The official composer - a 1960s legend and author of much-loved, cheery three-minute songs - was commissioned to write an oratorio by a prosperous provincial festival. Carl Davis "collaborated" on Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio - a process eye-openingly described at the time: "Unable to read music, McCartney hums, sings or plays the piano while his collaborator jots down the notes ('Ah, that's better - C sharp!')."Ī composer friend of mine, who had the opportunity to observe the production of one of these projects, described it more ruthlessly, in a way that has to remain anonymous. Three uncredited composers, it is said, worked on Asian Dub Foundation's Gaddafi opera. There is not much incentive in that situation to come up with anything original.
Most of these pseudo-classical works are actually written by teams of professional composers, working on what may be very approximate ideas. In the world of popular music, such transcribers, arrangers or "producers" have always done a great deal more than the public suspects. Many rock musicians can't read music and have what strikes most classical musicians as rather a loose conception of authorship, relying on amanuenses to transform vague ideas into detailed life. One of the reasons such enterprises often fail so dramatically - and it's very difficult to think of any that have lasted more than a couple of performances - is that their composers rarely have the technical ability to record and convey their intentions with any accuracy. An album of these arrangements is due shortly, followed by a ballet at the Royal Opera House to Talbot's arrangements. The Kronos Quartet has made elegant string-quartet arrangements of Jimi Hendrix numbers, while composer Joby Talbot has orchestrated three White Stripes songs for a 35-piece orchestra. There are, however, more conscious attempts to use the means and gestures of art music. Perfectly good on their own terms, they remain stolidly within their own conventions, yet have the nerve to bill themselves as radical. They can hardly be considered heirs to the tradition of Wagner, Verdi and Puccini. They are either musicals with naive little three-minute solo numbers or they are, bizarrely, just albums. Most "rock operas" - such as Tommy, The Wall, Roger Waters' Ca Ira and Jesus Christ Superstar - are one of two things. Usually, exercises billed as crossing cultural boundaries turn out to be no such thing. "For me," Sting says, "these are pop songs, beautiful melodies, fantastic lyrics, great accompaniments." Latest in the catalogue of embarrassment is Sting's album of Dowland songs - an effusion matched only by Barbra Streisand's ill-advised performances of Wolf and Schumann lieder in the 1970s. Rock operas, fusions between rock groups and orchestras, collaborations with string quartets: from Deep Purple's Concerto For Rock Group and Orchestra to Elvis Costello's laborious exercises in elementary counterpoint with the Brodsky Quartet, very little can be counted as a success.
The history of rock musicians' attempts to place themselves in front of orchestras - and to write what can sometimes, risibly, be referred to as "classical music" - is a truly grisly one. Worst of all, almost every review used the word "brave".Įveryone involved, you might have thought, ought to know better. "risible moments that look and sound like a Middle Eastern version of Springtime For Hitler". "long stretches of jaw-dropping banality".
"embarrassingly redolent of sixth-form earnestness". The critics did their worst: "Cliche and bombast. When it was finally unveiled, there was not much pleasure to be had from seeing this gloomy prognostication confirmed. In December 2005, writing in this paper about the state of affairs at English National Opera, I said: "A commissioned opera from Asian Dub Foundation has had to be put off - and it's not hard to guess why." Some of us had doubts long before the premiere. The piece, written by members of Asian Dub Foundation, was billed in advance as a venture of extraordinary audacity, addressing contemporary politics in music that would set our old friend the Classical Music Establishment by its ears.
Speaking before the September premiere of his new commission, Gaddafi: A Living Myth, English National Opera artistic director John Berry averred that it could "redefine opera".