Eric Whitacre: When Rock Meets Classical
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- Опубликовано: 17 янв 2018
- How Rock Music has influenced the works of Eric Whitacre.
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Eric Whitacre is a Grammy-award winning choral composer of songs such as Lux Aurumque, Sleep, Water Night, When David Heard, Deep Field, Equus, Goodnight Moon, Seal Lullaby, and Cloudburst.
This video analyses how the power chord progressions of rock music has influenced his music, focusing on Lux Aurumque, Sleep, Water Night, and A Boy and a Girl. It looks at how Whitacre uses social media, virtual choirs, and image to create a strong fan base, and how he uses rock chord progressions and added notes to create the dissonant, glistening effect we recognise as Whitacre.
It includes a brief analysis of his use of dissonance, and how he mixes these dissonances with rock chords to create 'the Whitacre Effect'.
SELECTED RECORDING
Cloudburst and other choral works - Sung by Polyphony, conducted by Stephen Layton
Fantastic! Perfect blend of accessibly and technical.
Thanks! Glad you liked it, that's what I was aiming for. Stay tuned for more!
I sang Glow a few years ago with my choir. At first glance of the sheet music, the dissonances, frequent time signature changes and crazy note jumps made me think "Wtf is this?!" But by the end of the song, I was almost in awe, it's one of the most beautiful pieces I've had a the privilege of singing.
I've listened to heavy metal and prog rock for my whole life, and I love these kind of "unusual" cadences. A lot of folk music uses these chords as well. I never get tired of the bVI-bVII-i -progression
Like... My mind is blown right now. Freshman year of high school, my choir "director" gave us mix cd's of choral music, from a choir arrangement of "Good Vibrations", to "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree", to "Dance on MyHeart." There is one song on there that always stuck with me, "5 Motets: No. 2, Bön." The harms, the "glistening" as you call it in the video, struck the chords of my soul. Corny I know, but that's the only way I know how to describe it. Choir, when done right, hits a vibration that opens a new level of peace for me. It's weird. I can't find that anywhere else. Me finally knocking out some of my Watch Later list reminded me of that. I miss singing in a choir, and I wish I were decent enough to be in one again. It's home. but now, thanks to you, I am playing Mr. Whitacre on my google nest, and youtube is probably already working it into my mixes as I type this.... and I am rambling. I do apologize, but thank you for all that you do. My friend introduced me to your content, and I am forever fascinated, if not overwhelmed, by the details, and the magic behind composition.
Never heard of this guy before but I love choral music. Thanks for the breakout
Hope you enjoy his music!
I don't sing, but I got to play a concert band arrangement of sleep. I love Sleep.
Eric Whitacre's virtual choir is incredible. One of the music teachers who teaches choir at our school is very impressed with Eric Whitacre's compositions.
Great! We need more of those videos to form bridges between different genres :)
Was looking for an explanation of what Whitacre does with the vocals. I really wanted to learn what is the underlining factor behind his choice of chords. This will take me miles. Are there more from you towards such thoughts. I'd love to add them to my arrangements of vocal harmonies.
Thank you! Good observations (succinctly explained then shown), I like the neat qualifications on simplifying propositions, all neatly put together :-)
Thank you! I do very like Eric's music!
Great video ! It’s incredible to see how he was influenced by Pärt and Nystedt with all the dissonances. It’s simple but it has an enormous effect. I always feel like i’m in another dimension.
Nowhere near as deep as either of them though
Thank you for such a detailed and insightful video. It had me glued to the screen for the entirety. And I loved the excellent content and examples.
I however feel like the bVI and bVII and bIII that you are pointing out is just IV, V, and I respectively in major. Perhaps your argument is that the pieces aren't in major, and so for example, you do chord analysis for "Sleep" in minor and get the "rock progression."
I feel like you can't really classify these pieces into major or minor too strongly, just from the plain fact that many of these chords don't exist as major or minor chords, in addition to the fact that traditional progressions are by not always followed purely here. The removed and added tones give it a mix of major and minor sonorities, and the interactions between each of the tones with each other, and groups of these with groups of others, within the same chord, give a color that you can't pin down into major or minor- or at least, that's how I feel. I analyzed Sleep a week ago, and halfway through, I dropped Roman Numeral Analysis because that was giving very little insight into this sort of cluster chord music.
I do however see your point in the fact that he has a very pop-culture persona, and he doesn't bind his music to the Common Practice Period, and instead, follows his heart and does not restrict himself, as musicians should do. He definitely has auras which he derives from some Common Practice music, some 20th century music, some pop, some rock, etc.
Wow, I had never heard of this Eric Whitacre before. You got me very curious to find out more about his work
Guilherme, check out his new "Virtuala Choir" release "Sing gently" on youtube, which came out 2 days ago. 17.000 singers from around the world joined together. Truly special.
Do you meant: when Beethoven meets Baroque??
I really liked your video. I am a big Eric Ehitacre fan, so when I saw this video I thought that you were going to talk about his recent cover of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails. If you haven't heard it yet then you should totally worth it.
Thanks - I'm glad you liked it. Stay tuned for more like this :) I actually made this video last summer, but only got round to creating this account recently, so I might not have been up to speed with his latest stuff. But for sure, a lot of the stuff he does e.g. Techno opera and such seems to be very much blurring the lines between classical and pop.
Why when i write parallel fifths it's considered a terrible thing to avoid at all cost but when this guys does it he's a genius ?
Reloup Depends on the context. Parallel fifths are strictly prohibited in species counterpoint. But Whitacre is above all that.
You should talk about minimalism!
