Late last night I was surfing cable looking for something to watch when I came across what appeared to be a Pink Floyd concert on one of our local PBS stations. But it wasn’t Pink Floyd. It was Brit Floyd, which is a tribute band that does concerts designed to look and feel as much like Pink Floyd concerts as possible. They are actually quite good and they are appearing here in Philadelphia on April 11th. Then I woke up this morning and realized that it is the anniversary of Beethoven’s funeral. And I started to think about how orchestras all over the world reenact Beethoven’s symphonies and other compositions all the time. And I thought about the band Dark Star that faithfully recreates Grateful Dead shows using the exact set lists of particular shows. And I realized that this is a real thing. In the future, musicians will work to recreate the works of contemporary artists and artists from the mid-to-late 20th Century. They can even use holograms to reanimate the artists on stage. They can play in the same venues in order to faithfully recreate the acoustics, or even build replicas of arenas and theaters that have been torn down.
The guitarist from Brit Floyd has obviously spent an immense amount of time learning how to play the guitar so that he can sound exactly like David Gilmour. I wondered why someone talented enough on guitar to convincingly emulate David Gilmour wouldn’t just go out and create his own music. But then I thought about Beethoven again. Why do the people who play his symphonies not just go out and compose their own music?
It’s an odd thing. And, yet, it’s not so odd at all, if you think about it.
Well, our culture just isn’t generating any Beethovens (or Mozarts) anymore. And it never will again. And I like modern symphonists (like, say, Allan Pettersson) plenty. But today’s composers would be the first to say they’re no Beethoven.
We’re actually lucky that anyone even tried writing symphonies after Beethoven’s death. As Mahler said, “Those who are born after such great spirits as Beethoven and Wagner, the epigones, have no easy task. For the harvest is already gathered in, and there remain only a few solitary ears of corn to glean”. Mahler!
Brahms, too, commented frequently on the enormity of the task of the symphony after Beethoven. “I can hear his footsteps always behind me”, Brahms lamented. (Try listening to Brahms First with that image in mind!)
Recreating the great music of the past (Beethoven or Pink Floyd) is its own challenge and has its own satisfaction.
What a charming little article! I have often wondered about tribute bands. So often they are composed of clearly very talented people, so why don’t they find their own voice instead of being at best an imitation of an original?
But as you point out, orchestras and bands play other people’s music every day, doing their best to play Beethoven as Beethoven would.
Hmm. Food for thought. 🙂
Orchestras aren’t very good at being tribute bands, though. They typically play music substantially more slowly than when it was first performed, and they’re very staid with the tempos. We have one horribly degraded recording of Brahms, and he’s so fast and loose with the tempo that for decades people thought it was the fault of the recording. And they insist the audience be quiet and applaud only at the end, while back when these things were first performed audiences were expected to cheer and boo during the performance. They even threw things like women’s underwear onto the stage (for Franz Liszt.)
“Why do the people who play his symphonies not just go out and compose their own music? “
Some do.
It seems to me the goal of tribute rock bands is to mimic the group as much with dress, vocal mimic, gestures, or whatever it taks. Most of the time orchestras are just playing the music unless they want to highlight older instruments of the era of the composition (that would be mimicry of sorts). I think there is a clear difference between playing someone’s music because you like it and have some thoughts about how you want to direct an orchestra to play it vs. mimicry of a tribute band.
There’s just a bit of a difference between writing rock songs and composing symphonies, not least of which is the number of parts that have to be written and communicated to the performers somehow. Rock bands can get away with learning by ear, but there’s no way for an orchestra to do that. Add to that the greater complexities of harmony, counterpoint, dynamics, etc. expected of a symphony, and it’s clear how high the bar is for the aspiring composer.
That said, modern composers do exist, and the best symphony orchestras do perform their works. They should do it far more often, for the reason BooMan described: if they don’t, they do become cover bands on roids.
Because it’s fun. I tried painting the Mona Lisa once. It was actually quite awful but fun to try.
Somewhat off-topic here, but part of the answer is that, as with many collaborative art forms, there can be different roles: composer, arranger, producer, instrumentalist, vocalist, soloist, engineer, etc.
Many factors – in addition to factors mentioned above, i.e. the difficulty of composing a symphony post Beethoven, as you know, the classical Athenian playwrights wrote new plays for the drama contests every year; no plays were ever redone until centuries after the Athenian classical age when ppl became interested in the “classics”. Yet hundreds of plays were composed in Athens over that century for a couple festivals that had drama contests of which we have only a few by a handful of playwrights – Aristophanes, Sophocles, etc. Similarly Bach composed new works for the church at which he worked (it was a new branch of Christianity, Lutheranism; many of his melodies were composed by Martin Luther).
anyway, imo your question isn’t the key question – it’s good that there are memorial bands and orchestras, they recognize and preserve live performances of the the greats (just so art museums, etc paintings). The question is why aren’t we also supporting new art on a large scale.
