Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music

Subject: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: voyager
Date: 10 May 04 - 10:42 AM

Listening to a lecture on BACH and the St. Matthew's Passion (SMP) last night I was shocked, amazed and delighted to find the PAUL SIMON
tune from "An American Dream" lifted note-by-note from the Overture
to this work.

Although MUDCAT credits a Bach Melody to this PAUL SIMON tune, it was
actually a 15th-century popular song by HANS LEO HASSLER that was inserted by Bach into the SMP.

Question -
Are there other known Bach melodies throughout the popular/folk
song genre? I seem to remember Chad and Jeremy's "Summer Song" as
one example.

voyager

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 May 04 - 11:20 AM

I think the tune is even older. It's from a hymn called "O Sacred Head Surrounded" (O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden). My St. Gregory Hymnal says the lyrics were by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), and melody by H.L. Hassler (1600). The hymnal uses Bach's adaptation of the tune.

Then there's "Lover's Concerto," the 1965 hit by the Toys. My Who Wrote That Song? book says words and music were by Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, but it was based on Bach's "Minuet in G."

Are there others?

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Ernest
Date: 10 May 04 - 03:39 PM

Jethro Tull`s version of Bouree springs to mind...
A bouree (sory about the missing accent) is a dance from the Auvergne in France ... I am not sure if J.S.B. was inspired by it or stole it.
Yours
Ernest

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Ed.
Date: 10 May 04 - 03:46 PM

Ralph Mctell's "Let Down Easy" is sung to the tune of 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring'

The Byrds also used that tune as the instrumental break for "She Don't Care About Time"

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: jimmyt
Date: 10 May 04 - 03:55 PM

The Flip side of Blood Sweat and Tears' Spinnin'Wheel was called Theme by Eric Satie.   It is from a piece titled Trois Gymnopedies. Quite nice piece actually.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Ed.
Date: 10 May 04 - 04:19 PM

I'm sorry, jimmyt?

Satie's Gymnopedies are indeed lovely, particularly the first one. Not too much to do with Bach, though..

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 May 04 - 04:24 PM

"I am not sure if J.S.B. was inspired by it or stole it."

Actually, a bourée is not a specific piece of music, it's a dance form, like a minuet or a waltz. Composers such as Bach and umpteen others used standard dance forms as the basis for new compositions all the time (later, Johann Strauss, for example, made a career out of writing darned little but waltzes).

It was not at all uncommon for composers then and now to "borrow" themes from each other and change then or add their own licks to them. This was often acknowleged with titles such as "Variations on a Theme by (whoever)." Also, there were lots of well-known tunes floating around (often folk tunes) that nobody laid claim to, and composers would take these and play around with them.

Leonard Bernstein was criticized for his "There's a Place for Us" in West Side Story because it's a dead-ringer for a theme in one of Beethoven's piano concertos. Bernstein answered by pointing out that, historically, composers very frequently did this with no need to apologize to anyone, then said of the West Side Story song, "Of course I borrowed it from Beethoven. It's much too good a melody to be used only once." West Side Story was also a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

The "folk process" is not limited to "the folk" (whoever they are).

It's only plagiarism if you take it note-for-note or word-for-word, making no changes, and then claim or imply that you wrote it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 May 04 - 05:26 PM

To expand on what Don Firth said--if you've listened to any classical music at all, you know that Baroque composers frequently composed Suites, and you know that they consisted of a number (four or more) of movements--Generally, each movement was a dance melody, which was often taken from the popular music of the day.

The standard sequence alternated slow and quick melodies---the names of the movements are familiar to everyone Allemande, then Courant, Sarabande, and Gigue. Between the last two parts, composers often inserted a few other dances, most of which were French , such as the bourree, gavotte, passacaglia, polonaise, saltarello, and occasionally a few airs(which are songs, not dances)--

Suites were not intended for dancing, and the dance "feel" was generally slowed down and evened out to allow the composer to explore harmonic ideas. Main thing is that the melodies that the composers worked with were pretty much folk music, so when someone uses one for a song, they really are just bring things around full circle--

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 May 04 - 05:40 PM

Bach was greatly interested in folk dance and music; some of his secular cantatas are in dialect and deal with events in a peasant's life. In turn, lots of people have used his themes. Such is music.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: jimmyt
Date: 10 May 04 - 06:24 PM

Sorry Ed I misread and thought the query was ather works of "classical" composers, not limited to Bach.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: michaelr
Date: 10 May 04 - 06:42 PM

I've been thinking for a while that "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" would make a grand slip jig. Has anyone attempted this?

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: GUEST,T-tone
Date: 10 May 04 - 11:25 PM

I've always heard the melody of Bach's "Air on a G String" in Procal Harem's 'Whiter Shade of Pale." Anyone else?

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 May 04 - 11:49 PM

Not precisely; but it's certainly a pastiche of Bach's style, and a clever one at that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 11 May 04 - 12:06 AM

I have a vague memory of hearing a piece based on one of the Brandenburg Concertos, I believe it was No. 5, on an "underground" radio station in Philadelphia (WMMR, WDAS, or WRTI) around 1969. There were words, too, something like "The moon is gone..."   Anybody got any more info, or is it just a delayed hallucination?

