruments and content,
the lute dulcimer and early forms of the harpsichord were played, ballads and
madrigals were sung. The pavane and galliard were danced. Henry Purcell became
court composer to King Charles II and wrote incidental music to plays and
events.
For other classes
instruments like pipe, tabor, bagpipe shawm, hurdygurdy and crumhorn
accompanied folk music and community dance. The fiddle gradually grew in
popularity. Differing regional styles of folk music developed, in
geographically separated areas such as Northumbria, London and the West
Country.
From about 1588 to 1627,
a group of composers known as the British Madrigal School became well-known in Britain and abroad. These madrigalists composed light a cappella songs for three to six
voices, based on Italian models. The School began when Nicholas Yonge published
Musica transalpina in 1588, using poetic forms like the sonnet and inspired by
the work of Alfonso Ferrabosco, an Italian composer in Elizabeth I's court.
18th Century
As courtly music grew
more elaborate and internationalised, with composers such as Handel and Mozart,
writing operas, oratorios and symphonic works, an British musician called John
Gay produced The Beggar's Opera, a revolutionary popular opera which used British
folk forms.
19th Century
With the Industrial
Revolution came a parallel revolution in British popular music as people moved
from stable agrarian communities into the growing industrial centres with the
rise of the brass band in the North of Britain. Folk Music went through a rapid
series of transformations as different regional idioms came together and
reformed themselves into the first universally acceptable and commercial
popular music. This change began first in the alehouses and later in what
became known as the Music Hall. Music Hall became the dominant form of British
popular music for over a century from its birth in the 1850s. While folk music
continued to enjoy popularity in the countryside, it was replaced for the
majority by the new forms.
Early 20th Century
Edward Elgar was the
dominant classical composer of the early part of the century. British tastes
also tended towards light classical composers such as Edward German, Ketelbey
and Eric Coates, whose music was spread by the new medium of Radio.
Radio also played a part
in the increasing popularity of big band dance music, popularised by the
orchestras of Geraldo, Ambrose, Henry Hall and Billy Cotton, and singers like
Al Bowlly, and Jack Buchanan.
Operetta and Musical
Comedy were very popular forms in this period, and leading British composers
included Ivor Novello, Noel Coward, and Noel Gay.
Popular singers in the
Music Hall idiom included, Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley, George Formby, Flanagan
and Allen and Gracie Fields. With the advent of World War II the taste for a
more reflective and romantic style of music was led by singers like Anne
Shelton and Vera Lynn.
The Fifties
A significant factor in
the early growth of folk clubs was Topic Records. A.L. Lloyd wrote many of the
sleeve notes for the records for the next 20 years and sang on several of their
albums. Ewan MacColl toured widely in Britain, and recorded many of the Child
Ballads. Collets records in London was the best shop to find folk records and
magazines. From the mid-fifties skiffle and Rock and Roll songs began to be
home-produced by British performers.
The modern period
In the 60s and 70s, Britain was in a state of social upheaval as a counterculture developed, from which came an
explosion of American blues-derived musical innovation as well as a revival of British
folk, inspired by pioneering artists like the Copper family. There was mixing
between the two groups, with bands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span
pioneering a folk-rock fusion. Nic Jones, Davy Graham, Roy Harper, Ralph
McTell, June Tabor, Shirley Collins, John Renbourn and John Kirkpatrick were
among those who balanced innovation with tradition, and criticized the worst
excesses of folk-rock. When Martin Carthy "plugged in" in 1971, the British
traditional scene erupted in an uproar of criticizing. Ashley Hutchings and
Dave Pegg had been earlier innovators of the fusion, and Hutchings helped
propel Fairport Convention into the star position of the British folk-rock
scene, starting with the album "What We Did On Our Holidays".
The seventies were
probably the heydays for Folk Music Publications. The popularity of British
folk declined in the later 1970s, however, losing ground to glam rock, disco,
punk rock, heavy metal and lovers rock. In the mid-1980s a new rebirth began,
this time fusing folk forms with energy and political aggression derived from
punk rock. Leaders included The Men They Couldn't Hang, Oyster Band, Billy
Bragg and The Pogues. Folk-dance music also became popular in the 80s, with the
British Country Blues Band and Tiger Moth. Later in the decade, reggae
influenced British country music due to the work of Edward II & the Red Hot
Polkas, especially on their seminal Let's Polkasteady from 1987. In the 21st
century, Oxford produced a young duo Spiers and Boden
Northumbrian folk
Northumbria, at the northern edge of Britain, bordering on Scotland across the Tweed River has the most vital traditional music
of Britain, with a strong scene and some mainstream success. Many of the most
popular traditional songs of today were written by legendary composers like
Tommy Armstrong in the late 19th century. In contrast to the rest of Britain, Northumbria shows a strong Irish Celtic influence in the music, the result of
immigration. Accordions and fiddles, for example, remain popular as a lasting
influence from Ireland.
