“Bach-To-Rock”: How Baroque Invaded Rock Music in the ‘60s and Then Was Largely Forgotten a.k.a. my final paper for my MUSI 314 class submitted in May 2021

When the album Switched-On Bach was released by Columbia Records in 1968, it wasn’t released with the expectation of reaching mainstream popularity, much less reaching number 10 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and additionally winning three Grammys—“for Best Classical Album, Best Classical Performance—Instrumental Soloist or Soloists, and Best Engineered Classical Recording.” Neither was it expected to “[change] the face of pop, rock, and classical music—the first classical recording ever to go Platinum.” But it did—and while Switched-On Bach is a brilliantly conceptualized and skillfully crafted album, it combined elements unfamiliar to popular music of the time: electronic production mostly reserved for the avant-garde and classical composition, though recognizable, mostly associated with “high art” and not conducive to the anti-intellectualism of pop-rock of the time. The album, which reinterpreted Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions on the Moog synthesizer, ushered electronic music into a popular consciousness—”[releasing] electronic music from sounding like ‘some obnoxious mating of a catfight and a garbage compactor.” For an album with obscure influences, it seems strange for it to rocket to the top of the charts. How did a classical record manage to usher electronic tropes into mainstream popularity? Resolving this question could also help us understand how baroque music as a whole invaded the mainstream in the ‘60s—I contend that the popularity of both Carlos’s album and baroque rock as a whole resulted from a countercultural susceptibility to quaint, anti-mainstream influences. Artists and record companies seized this opportunity to usher in baroque tropes; ironically, however, as baroque rock reached the mainstream, its value as a countercultural object declined, and it collapsed under its perceived intellectualism and popularity.

Brend affirms that Switched-On Bach’s popularity came from the novelty of and curiosity for the Moog synthesizer, which had been building in interest since 1966.” Rachel Elkind, who helped conceptualize the album, ascertained it was the familiarity of Bach’s compositions combined with the unfamiliar instrument of the Moog that sparked curiosity and therefore the charm of the album. Gulgas suggests it was the countercultural, postmodern desire to mix high and low art, eminent in ‘60s youth culture, that gave the album its appeal, a conception reflected in Brend’s claims of the album’s contentious irreverence. 

The album’s popularity, however, also reflected a greater trend toward baroque music during the ‘60s. Baroque pop (or alternatively baroque rock), a short-lived subgenre of music that emerged during the ‘60s, combined a classical sensibility with the more popular sound of rock at the time–the Beatles were one of the first artists to capitalize on the sound, and artists like the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, the Kinks, and the Left Banke followed suit. Many scholars argue that the sound fit in with the counterculture sensibility at the time, approaching music in a postmodern, eclectic way. 

Columbia Records agreed to a record contract for Switched-On Bach in alliance with this developing trend in music, as their “marketing scheme” at the time “was a Bach-to-Rock campaign.” This “scheme” got its start in the 1940s when Columbia Records used baroque compositions to market longer-playing LPs, a new development in recording at the time. This subsequently led to a “baroque boom” in classical recordings, though the author makes sure to note that this “boom” was reserved for the relatively niche audience of classical music aficionados, and made only a small profit for record companies. However, it was soon capitalized on by companies whose biggest profits came from “pop-show-folk”—what the New York Times in 1965 called an ironic twist considering that, at the time, the author of the article perceived “no mass audience for baroque music and no gold mine in its exploitation.” One of the first attempts to market baroque music at a young audience was the Nonesuch label. Nonesuch was

a new record label started by [Jac] Holzman to market classical music, particularly unusual and baroque music, for a new young audience at a reasonable price (the same price as a trade paperback book) and with slick modern packaging. The project had been called ‘Nonesuch’ because when Holzman had come up with the idea, he didn’t want other labels to find out what he was planning, so everyone had been instructed to say that there was ‘nonesuch project.’ Holzman was looking for experimental music to give the label avant-garde credibility. 

Nonesuch, a division of Elektra Records run by the aforementioned president of the company Jac Holzman, was one of the first to capitalize on a baroque sensibility in rock music. Its desire for “avant-garde credibility” reflects an ambition to fit in with the countercultural flavor of anti-establishment “fighting against the mainstream.” One of Nonesuch’s most prominent releases was The Baroque Beatles Book (1965), a classical album composed in the style of the Beatles whose album cover, much like the one later produced for Switched-On Bach, combined anachronistic elements in an irreverent fashion. The reason Columbia Records was interested in releasing Switched-On Bach in the first place was because of the “pressure they were under from Jac Holzman’s newly developed Nonesuch label.”

