Baroque Pop and Psychedelia: Bachian Pastness, Prestige, and Hybridity

Abstract:Baroque music and harpsichords are a well-known inspiration for many Euro-American pop and rock musicians of the 1960s. These old instrument timbres and musical forms pervaded films and television broadcasts, especially for mysterious and creepy scenes or depictions of the aristocracy. This transatlantic phenomenon has been well documented and researched. Previous literature, however, has yet to focus on Johann Sebastian Bach's prominence within these genres beyond a few pieces by the Beatles and Procol Harum. This article, through an examination of contemporary sources (music journalism, liner notes, and recordings), interviews, secondary literature, and conversations with musicians, provides a narrative and comprehensive overview of the role Bach and baroque idioms played in 1960s British pop and rock music. I also provide over a hundred listening suggestions and comments in the appendices.I focus on the aesthetic intentions behind baroque pop and psychedelia, and I aim to show what Bach and baroque music meant to these musicians in the 1960s. By isolating stylistic features at different stages, this article first shows that baroque pop musicians drew on Bach and baroque music to express vague ideas of pastness, nostalgia, and aristocracy in a humorous and playful manner. American pop and rock musicians, particularly African Americans, also inspired many British musicians to copy the stylistic features of contemporary American music (including baroque idioms). This led to the more esoteric British psychedelia stage, where musicians tried to create hybrids that merged rock with baroque and other "exotic" styles. For the second half of the article, I focus on psychedelic instances of Bach's music and baroque-inspired counterpoint and imitative forms. I show how psychedelic musicians were trying to unite a diverse array of styles into a hippie utopian art form called "head" music. Baroque music served as a prestigious vehicle to prove the intellectuality, musicality, and technical competence required for "head" music. Yet, as is typical for most music perceived as hybrid and boundary-crossing, these musicians faced a press backlash for, apparently, pandering to the sounds of "the establishment" and betraying rock's "low" background of intuitive blues rock. Throughout this article I prioritize the perspective of the musicians to demonstrate that pop and rock engagements with Bach and baroque music were not simply for prestige bestowed by "elite" forms from above. Instead, these popular British musicians were drawn to Bach in particular for musical reasons, rather than the more "British" music of George Frideric Handel and Henry Purcell.