Northumbria is known for its long history of
border ballads, such as "The Ballad of Chevy Chase" and dances,
including social ones like the Elsdon Reel and others, like rapper dancing and
Northumbrian clog dancing, more typically seen in concert halls.
Pipes
Northumbrian folk is most
characterized by the use of Northumbrian smallpipes as well as a strong
Scottish and Celtic influence. Northumbrian pipes are small and elbow-driven
and the music is traditionally very swift and rhythmic. Another distinct form
of Northumbrian pipe is called the "half-long" or "border"
pipe. Perhaps the most important of the old masters of the pipes is Billy Pigg.
Drawing on these pioneers, popularizers like Louis Killen, The High Level
Ranters and Bob Davenport brought Northumbrian folk to international audiences,
while Jack the Lad, Hedgehog Pie and Lindisfarne used regional sources for
folk-rock fusions.
West Country
The West Country is most
noted for its Scrumpy and Western music, much of it fusing comical folk-style
songs with affectionate parodies of more mainstream musical genres, delivered
in the local West Country dialects.
Sea shanties
Sea shanties are a form
of work song traditionally sung by sailors working on the rigging of ships.
There are several types, divided based on the type of work they set the
rhythmic base for. For example:
* short haul shanties: for quicks
pulls over a short time
* capstan shanties: for repetitive,
longer tasks that require a sustained rhythm
* halyard shanties: for heavier
work that require more time between pulls to set up
History of British Rock Music
Chuck Berry invented rock
and roll in 1955. Berry was a black man playing black music. But times had
changed: white kids were listening to rhythm and blues throughout the
Northeast, and white musicians were playing rhythm and blues side to side with
country music. The music industry soon understood that there was a white market
for black music and social prejudice, racial barriers, could nothing against
the forces of capitalism. Rock and roll was an overnight success. The music
industry promoted white idols such as Elvis Presley, but the real heroes were
the likes of Chuck Berry, who better symbolize the synergy between the
performer and the audience. The black rockers, and a few white rockers,
epitomized the youth's rebellious mood, their need for a soundtrack to their
dreams of anticonformism. Their impact was long lasting, but their careers were
short lived. For one reason or another, they all stopped recording after a
brief time. Rock and roll was inherited by white singers, such as Presley, who
often performed songs composed by obscure black musicians. White rockers became
gentler and gentler, thereby drowning rock and roll's very reason to exist.
Buddy Holly was the foremost white rocker of the late Fifties, while
cross-pollination with country music led to the vocal harmonies of the Everly
Brothers and to the instrumental rock of Duan Eddy.
The kids' malaise
returned, with a much taller wave, when folksingers started singing about the
problems of the system. Kids who had not identified with Woody Guthrie's
stories of poor people, identified immediately with folksingers singing about
the Vietnam war and civil rights. Bob Dylan was arguably the most influential
musician of the era. He led the charge against the Establishment with simple
songs and poetic lyrics. A generation believed in him and followed his dreams.
Music became the expression of youth's ambitions.
At the same time, the story
of commercial rock music took a bizarre turn when it hit the coast of California: the Beach Boys invented surf music. Surf music was just rock and roll music,
but with a spin: very sophisticated vocal harmonies. California had its own
ideas about what rock and roll should be: a music for having fun at the beaches
and at the parties. The Beach Boys' vocal harmonies, a natural bridge between
rockers and doo-wop, turned out to be a fantastic delivery vehicle for the
melodic aspect of rock and roll, that black musicians usually buried in their
emphatic shouting.
The times were ripe for
change, but a catalyst was still needed.
"Mersey-beat"
changed the story of rock music forever. Mersey-beat came out of nowhere, but
it came with the power of history. Britain had had a lousy music scene
throughout the early Sixties. Mainly, British rockers were mimicking Presley.
Mainstream Britain did not identify with rock and roll, was not amused by their
"rebel" attitudes, did not enjoy their frenzy rhythm. To a large extent,
though, the seeds had already been planted. Britain had an underground before America did: the blues clubs. Throughout the Fifties, blues clubs flourished all over Britain. London was the epicenter, but every major British city had its own doses of weekly
blues. Unlike their rock counterparts, who were mere imitators, the British
blues musicians were true innovators: in their hands, blues became something
else. They subjected blues to a metamorphosis that turned it into a
"white" music: they emphasized the epic refrains of the call and
response, they sped up Chicago's rhythm guitars, they smoothed down the vocal
delivery to make it sound more operatic, they flexed the choruses, enhanced the
organ arrangements, added vocal harmony. In a few years, British blues
musicians were playing something that was as deeply felt as the American blues,
but had a driving power that no other music on Earth had.