As Pinch states, “The counterculture was also not adverse to a bit of Bach.” The reason such campaigns worked, Gulgas argues, is because the baroque artist “provided solidity to 1960s youth culture during a time of political and social revolution.” Gulgas further makes the argument that incorporating Bach (and baroque elements, more broadly) satisfied rock musicians’ desire for eclecticism, and further fit in with the postmodern countercultural motives of youth culture at the time which included a “wish to be outside of the political system through pluralism which was demonstrated by its acceptance of multiple and divergent styles.” This postmodern sentiment further challenged the distinction between high and low art, commercial versus non-commercial enterprises, and the past versus the present.

 The advertising copy used at the time confirms these connections: according to a 1968 article in the New York Times,

Columbia Records is going for baroque in a five-month promotion campaign to turn the youth market toward classical recordings. The label is using such advertising copy as:

“America listens while the establishment burns.” “Charles Ives sold insurance, but his real gig was the new music.” “Hector Berlioz took dope, and his trips exploded into out-of-sight sounds.” 

In its “Bach to Rock” drive, Columbia is creating protest signs and buttons with such slogans as “Gabrielli Grooves,” “Brahms not Bombs,” and “Charles Ives Lives.” 

Clearly, record companies strongly desired to strike a chord with youth culture at the time. This desire for pluralism and eclecticism further combined with a desire for “a novelty touch” or “to be in step with London’s colorful Edwardian fashion trend and the psychedelic scene that came with it.” Significantly, many artists followed in the steps of the Beatles, who were among the first to incorporate the sound of the harpsichord into their music. 

1965—the year the Baroque Beatles Book was published and additionally when “the harpsichord gained pop stardom,” according to a contemporary article from the Wall Street Journal, was the year the Beatles added a baroque touch on “In My Life,” from their album “Rubber Soul.” However, the instrument that added this “touch” was a piano.

When George Martin found he couldn’t play what he wanted fast enough on the piano, he recorded his part with the tape running at half speed. When it was played back at the normal speed, the piano sounded twice as fast and an octave higher—evocative of a harpsichord. 

Though the Beatles were not the first to hit upon a baroque-rock combo, the release of “In My Life” “was clearly a watershed moment in rock music history for its baroque influences as well as its success with studio experimentation as evidenced by its influence on producers and artists.”

Soon, other artists followed in the Beatles’ steps. The Rolling Stones, for example, used a harpsichord in “Sittin’ On A Fence.” Other artists, too, did so, with the additional desire to “sound in sync with the British Invasion.” British fashion, too, spread to the United States during this period. Baroque pop, therefore, largely blew up “because the Beatles did” it. 

Other artists, however, captured the true “baroque rock” sound with more precision. The Boston Globe calls the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renée,” “the style’s quintessence.” Michael Brown, the composer and harpsichord player for the song, was merely fifteen when he composed the song. The Guardian explains it further: 

In New York, a classically trained keyboard player called Michael Brown was paying close attention. She’s Not There was a far bigger hit in the States, where, in the wake of Beatlemania, it was hip to drink tea, the milkier the better. The Zombies couldn’t miss, and Brown was inspired. He formed a band called the Left Banke and roped in his dad, an arranger called Harry Lookofsky, to oversee their first single. The other players were rudimentary, so Lookofsky focused on Brown’s harpsichord and the string quartet; Walk Away Renee was the first bona fide baroque pop hit at the end of 1965.

The instrument was soon featured in other songs, like in “the Beach Boys’ ‘When I Grow Up (to Be a Man),’ or The Mamas & the Papas’ ‘Monday Monday.’” Gulgas, however, intimates that it was the practicality of the presence of harpsichords in studios that encouraged their usage, and that the instrument by itself does not make something baroque pop.

Baroque pop is, as Gulgas asserts, not an imitation of baroque but a pastiche—containing ideas of the baroque, its lightness and sensibility, but “uninterested in ‘historically accurate’ instrumentation.” Although many baroque pop creations “blended the neoclassic sound of string quartets, harpsichord ostinatos, and contrapuntal techniques with rock instrumentation,” the genre emanates a vague nostalgic idea of baroque music versus baroque itself. This “nostalgia” is defined, in Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, as a nostalgia not for the period of the past, but for a present, imagined perception of what this past may have been like. Gulgas maintains that the goal of baroque pop artists “was never to create historically informed performances but instead to adapt baroque style to a rock context in order to create commentary about the present and the future”—what she calls “postmodern nostalgia.” Sometimes baroque pop just arose out of the practicality of the availability of a harpsichord in studios. Sometimes, the harpsichord wasn’t even a harpsichord, like on the Beatles’ “In My Life,” the song with reputedly jump-started interest in baroque rock sounds from other musicians.

