I and my colleagues have been happily torn from a long nap by the energy of rock, principally as embodied in the Beatles. ...That was from some quick internet searching ... There are probably tons more examples like that from the '60s.
The Beatles are good even though everyone knows they're good, i.e., in spite of the claims of people under thirty about their filling a new sociological need like Civil Rights and LSD. Our need for them is neither sociological nor new, but artistic and old, specifically a renewal, a renewal of pleasure.
WHY are the Beatles superior? It is easy to say that most of their competition (like most everything everywhere) is junk. More important, their superiority is consistent: each of the songs from their last three albums is memorable. The best of these memorable tunes—and the best is a large percentage (Here, There and Everywhere, Good Day Sunshine, Michelle, Norwegian Wood)—compare with those by composers from great eras of song: Monteverdi, Schumann, Poulenc.
Good melody—even perfect melody—can be both defined and taught, as indeed can the other three "dimensions" of music: rhythm, harmony, counterpoint (although rhythm is the only one that can exist alone). Melody may be described thus: a series of notes of varying pitch and length, which evolve into a recognizable musical shape. In the case of a melody (tune means the same thing) which is set to words, the musical line will flow in curves relating to the verse that propels it inevitably toward a "high" point, usually called climax, and thence to the moment of culmination. The inevitable element is what makes the melody good—or perfect. But perfection can be sterile, as witness the thousands of thirty-two-bar models turned out yesterday in Tin Pan Alley, or today by, say, The Jefferson Airplane. Can we really recall, such tunes when they are divorced from their words?
Superior melody results from the same recipe, with the exception that certain of the ingredients are blessed with distortion. The Beatles' words often go against the music (the crushing poetry that opens A Day in the Life intoned to the blandest of tunes), even as Martha Graham's music often contradicts her dance (she gyrates hysterically to utter silence, or stands motionless while all hell breaks loose in the pit). Because the Beatles pervert with naturalness they usually build solid structures, whereas their rivals pervert with affectation, aping the gargoyles but not the cathedral.
THE UNEXPECTED in itself, of course, is no virtue, though all great works seem to contain it. For instance, to cite as examples only the above four songs: Here, There and Everywhere would seem at mid-hearing to be no more than a charming college show ballad, but once concluded it has grown immediately memorable. Why? Because of the minute harmonic shift on the words "wave of her hand," as surprising, yet as satisfyingly right as that in a Monteverdi madrigal like "A un giro sol." The notation of the hyper-exuberant rhythms in Good Day Sunshine was as elusive to me as some by Charles Ives, until I realized it was made by triplets over the bar; the "surprise" here was that the Beatles had made so simple a process sound so complex to a professional ear, and yet (by a third convolution) be instantly imitable by any amateur "with a beat." Michelle changes key on the very second measure (which is also the second word): in itself this is "allowed"—Poulenc often did it, and probably he was the most derivative and correct composer who ever lived; the point is that he chose to do it on just the second measure, and that the choice worked. Genius doesn't lie in not being derivative, but in making right choices instead of wrong ones. As for Norwegian Wood, again it is the arch of the tune—a movement growing increasingly disjunct, an inverted pyramid formed by a zigzag—which proves the song unique and memorable, rather than merely original."
I'd say it started when the 13 year olds who saw the 1964 Ed Sullivan performance started to write music reviews and was cemented with Jon Lennon's death.
posted by The Whelk at 8:33 AM on February 4, 2009