In the early Sixties
veterans of that scene, or disciples of that scene, led to the formation of
bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and the Animals. The Rolling
Stones became "the" sensation in London and went on to record the
most successful singles of the era. The Yardbirds were the most experimental of
them all, and became the training ground for three of the greatest guitarists
ever: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimi Page. From their ashes two blues bands
were born, the Cream and the Led Zeppelin, that in a few years will
revolutionize rock music again.
Liverpool did not have a great underground scene
but had a more commercial brand of rock bands. The producer George Martin was
instrumental in creating the whole phenomenon, with both Gerry And The
Pacemakers and the Beatles, the band that went on to achieve world-wide
success. The smiling faces of the Liverpool kids were in stark contrast with
the underground club's angry blues animals. But the two complemented each
other. "Beatlemania" stole the momentum from the blues scene and
understood how to turn that music into a mass-media attraction. Rock music as a
major business was born.
The most influential
bands of the second generation were the Kinks and the Who. Both went on to
record concept albums and "rock operas" that paraphrased the British
operetta at the sound of rock music. While Kinks were still proponents of
melodic rock, the Who's manically amplified guitars were already pointing
towards a noisier and less gentle future. The Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the
Who represent the triad of British rock bands of the mid 1960s that would
influence entire generations of rock bands for decades. The Who were composing
autobiographical songs of the angry and frustrated urban youth. The Rolling
Stones were composing autobiographical songs of the decadent punks of the
working class. The Kinks were composing realistic vignettes of ordinary life in
bourgeois Britain. The three together provide a complete picture of the time.
Cream and Led Zeppelin
upped the ante when they started playing very loud blues. Cream's lengthy solos
and Led Zeppelin's fast riffs created the epitome of "hard rock".
The impact of British
electricity on the American scene was equivalent to an earthquake. Kids
embraced electric guitars in every garage of the United States and started
playing blues music with a vengeance.
On the East Coast it was
Dylan again who led the charge. His first electric performances were met with
disappointment by his fans, but soon "folk-rock" boomed with the hits
of the Byrds and Simon And Garfunkel.
In Britain, rock music took more of a European feel with the underground movement that was
born out of psychedelic clubs. Canterbury became the center of the most
experimental school of rock music. The Soft Machine were the most important
band of the period, lending rock music a jazz flavor that would inspire
"progressive-rock". Among the eccentric and creative musicians that
grew up in the Soft Machine were Robert Wyatt, David Aellen, and Kevin Ayers.
Their legacy can be seen in later Canterbury bands such as Henry Cow, no less
creative and improvisational.
Progressive-rock took
away rock's energy and replaced it with a brain. Traffic, Jethro Tull, Family
and later Roxy Music developed a brand of soul-rock that had little in common
with soul or rock and roll: long, convoluted jams, jazz accents, and baroque
arrangements derailed the song format. King Crimson, Colosseum, Van Der Graaf
Generator, early Genesis, Yes and started playing ever more complex, theatrical
and hermetic pieces. Arrangements became more and more complex, insturmentalists
become more and more skilled. Electronic instruments were employed frequently.
Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Third Ear Band and Hawkwind created genres that at the
time had no name (decadent cabaret, world-music and psychedelic hard rock).
The paradigm soon spilled
into continental Europe, that gave its first major rock acts: Magma, Art Zoyd,
Univers Zero.
Even Britain's folksingers sounded more like French intellectuals than oldfashioned
storytellers. The folk revival of the Sixties was mainly the creation of a
fistful of three collectives: the Pentangle, the Fairport Convention and the
Incredible String Band. But around them singer songwriters like Donovan, Cat
Stevens, Nick Drake , John Martyn, Syd Barrett and Van Morrison established new
standards for musical expression of intimate themes.
The 1960s were the
"classic" age of rock music. The main sub-genres were defined in the
1960s. The paradigm of rock music as the "alternative" to commercial
pop music was established in the 1960s. Wild experimentation alloweds rock
musicians to explore a range of musical styles that few musicians had attempted
before 1966. Captain Beefheart and the Velvet Underground also created a
different kind of rock music within rock music, a different paradigm within the
new paradigm, one that will influence alternative musicians for decades. More
than musical giants like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, humble musicians like
Captain Beefheart, the Velvet Underground and the Red Crayola may be the true
heroes of the 1960s.
