The Headbanger’s Guide to the Orchestra

The Headbanger’s Guide to the Orchestra:

A Brief Introduction to the Relationship between Classical and Heavy Metal Music

To those who are unfamiliar with heavy metal music, classical music might seem to be a very distant relative musically. However, heavy metal borrows more from classical music than any other form of pop music (jazz aficionados may care to debate that but the relationship there is very different). The similarities between heavy metal and classical come from both genres encapsulating music which can be: wonderfully grandiose, virtuosic, violent, and extreme. Also, 21^st century metal shares a fondness with classical music for having strict arrangements of songs with little to no room for improvisation during live performance. This style is often due to the complexity of the music being performed. (on a side note, I am labeling metal as pop music because the majority of metal does not fall into the mould of art music. This classification is due to metal music focusing more on an artist’s recording of their music rather than a written manuscript of said music. And there are a few other reasons)

A prime example of a classical music piece which fits well with the metal ethos is “Der Holle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” from Mozart’s opera “The magic flute”. This is probably the most famous aria in all of opera but many people neglect the meaning of the lyrics. The Queen of the Night places a dagger in her daughter’s hand and tells her to go kill the Queen’s enemy.

•         “Hell's vengeance boils in my heart;
Death and despair blaze around me!
If Sarastro does not feel the pain of death because of you,
Then you will be my daughter nevermore.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ODfuMMyss

Brutal, beautiful, and virtuosic, these are all qualities in which metal is abundant.

The concept of classical music influencing metal is nothing new though. Many metal fans and artists listen to classical music for appreciation and inspiration. There is a sort of canon of composers who are widely accepted in the metal community. These include but are not limited to: Igor Stravinsky (the Rite of Spring, the Firebird Suite), Sergei Prokofiev (Scythian suite), Richard Wagner (the Ring cycle), Ludwig Van Beethoven (especially his 5^th symphony), Pyotr Tchaikovsky (for ex. The 1812 overture), Modest Mussorgsky, Bela Bartok, and Carl Orff. If you are a headbanger wanting to get into classical music, these are some great places to start.

Personally, some of my favourites from the “canon” include Gustav Holst’s suite “The Planets”, this work was what turned me on to classical music as a whole. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bcRCCg01I Wagner is awesome because his ring cycle reaches a level of epicness which most power metal bands only dream of; there’s dragons, lady Vikings, murder, and the end of the world, what’s not to love (except for the anti-Semitism thing)? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiyoLa9z1ao  Stravinsky is awesome chiefly because of his use of rhythm. If you listen to the Rite of Spring, the music can be so beautifully choppy you’d think you were listening to Meshuggah. Also, the original choreography to that ballet in combination with the music caused a riot during its first performance because it was so disturbing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK64sTi4mKc&feature=related (a recreation of the original choreography). Carrying on, I regard Beethoven’s 9^th symphony as one of the greatest works of all time and if you haven’t heard it, you must.

As mentioned previously, one of the major differences between metal and classical music is the classical approach of maintaining a division between composer and performer. This division allows for a song to be interpreted many different ways with some performers adding an entirely different dimension to the original work. A prime example of that is the organist Virgil Fox. In the sixties and seventies, Fox would combine his fiery (or what some people considered noisily irreverent) interpretations of J.S. Bach with elaborate light shows to create a concert experience which would blow the socks off of anything that other organists were doing. He called these his “heavy organ” concerts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UbDWkZLevM In my opinion, the pipe organ is the king of instruments because you can make more sounds and noise with a pipe organ than any single acoustic instrument. So strangely enough, even one of the biggest differences between metal and classical music can give rise to performances with strikingly similar characteristics i.e. big, heavy, flashy, and captivating. Unfortunately, performers such as this are far and few between but many people have been suggesting that a young organist by the name of Cameron Carpenter may be Virgil’s successor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr9SXtvunwk

Tangentially, another fantastic performer of J.S. Bach was Canada’s own Glenn Gould. This guy understood counterpoint like nobody’s business and was skilled enough that he did not actually practice, he would just look at pieces and think about how to phrase them. When you watch him perform, you can tell that his mind was no longer on the materials he was manipulating but purely on the essence of his music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ&feature=related

I shall now share with you some of my favourite classical pieces and composers which/who you may not have heard of. Benjamin Britten was a great English composer, an example of his work would be “The Turn of the Screw,” a really neat opera based on a ghost story. Howard Bashaw is the professor of composition here at the University of Alberta and I have been impressed with everything I’ve heard from him. Anton Bruckner was a composer who followed in Richard Wagner’s footsteps and had an incredible triumphant sensitivity to him (as paradoxical as that sounds), his fourth symphony is captivating. Frederic Rzewski is a post-modern composer who uses all manner of composition styles in his piano music to great effect, check out his magnum opus: “the People United Will Never be Defeated!” I also love Aram Khachaturian’s Violin concerto in D, his use of gypsy violin melodies is wonderful.