Gulgas calls baroque music music that “utilizes both baroque instrumentation and style,” because, as she says, “it situates the subgenre in the 1960s. Harpsichords and string arrangements were used in popular music before baroque rock began in 1965 but they rarely ever focused on baroque style.” Determining whether an artist or song is truly baroque pop is also confounded by the definition of genre. As Gulgas states,

the process of genre categorization is firmly rooted in exclusion and inclusion. Genres should not be viewed as lists of musical characteristics but rather as an expression of identity enacted through the interaction between performers and listeners. 

As popularity for baroque pop receded, so did the genre. And as the ‘70s progressed toward heaviness, baroque pop phased out.

The proliferation of baroque pop occurred as “heaviness and hairiness became the norm between 1968 and 1973 – even as Led Zep ruled the student unions, the harpsichord trickle-down took its time to reach the provinces.” Eventually, baroque elements were phased out altogether, to be overtaken by this harder sound. Electronic music, too–spurred by Switched-On Bach, the baroque-electronic infusion album, found its place both in the mainstream and in offshoot music genres like synthpop. 

What’s interesting is that both the Moog and baroque elements were used by the same bands, both incorporated into pop hits, and both spoke to a pervasive countercultural desire to combine unfamiliar elements into music. The Beatles are notable for including both, as are the Beach Boys and the Mamas and the Papas. Nonesuch later released the Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music in 1968, three years after releasing The Baroque Beatles Book

However, the synth and electronic elements that proliferated simultaneously during this era had staying power that baroque did not. Switched-On Bach almost singlehandedly ushered the Moog synthesizer into a popular consciousness–verifiably determining the direction of electronic music, if not pop music for years to come. Like with baroque instrumentation and style, “rock and pop music was where the Moog synthesizer found its true home. Groups like the Byrds, the Doors, and the Beatles used their Moogs as part of the sixties’ search for new psychedelic sounds.” Both electronic and baroque elements became popular due to their eclecticism and their association with the counterculture–on behalf of the Moog, Gulgas writes, “The synthesizer’s transformative power to change familiar instrumental sounds into electronic timbral imitations was also used by performers with the countercultural goal of transforming states of consciousness and breaking out of the strains of mainstream society.”

However, unlike the electronic elements in popular music spurred by the Moog, baroque pop didn’t last beyond the ‘70s. There are some baroque elements in pop music of the ‘00s—Panic! At The Disco and Of Montreal are two examples—but these artists did not conglomerate to form a single cohesive genre. 

Baroque pop is largely forgotten as a genre that affected pop music. Why didn’t baroque pop last, or envision itself in new forms the way early synthpop or other genres have? Part of the reason, it seems to me, is because it was overshadowed by the much brighter novelties in technology like the Moog. Another reason, which Gulgas describes, is that is seemed to be a “stain on rock’s harder image,” clashing with the anti-intellectualism and rawness of the genre. Additionally, 

the incompatibility between the rock genre’s propensity for raging against established tradition and baroque rock’s acceptance by mainstream culture led to an embarrassing perception of baroque rock, making it a moment in rock history that people wish to forget. The transition to hard rock with its harsh, distorted timbres, screaming vocals, and driving rhythms also forced baroque rock’s associations with acoustic timbres, light vocals, and counterpoint into the recesses of artists’ memories. 

The Guardian reiterates this push toward more raw sounds: “With riots in Paris, Chicago and even Grosvenor Square, 1968’s predominant trend was to get hairier, heavier, more long-winded.”

The two prongs of Switched-On Bach, electronic and baroque, combined with popular culture, eclecticism, irreverence, novelty, high and low culture, the familiar and the unfamiliar, in a way that was conducive to entering mainstream culture. Electronic music’s staying power emerged by its use within subcultures and associations, launching it into the now. Baroque pop was a blip of the ‘60s, receding into the background. Nevertheless, the brevity of its influence left a mark on the countercultural atmosphere of the decade, and many of the artists of the era continue to influence artists and intrigue listeners with their eclectic compositions.

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