In Britain, the early Seventies saw the proliferation of hard rock and progressive-rock and
their branching into several sub-genres. British musicians gave rock and roll
an "intellectual" quality that made it the cultural peer of European
cinema and literature. British rock was dragged down by the same stagnation
that afflicted American rock. The momentum for innovation was rapidly lost and
the new genres created by British musicians either languished or mutated into
commercial phenomena. Musical decadence led to decadence-rock, personified by
dandies David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Eccentric remnants of progressive-rock such
as Robert Fripp and Peter Gabriel started avantgarde careers that were to lead
to an expanded notion of rock music. New musicians such as Kate Bush and Mike
Oldfield helped liberate rock music from the classification in genres and
opened the road to more abstract music. But the single most influential
musician was Brian Eno, who first led Roxy Music to innovate progressive-rock
and then invented ambient music.
Later in Britain first came
industrial music, invented by Throbbing Gristle as a hybrid of avantgarde and
rock music, and then dark-punk, whose main proponents were Joy Division,
Siouxsie Sioux, Public Image Ltd, the Cure, the Killing Joke, the Sisters Of
Mercy.
In early 80s Britain chose a different course, almost in the opposite direction, towards simpler and
more commercial music. It all started with the modernist sounds of Ultravox,
Wire and XTC, and their vaguely robotic melodies. Then Japan and Simple Minds turned that sound into pompous pop songs. And finally Orchestral
Manouvres in the Dark and others created synth-pop, that typically was pop
played on electronic instruments and sung by a female or gay singer (with a few
notable exceptions). The Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys were probably the
most artistically successful of the many that climbed the charts. The Irish U2
and the Smiths turned sharply towards melody.
In 90s Britain was the place for psychedelic music. It started with the Liverpool revival of Echo
And The Bunnymen and Julian Cope, then it picked up speed with dream-pop
(Cocteau Twins, the Australian Dead Can Dance, the Norwegian Bel Canto, and
later the formidable triad of Slowdive, Bark Psychosis and Tindersticks) and
with the Scottish noise-pop bands (Jesus And Mary Chain and Primal Scream ) and
finally reached a climax with the shoegazers (My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3,
Loop, Spiritualized, Catherine Wheel), before folding into a new form of
ambient music.
By the end of the decade,
Britain was awash in Brit-pop, a media-induced trance of super-melodic pop
that spawned countless "next big things", from Verve to Oasis to Blur
to Suede to Radiohead, the band that finally disposed of it. But the best in
the melodic genre came from humbler groups, led by girls, like Primitives and
Heavenly.
The 1990s were also the
decade of heavy metal, that peaked in Los Angeles with Metallica, Jane's
Addiction, Guns And Roses, and that soon split into a myriad subgenres (doom
metal, grind-core, death metal, etc) and funk-metal (Red Hot Chili Peppers and
Rage Against The Machine in Los Angeles, Primus and Faith No More in San
Francisco). Marilyn Manson was the late phenomenon that recharged the genre.
The Nineties were the age
of electronic music, whether in dance, ambient or noise format. Electronic
musicians and ensembles spread to Belgium (Vidna Obmana), France (Air, Deep Forest, Lightwave), Germany (Sven Vath, Mo Boma, Oval, Mouse On Mars, Air Liquide), Canada (Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Vampire Rodents, Trance Mission), Scandinavia, and especially Japan (Zeni Geva, Boredoms, Merzbow, the triad of noise). Britain's revitalized ambient scene yielded Orb, Main, Rapoon, Autechre.
Britain's dance music was
far more successful (creatively speaking) than its rock bands: Madchester
(Stone Roses), rave (Saint Etienne), transglobal dance (Banco De Gaia, Loop
Guru, Transglobal Underground, TUU) ambient house (Orbital, Future Sound Of
London, Aphex Twins, Mu-ziq), jungle (Goldie, Squarepusher, Propellerheads),
trip-hop (Portishead, Tricky), and plain techno (Meat Beat Manifesto, Prodigy,
Chemical Brothers) artists redefined compositional processes and cross-bred
countless genres.
Industrial music and
grindcore somehow merged and spawned terrifying sounds in the albums of Techno
Animal and Godflesh.
The Irish Cranberries and
the Scottish Belle And Sebastian are among the revelations of the end of the
decade.
Of course, it is impossible
to mention all the bands and branches of rock, but we tried to mention the
brightest ones. Rock music continues its developing and nowadays almost every
band merges rock with some other genres and classification is getting
impossible and now based on similarity between band’s style and existing branch
of rock. In this work we tried to avoid mentioning such brunches as “hardcore”,
“hardcore metal”, “death metal” etc. because links between above mentioned
branches and its parent branch is very transparent.
References:
·
Irwin, Colin.
"Britain's Changing Roots". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 64-82. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books.
·
Mathieson, Kenny.
"Wales, Isle of Man and Britain". 2001. In Mathieson, Kenny (Ed.), Celtic music, pp. 88-95. Backbeat Books.
·
www.progarchives.com/Progressive_
rock_discography_LIST.asp?style=18