Now then, back to the musicological discussion. One of the unifying musical characteristics between metal and 20th/21st century classical music is the use of dissonance. We chiefly have Arnold Schoenberg to thank for that because at the beginning of the 1900s, he decided that a key ought to contain all of the notes between octaves i.e. twelve notes instead of eight. In this way, both metal and modern composers use whatever means necessary to express whatever idea they wish to convey. One work which is a must for anyone getting into dissonant music is Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U71T7afnBGw . If you ever get a chance to see it live, do it and bring a translation of the German. The music in combination with the strange poetry is disturbing and awesome.

Further use of dissonance was continued by Krysztoph Penderecki who loved to use huge tone clusters in his music. His Dies Irae in memoriam of Auschwitz is very fitting. Also, almost any musicological discussion of modern music is incomplete without bringing up John Cage. At one point in his career, he started using chance in his compositions thereby causing everyone who encounters his work to concretely define what music is to them. Coincidentally, Napalm Death’s album Scum set out to redefine what people thought of as music as well. If you didn’t know that Frank Zappa composed orchestral music, he did. A lot of Zappa’s orchestral music is quite challenging and dissonant which is why it doesn’t get played very often, but it’s what he wanted to be remembered for.

Metal has borrowed from classical quite heavily in many departments. Metal is a constantly evolving genre of music just like classical and both generally progress towards extremity. Also, this tends to be most fans progression to start with something more mainstream and progress towards the more extreme end of the spectrum. This is in contrast to blues music where the deeper one goes, the farther backward one goes.

Another element from classical music in metal is the breaking of the standard song structure. Many bands still adhere to standard verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structures but many do not, preferring to set different lyrics to completely different musical ideas and structures all within the same song. This is one of the dividing factors between what is considered popular music and art music. Yet another similarity is that metal and classical both demand strong technique for a high level of musicianship. This is true for guitarists/bassists who have to use techniques like two-handed hammer-ons and sweep picking; vocalists who must use proper vocal techniques to avoid ruining their voices on tour; and drummers who must have the stamina to play at blistering tempos for entire sets.

Lastly, classical music and metal share a love for scope and perspective. Many classical works deal with themes which cause one to reflect on the state of themselves, the world, their beliefs etc. The same is true with lyrics from many metal bands.

The metal which draws the most from classical music comes from technical/death, avant-garde, progressive, and black metal sub-genres and some symphonic metal bands. A lot of bands are touted by their fans as having operatic vocalists when really they’re just female vocalists with half decent technique. However, some bands do include operatic vocals and it’s awesome. To demonstrate the difference, just compare this recent Nightwish song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTif4koVr7M to this song by Diablo Swing Orchestra http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsmAF9cVPm4

If you are a headbanger wanting to get into classical music, there are many ways to do so. The U of A has a subscription to the NAXOS music library, so if you search the university library website for naxos, you’ll have access to thousands of CDs to stream on your computer simply with your CCID and password. Both the university library and the public library have tons of classical albums on CD. Being a student, a cheap way to be exposed to new pieces is to attend recitals of fellow students. Another benefit of being a student is that orchestras and opera companies wish you to become fond of their art so that you’ll support them when you are rich, as a result tickets to concerts and operas are usually cheaper for students (join the explorer’s club or get rush tickets the day of). Downloading classical music is a bit of a crapshoot because there is so much variability in the performance and production of any recording but when you’ve downloaded it you’ve lost nothing but your time so it all balances out.

In conclusion to this brief introduction, the relationship between metal and classical music is quite unique and both genres have much to share. We love metal for its exciting frenzy, its empowering anthems, its cerebral engagement, its community and depth. There are many of these qualities in classical music as well and that is why they go together so nicely. And when you find a case where classical takes the showmanship of metal, or metal takes the artistic merit of classical, rejoice because you know you’ve got something awesome.


By Austin Penner