Music Album Review: 'The Baroque Beatles Book'
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Cover art for The Baroque Beatles Book by Roger Hane (C) 1965. 2009 Elektra Nonesuch Records
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In November of 1965, Nonesuch Records – a budget classical
label founded by Elektra Records’ exec Jac Holtzman one year earlier – dropped The Baroque Beatles Book, a
tongue-in-cheek crossover album featuring 11 of the Fab Four’s hit singles and a
recitation based on John Lennon’s writing, including excerpts from In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works.
The Baroque Beatles
Book was, as the 2009 reissue edition’s liner notes explain, conceived by
Nonesuch founder Holtzman. The Beatles’ popularity was climbing to insane
levels at a time when music from the Baroque era (c. 1600-1750) of art and music
was also enjoying a resurgence in popularity (although that, perhaps, was not as intense as the wave of Beatlemania that
swept over Western civilization in the mid-Sixties).
As Joshua Rifkin, the (then) 21-year-old musicologist,
pianist, and arranger, writes in his 2009 essay on the making of the album:
Who, Jac wondered,
could accomplish the musical transmutation he had in mind? I suggested Peter Schickele,
who knew his way equally around Baroque Music and Beatles, and whom I knew from
Julliard: I’d sung the first performance there of his P.D.Q. Bach cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn. But Peter had
other commitments that kept him from taking on the assignment. So I then had the
temerity to suggest that Jac consider me – indeed, looking back, I suspect he may
have had me in mind all along, but hesitated because of my age and experience.
In any event, we arranged for a demo, and I quickly wrote the little trio on Eight Days a Week that wound up in the
last piece on the album. Some Julliard friends recorded it with me. Jac liked the
result; and I now had the job.
In The Baroque Beatles Book, which
presents 11 interpretations of songs and prose written by Paul McCartney during The
Beatles' "early pop band" period as if they had been composed in the
time of George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach. Performed by
"the Baroque Ensemble of the Merseyside Kammermusikgesellschaft" – in
reality, a group made up by some of the best classical music freelance
performers in New York City at the time – and conducted by Rifkin, the selections
are:
The Royale Beatleworks Musique, MBE 1963
1.
Overture:
I Want to Hold Your Hand and "You're Gonna Lose that Girl" – 6:00
2.
Réjouissance:
I'll Cry Instead – 1:50
3.
La
Paix: Things We Said Today – 2:02
4.
L'Amour
s'en cachant: You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
5.
Les Plaisirs: Ticket to Ride – 4:24
Epstein Variations, MBE 69A
6.
Hold Me Tight – 4:15
"Last Night I Said", Cantata for the Third Sunday after the
Shea Stadium, MBE 58,000
7.
Chorus: "Last Night I Said" (Please
Please Me) – 5:22
8.
Recitative: "In they came jorking"
9.
Aria: "When I Was Younger" (Help!) –
5:31
10. Chorale:
"You know, if you break my heart" (I'll Be Back) – 1:40
Trio Sonata, Das Kaferlein, MBE 004 1/4
11. Grave-Allegro-Grave: Eight Days a Week –
2:27
12. Quodlibet: She Loves You/Thank You Girl/Hard
Day's Night – 1:12
My Take
I’m too young to have been a Beatles’ fan in 1965. I became
a fan – albeit not a rabid,
must-have-the-entire-Beatles-discography-in-my-record-collection one – when I
was a high school sophomore. By the same token, it was during that time that I
was also becoming a classical music listener, although I wouldn’t have been
able to confidently sign up for a music appreciation class at my high school –
had such a course been offered, that is. As a result, I didn’t know that The Baroque Beatles Book even existed.
As it happens, not only did The Baroque Beatles Book exist – it was also a successful album
when it was released. It was not, I grant, a Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club-level of success for a recording
of Lennon/McCartney songs (and a bit of acerbic Beatle John’s writings added
for extra measure). But it sold enough copies to warrant Elektra’s release of a
single ("You've Got to Hide Your
Love Away"/"Ticket to Ride"),and it remained in print
throughout much of the next decade; Elektra, and subsequently, Nonesuch also
released The Baroque Beatles Book on
reel-to-reel tape, with 4-track tape and cassette versions issued as those
formats evolved.
The Baroque Beatles
Book is a wonderfully inventive and immensely funny recording. To hear a
familiar pop/rock song such as I Want to
Hold Your Hand played in the style of Handel’s Water Music or Help sung
as an 18th Century aria by a classically-trained tenor is both an aesthetically pleasing experience
as well as a funny one. And if you look at the composition titles, you can tell
that Rifkin channeled the same satirical vibes as his friend and musical
humorist Peter Schikele (aka “P.D.Q. Bach”). The MBE in the “catalog listings” is a cheeky callback to the Beatles’ status
as recipients of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
There are other in-jokes and musical anachronisms in The Baroque Beatles Book, starting with
Roger Hanes’ clever illustration for the album cover, but I’ll let you discover
most of them on your own.
As often happens with projects such as The Baroque Beatles Book, this is a case of an artist – or a team
of artists – that creates a one-of-a-kind project that leaves audiences wanting
more.
Surely, Jac Holtzman and Joshua Rifkin must have given it some
thought, right? I mean, 1965 was hardly the zenith of The Beatles’ career –
that would come a few years later – and the band would not break up till 1970.
Was there any chance of a second volume of The
Baroque Beatles Book?
Per Richie Unterberger’s liner notes for the 2006 CD:
It's not well known that a sequel to the LP was planned on Elektra, and a few arrangements that would have been on that record were performed at a concert based around The Baroque Beatles Book in the spring of 1966. "At the time, I was writing volume two, and this was going to be the first outing for some of the pieces," explains Rifkin. "We had about half the thing already written. I was planning to do an orchestral piece, a sort of concerto grosso with a first movement based on 'Another Girl.' We had another cantata; this used 'Girl,' complete with a chorus inhaling, and 'I've Just Seen a Face,' and the text came from some of Lennon's writings. The final chorus was 'We Can Work It Out,' one of the really great, stunning, beautiful Beatles songs. Turned into baroque music, it had an almost religious feeling to it. It was just beautiful. People cried when they heard it; it's been heard in one or two concert performances since. That I'm sorry that we didn't get to record."
As to why a second volume never appeared, Joshua elaborates, "I remember very distinctly one evening going over to Mark Abramson's apartment in Lower Manhattan to eat dinner and do some more planning on the album. We ate, drank wine, and talked for a couple of hours. Somewhere around dessert, we looked across the table at each other and said, quite suddenly, 'Let's not do this record.' Mark and I had come to a feeling that this was not something we wanted to repeat. We were very, very happy with the way it was done, and it would not be the same to do it again."
As far as the music is concerned – it’s quite lovely, as you
can hear for yourself in the tracks I’ve added to this essay. It’s really hard
to put into words, but hearing Lennon/McCartney songs in the style of Bach, Telemann,
or Handel is an out-of-this world experience.
Additional Source: http://www.richieunterberger.com/rifkin.html
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