How about and episode on Arvo Pä'rt? I would recommend his "Adam's Lament" ou his choral music. He deserves it, he is still alive and he his a genious composer, and his music has many of the themes you've mencioned on every video. Greetings
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Emerson , Lake & Palmer - when rock married classical
There is good reason they have been my user name for 13 years :D one of the best bands ever imo,
I LOVE the epic stuff that did, but my favorite is when Emerson dials it back a bit like Take a Pebble and the first part of Trilogy... Nobody else sounds like that
8:50
I have the same background
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Great video! I will check the music from this guy. I suggest you to check Jason Becker. For me he is the perfect example of Classical +Rock. Thanks to listen to him and comment if you liked him. Listen to Altitudes, Air, End of the Beginning, Once Upon a Melody, Opus Pocus, Higher, ...
Check out Fleshgod Apocalypse. It's when classical meets death metal
I thought on review is Lebovsky
Do illenium please :)
I thought the bVI-bVII-I was the videogame chord progression (think of Mario's victory theme), haha
3:55 Bohemian Rhapsody?
Yeah although it's voiced for only four voices as sol, la, do, mi
Ah yes, the sound of high school chorus
I disagree. Music is more than just roman numeral analysis. What gives rock its unique flavor in terms of music is a combination of the instrumentation (drum set, guitar, bass), playing technique, lyrics, performance energy, and melody. No chord is unique to a specific genre. I could argue, for instance, that bVI-bVII-I is a chord progression found commonly in Super Mario Bros. Now, I'm sure that Whitacre has a lot of contemporary influences, so it wouldn't be too far fetched to say that he draws inspiration from video game music. That being said, it would be incorrect of me to assume that because they share the same chords from a roman numeral perspective, that directly means that he draws inspiration from that. Choral textures are completely different from rock textures. If you want to make a claim like this, you have to bring in more supporting evidence then "the chords are the same."
What if I told you Koji Kondo was also very much inspired by rock?
Great video, but . . . let us debate:
In your first written example, you say that it's an Am chord. Ya. But after the modification to it, it becomes either a Dm7(9, 11)/A bass or an Fmaj7(9, 13)/A bass. The ear will no longer hear the A as the root, because the b13 that is being added (i.e., the F note) is not available on a minor structure. So, the ear will want to reorder it and hear it either as a second-inversion Dm7 with tensions, or as a first-inversion Fmaj7 with tensions. The duality results simply from using a whopping six out of the seven possible diatonic notes (relevant to the tonal center of the moment).
Your second written example is a Dm7(9, 11, 13) voiced with . . . TWELVE notes, eight of which are clustered at the top. Personally, I would NEVER allow seconds at the top, but then, I'm not the cluster guy, am I? (No, I'm the independent-melodic-activity-under-strict-harmonic-control guy, and I don't want seconds at the top!)
I think that you are wrongly associating what we modern diatonic writers do these days with a specific genre. We favor diatonic music because we dislike "serious music," because it sounds like a cat walking up and down a piano keyboard. We dislike "serious musicians" because they constantly belittle and criticize folks who are doing intelligent things. We dislike music that we would rather look at on a page than listen to in a concert hall. Musically, while we restrict ourselves to what is diatonic, we nonetheless like to go anywhere we want, anytime we want; therefore, we naturally and often find ourselves enjoying flat sevens, flat sixes, flat threes, flat twos, sharp fours, tritone substitutions, non-functionally-related diatonic structures, direct modulations galore, unconventional resolutions, interpolated structures between target structures, and so on.
Would you be saying these things about the Rock genre had Eric not first mentioned his past interest in Rock? See what I mean? All modern diatonic writers use these kinds of harmonic constructs these days, not just those interested in the Rock genre. Many of these structures can be found also in Jazz, in Vocal Trance, and in medieval modal music. Could it be that Eric secretly likes Vocal Trance?!
You've got to realize that THERE ARE ONLY SEVEN DIATONIC NOTES. Sooner or later, there will be some overlap. That doesn't mean that he's pulling from Rock. It's just that he likes those sounds and, of course, likes Rock. Maybe the reason he likes Rock is because I-V-iv-IV is "in his soul," and Rock just happens to use it. . . . At the very beginning of Rock, it was I-iv-IV-V.
Anyway, great video.
Almost all of these harmonic progressions that you ascribe to rock music, have been done long before rock music even existed. Listen to Satie's "Ogives" and Ravel's Sonatine for example. Also I fail to see how the 'heavy metal' part sounds like heavy metal at all. The connection you try to make with rock music feels very forced if I'm being honest.
Hi IMakeVeryDumbVids. We're talking about Influence here, and the Anxiety of Influence - not who first came up with the idea to use these harmonies. And we're talking about why this music appeals to the mainstream. Perhaps I'm wrong - perhaps there's a better explanation. But until I find a better explanation I have a damned sight of evidence in front of me to support my argument
Inside the Score Well, apologies if my first comment was a little agressive. I see the influence point, however then I wish you would talk more about what Eric himself has said about his influences and how he feels about different kinds of music. Now, most of the video is just your harmonic analysis, which I sometimes find questionable as well (but that's a different story), and saying he uses these progressions which are typical rock progressions, while you might just as well say they are typical Late-19th-century-French-music progressions. I feel like that would explain things just as well, seeing how someone like Satie is still immensely popular and appealing to the mainstream as well. By the way, Satie also did a lot of self-promotion, as one of the first classical composers to do so actually.
Eric Whitacre's design for his pieces is dissonance, I do not believe his desire is to be any type of rock.
This video presents a hypothesis and then supports it with evidence. You have shared your opinion, but have presented nothing to back it up.
@@skyerune really, the only one that I see would be considered rock would be fly me to paradise but I suppose certain parts could be considered "rock"
Sorry, no matter how much you academicise his music; you can't reduce it.
The lyrics in the first two songs are dumb
Sounds like bad "pop" and bad "classical" to me.
Insipid and facile pretentious easy listening.