In Beethoven’s time, there was no such thing as recorded music, so in order to listen to music, you had no choice but to listen to Beethoven himself, or some other gathering of musicians playing something similar. The range of knowledge of what constituted music was therefore rather limited. The opportunities for musicians were limited to those who had patrons.
In Led Zeppelin’s time, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant stole liberally from other artists to create their works. Even some of those stolen works were not original either. Blues are extremely derivative. Most rock and roll can be traced back to some blues roots. With the advent of recorded music the common knowledge and variety of music exploded. It continues to explode and merge and explode again.
All art, not just music, is derived from art that came before it.
Yes, recording technology makes an enormous difference. I don’t think the idea of a tribute band even makes sense without it, because it ultimately comes down to wanting to experience live what you’ve heard on records and seen on film. So you have extremely precise expectations when you go to see a tribute band, much more than if you go to a performance of a symphony orchestra.
Using a tool called Lilypond, I have written music. I went to the retirement seminar of my major professor, and gave a talk. I also took an abstract of his, and set it to music. I didn’t spend a huge amount of time on the music, and my wife and I sang the abstract.
I am not going to win any awards for the music. Composing music is not easy.
We are currently singing Mozart’s Requiem. As many know, Mozart was dying during this, and he died before it was complete. If you know music, and know Mozart’s style, you can pick out the Mozart parts and also the Sussmeyer parts. Mozart was a genius, and Sussmeyer was the student of a genius. The two are not the same.
Anyone can write music, and using Lilypond, anyone can set the music up as well-written scores. However, only a genius can write good music. It’s just like novels. Anyone can write a novel. Most of the stuff written by anyone is crap.
If I had to guess, I’d say it’s very likely that Brit Floyd’s guitarist did write and perform original music before discovering what most pro musicians (including me) now know: tribute bands, especially these days, are very hot and often very profitable. You can still draw a crowd with original music, of course, but the temptation to tap into a ready-made audience with comparatively little preparation (i.e., composition) often proves too strong for musicians who’ve been playing original material in godawful wing bars for years to tiny audiences who don’t really care whether the band lives, dies, or just packs up and leaves. Lamentable, but it is as it is.
An Orchestra playing Beethoven is not trying to recreate what Beethoven’s band did back in the day. Beethoven scores are scripts, akin to plays, that require performers to interpret them. Did then, and do now. Whether Beethoven was one of the performers is very secondary.
Pink Floyd’s primary product is recordings. A particular performance, and therefore interpretation, is frozen in time. “Comfortably Numb” is not just melody, chords, lyrics; it is all the nuances of Gilmore’s solo. It is more akin to a film than a play. People remake films, but only by re-interpreting them. Tribute bands are recreating an interpretation. Orchestras are trying to find new interpretations of old material. If a rock band re-interprets a song, they are doing a cover, not functioning as tribute. What creates a space for tribute bands is that rock groups also play live, which blurs the boundary somewhat (although there have been tribute bands to the Beatles and Steely Dan that include material that never was played live). The band can reinterpret its material, although many just try to replicate the records. For a tribute band to try to re-create a spontaneous reinterpretation, though, is a bit of a contradiction
Well, those are some good points, but it’s hard to draw tight lines.
For example, from what I saw, Brit Floyd wants to sound note-for-note as close to Pink Floyd as possible.
Whereas Dark Star makes no effort to play the Dead’s live performances note for note, nor do they reinterpret them. They play their songs in the way the Dead did. With a structure, and let the rest fly. The whole point is to get somewhere unintended to create some magic.
The Dead and other jam bands are adopting the jazz approach to rock, which is distinct from the typical approach of either rock or classical. In this approach, the composition is a context for a piece of music that is created spontaneously. Each performance is a reinterpretation to at least the extent that each new performance of Beethoven is. A contemporary jazz band playing Charlie Parker is reinterpreting it, even if they keep it in the original style. They don’t try to replicate Bird solos note for note like tribute bands; that’s not jazz. I don’t think “tribute band” is a concept that really translates to improvised music, though Dark Star may call themselves such.
If you watch this video and skip ahead to about 1:45 (where it gets started) you can see that some people do attempt to play Garcia note for note, but it’s a pretty difficult challenge. And, you’re right, it’s not the point. Garcia never played a jam the same way twice.
None of the individual notes are all that key to effect Garcia creates. He’s cascading from note to note and it’s all about phrasing. When you listen to the lead break in Comfortably Numb, you are expecting every note, and if it isn’t produced you are going to be sorely disappointed. When you listen to the lead break in Catfish John, you only really anticipate the shifts (from A to D, for example) but not the way he gets there. A lot of the reason for that is because he doesn’t know how he’s going to get there until he gets there, so how are you supposed to know? And he’s feeding off his bassist and rhythm guitar players, who are both permitted to steer things from time to time. Pink Floyd simply isn’t improvisational at all. Everything is planned and there for a purpose.
More than a few bands have made Dead tunes their bread and butter. The Dead had their share of critics, but they really have a large catalogue of great songs to dig. I’m a big Dead fan, but cover bands strike me the same as you – impatient for some originality. There is a band here in Portland, however, the Garcia Birthday Band, that captures the sound and spirit but gives the tunes their own voice. Makes me rethink the concept.
