Music Album Review: 'The Baroque Beatles Book'
Cover art for The Baroque Beatles Book by Roger Hane (C) 1965. 2009 Elektra Nonesuch Records 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 ess...
