Kimberly Martin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I'm 19 and in college, majoring in music education.  I've already found
>myself creating a massive gulf between "real" music (an expression one of
>my professors unwisely used) and popular music.  Recently, the gulf between
>heavy metal and symphony music has been brought together through Metallica
>and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  I'm curious as to what other
>music-appreciative people feel about this blend.

Since reading the initial writeups and reviews last month I've been
strongly resolved to get hold of this record, but I haven't yet done so.
Firstly, while as others have pointed out this experiment has been done
before, more important is the fact that it has never been done very
fruitfully.  There have been some wonderfully ingenious joinings of this
kind in the realm of pop (Scott Walker, Sinatra/Riddle, Nick Drake, the
Talk Talk album "Spirit Of Eden") and jazz (Miles Davis/Gil Evans, "Parker
with Strings") but never in rock.  One reason I think it could work with
Metallica is that they have always had a tendency to use asymmetrical
rhythms and highly contrasted song-sections (though not in the
note-spinning longwinded and pompous manner of the 70's prog-rock monoliths
like Emerson Lake etc., Yes, Gentle Giant, etc...  for me only the mid-70's
King Crimson records made the idea work) thus giving the orchestra
something to do other than "singalong" to the foursquare verses and chorus.
I've always suspected that Metallica had a thing for Bartok and Stravinsky,
and they've often shown themselves to be genuine experimentalists, so I
have hopes that the orchestra will be allowed to actually do something here
and change the nature of the material.  Promising is the fact that rather
than the usual "London Symphony Orchestra plays the music of (whomever)"
approach it sounds like they have used a sort of "Concerto for rock quartet
and orchestra" approach.  We'll see.  I certainly think this sort of thing
can be valid but only if the the routines of BOTH types of music are
jettisoned.  (Take the Miles Davis/Gil Evans albums.  They aren't really
jazz OR classical.) Conversely, rock songs with orchestral accompaniment,
or use of "rock style" in a classical composition, is a recipe for
annoyance.

Another reason I have to at least hear this release is in hopes that the
Lovecraft-inspired numbers ("The Thing That Should Not Be" is one of my
all-time favorite titles for anything) will have generated appropriate
orchestral material.  Why on earth have 20th century composers not
exploited Lovecraft for material?!  Intentionally, that is-- if you didn't
give me a translation text I'd easily believe Lutoslawki's "Espaces Du
Sommeil" to be a setting of part of "Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath",
Cthulu's name could be put to any number of Varese's works, and don't
even mention the Schattenhaft movement of Mahler 7...

Jon Lewis
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