On a more romantic note, when I was in college I loved listening to a group called "Renaissance." Once I heard someone playing something on the piano that I'd heard on their first album. When I made a comment about the group, he gave me an odd look. "This is a Beethoven sonata," he said. Apparently they had stuck an extended passage from Beethoven into the middle of a rock song. I can't remember which sonata it was, or the name of the cut on the Renaissance album, but I'm sure there's somebody out in Mudcatland who can.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 11 May 04 - 03:23 AM

Bach and Hassler:
The popular song was first; text: Mein Gmüt ist mir verwirret von einem Mägdlein zart ... = My mind is bewildered by a tender girl ...
O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden = O head full of blood and wounds is a standard hymn which is sung at Good Friday in almost all services over the country. So Bach had inevitably to use this tune in his Passion.
Especially during Luthers lifetime it was usual to take the tune of a popular song to make a new hymn attractive to the parish. The putting of a hymn to a worldly tune (and vice versa) is called contrafactura.

Wilfried

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 13 May 04 - 01:24 AM

Refresh...any answers?

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: MAJ
Date: 20 May 04 - 04:24 PM

Ralph's song "Let Me Down Easy" isn't sung to the tune of "Jesu Joy...", it is "Dreams Of You" which was the follow up single to "The Hit".

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: el ted
Date: 21 May 04 - 09:00 AM

Slightly off topic, but something is bugging me about joe's post relating to "O sacred head surrounded" When I was a tiny little boy I used to play a piece on the organ in Beverley minster called "O sacred head now wounded" Is it the same piece? or is my memory shot? I'm sure it came from a book of selected works by JS Bach.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 May 04 - 10:28 AM

Many of the Chorales that Bach used were well-known liturgical tunes and Bach incorporated them for that very reason. He also uses the "Passion Chorale" in the "Christmas Oratorio" in at least two different settings.

It is quite a normal practise for hymn tunes to be used for different sets of words and vice versa. There are many choral works which use existing hymn settings at least as a basis ie "Praise to the Holiest" in "The Dream of Gerontius".

Incidently Keith Marsden borrowed a chunk of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" for the verse of his song "The Drovers" and Bill Caddick borrowed the melody for "John of Dreams" from Tchaikovsky, who in turn had borrowed it from a southern Italian lullabye entitled Piva Piva.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: el ted
Date: 21 May 04 - 10:31 AM

So I'm not senile yet then Dave? Ta.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 22 May 04 - 03:51 AM

Interesting...I just tried a Google search on "Brandenburg +'the moon is gone'" wanting to see if I could find out anything about that song I vaguely remember (which I think may even have been called "Brandenburg"). I did get one hit...my post! Well, at least I know Google is listening, anyway!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Lanfranc
Date: 22 May 04 - 06:18 AM

Going back a bit, Gounod set his "Ave Maria" to Bach's "Prelude in C" from the 48 Preludes and Fugues. Personally I prefer the Schubert setting, but ...

Alan

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 22 May 04 - 09:59 PM

The Nice (which, incredible as it seemed even at the time, was the warm-up act for P P Arnold the first time I saw it) did a stunning version of one of Bach's Brandenburg concertos. The track was called Brandenburger, the album was ARs Longa Vita Brevis, and Keith Emmerson was on keyboards.

T-tone, Whiter Shade of Pale was indeed consciously derived from the Air on a G String.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Helen
Date: 22 May 04 - 11:25 PM

Talking of classical music (slightly off topic because not specifically about Bach) there are two Cd's to look out for.

One is by a young New Zealand woman called Hayley Westenra. I have only heard one track which is a song based on one part of Vivaldi's four Seasons. She has a crystal-pure voice and it is a joy to hear.

The other "crossover" CD I have heard some tracks from is by Maggie & Katie Noonan, an Oz mother & daughter. Maggie is an opera singer, and Katie has been in a couple of rock groups called George, and Elixir, both of which are pushing the boundaries of modern popular music.

Helen

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 23 May 04 - 03:20 PM

Thanks, Peter K, that's got to be it!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 24 May 04 - 11:45 AM

El Ted, it's years since I sang the St Matthew Passion, but I think you'll find that the hymn "O Sacred Head now Wounded" (which is in my copy of Hymns, Ancient and Modern) is basically a loose translation of the original German.

Incidently, under the title of "Passion Chorale" the tune was one of the practice pieces in Recorder Book 1.

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 10:41 AM

There's a nice article by Bernard Greenberg discussing the relationship of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and Bach.

Also found a webpage discussing the relationship of various pop songs to classics at http://www.philharmonic.u-net.com/

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: Origins: Bach's Melodies in Popular Music
From: jack halyard
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 05:36 AM

I found both "Jesu Joy of man's desiring" and "Sleeper's awake" in
'Whiter shade of pale" it was the one that got me looking closer at Bach.
"Fly me to the moon" has distinct and recognisable elements of "Toccatta and Fugue in Dm"
Like Shakespeare quotes have enriched English, so Bach seems to have left his mark on music- and that's great by me.
Jack Halyard