If you want to watch the original lead break, here it is. Terrible video quality but the audio is thankfully pretty good.
I’m taking a pretty narrow concept of tribute band that I think the example of Brit Floyd implied. Bitches Brew is a tribune to early 70s period Miles – obviously, they don’t recreate his solos, they don’t even have entirely the same orchestration (they don’t repeat the mistake of having 2 or 3 keyboard players trying to stay out of one another’s way). This kind of tribute band I like better, but it’s still not what the symphony is doing.
The stark differences you describe in this Dead/Floyd comparison is thought-provoking and entertaining, BooMan. It’s good to be reminded that there’s a lot of alternative approaches to the creation of great entertainments and great art.
As far as tribute songs, here’s two of my favorites:
“Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes ’round
They sing “I’m in love. What’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.”…
I never travel far, without a little Big Star”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8gFbr5rcVk
“I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands
I used to go see on the landing in the summer
She fell in love with the drummer
She fell in love with the drummer
She fell in love…
I miss the innocence I’ve known
Playing KISS covers, beautiful and stoned”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5OS2kzlIgw
Right. And, of course, there are matters of degree (Clapton improvises a bit, I think; the Dead more; Fred Anderson is almost purely improv). But I don’t see any path from that to the saying that London Symphony trying to find a something new to say is an interpretation of Beethoven is the equivalent of Brit Floyd trying to precisely recreate Floyd recordings. It is the difference between putting on a performance of Shakespeare, where the script is the same ole Hamlet, and attempting to remake a Hitchcock film precisely as Hitchcock made it. The only reason the latter makes sense at all is that rock can be produced live, whereas film cannot.
Actually back in the 70’s Floyd was improvisational. Compare the original DSOTM to the live Wembley Stadium concert from 74 included in the new remix DSOTM two CD set.
Also listen to the second live CD from the Wish You Were Here new CD set, they have live raw original cuts from songs that eventually became cuts on the album Animals: “Raving and Drooling” (which later became “Sheep”) and “You’ve Got To Be Crazy almost an entirely different song from what it eventually became (“Dogs”).”
They were very improvisational both in concert back in the day and in the studio. Like most live bands were back then, not quite as free flowing as the “Dead”:, but playing live music not trying to note for note correctly reproduce the studio experience.
Yes, this is the critical rejoinder to Booman’s point. One must distinguish between the work itself (the song, the symphony) and some particular interpretation of the work (and even some particular artist’s interpretation of the work, their “style”).
It is an interesting phenomenon why people are so desirous of going to hear a band whose artistic goal is to perfectly reproduce Pink Floyd’s interpretations of its songs. Are these fans interested in hearing other bands perform their own personal interpretations of the Pink Floyd works? If not, then what is it they love—the work or Pink Floyd’s interpretation of the work?
We’ll never accurately know how Beethoven interpreted and performed his piano sonatas, for example. Or even his pianistic “style”, although of course there are written descriptions of it. As for how orchestras sounded in Beethoven’s day (and the tempos they played at) that is a subject of intense study, interest and disagreement today—the “original instruments” movement.
Creators die, artists die, bands die. The works do not. The works should not be dependent upon a (very personal and particular) performance in order to “live” in the future—that’s too restrictive. And that’s why Beethoven (and many others) are still performed and played today, because it is the work itself that matters the most, and creating a “new” interpretation provides the immense challenge for the performer(s).
But now recordings do not die, either. I fear that the modern human is far too attached to the interpretation of a work rather than the work itself. Some people won’t go see a celebrated musical unless they can see the original cast! So I guess for them the work can be thrown in the trash when that cast disbands. This would definitely limit the life of a work in the future.
I guess we are lucky there are so many songs written if we are only willing to hear them as they were originally performed by their creators. And thank god that isn’t the case for Beethoven!
You can be technically good, but suck creatively. Why can some people write great fanfiction but crappy original stories?
i’v always had similar feelings about people who can copy ancient works of art so well even experts are fooled, leading me to realise how rare originality is compared to (mere?) technical talent.
i saw apolice cover band once, and they were amazing…at sounding like a cloned police.
after 2 songs i was bored.
sometimes a ‘reasonable facsimile’ just don’t cut it.
the catch is that the pursuit of originality for its own sake is common, but rarely strikes gold, so some musos make a ‘rational actor’ decision to follow the money in a more reliably predictable way, hoping that will be the key to being appreciated as good at that at least, rather than ending up singing your no-doubt-fabulous-to-your-own-ears to no-one who recognises your genius.
I’ve heard Roger Waters make similar comments about his own performance of Pink Floyd songs, which he reproduces exactly like the original cuts just like they are classical pieces. Of course, there is room to get creative with Pink Floyd songs, as Waters did with the Berlin Wall concert in 1989, and then there’s this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_YpfzmAQvoc#!
But, notice when Gilmour chimes in, it goes back to the original sound of the song.