Baroque meets Rock
interview by Daniel Barbiero
Our interview about Stairway Bach has just been published by Perfect Sound Forever:
https://www.furious.com/perfect/sveningvartmikkelsen.html

Organist Sven-Ingvart Mikkelsen's Stairway to Bach is a crossover album that features classic rock songs arranged for organ in a way that pays homage to both classical music and to symphonic rock. As the liner note declares, it's a collection of "rock classics with a hint of Bach." Mikkelsen takes classic rock songs and arranges them as Bach might have, recasting them contrapuntally, emphasizing the bass lines, and incorporating quotes from Bach. None of this was conjured up out of nowhere; these rock classics as originally written already contained a hint of Bach or other Baroque and classical music, since a number of the musicians of the classic rock period - the late 1960's and early-to-mid 1970s - had at least a rudimentary background in classical music before taking up rock. Bach was, in many cases, already in rock. With Stairway to Bach, Mikkelsen wished to dramatize these sometimes overt, sometimes covert connections between Baroque music and rock, and present them on the pipe organ, as Bach might have. The album also includes Mikkelsen's performances of some of Bach's own music. By putting them in such close proximity to the rock songs he chose, Mikkelsen gives us a deeper understanding of the melodic and harmonic underpinnings of the latter. Sven-Ingvart is Professor and Head of Department for Organ and Church Music at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, whose Marcussen organ is featured on Stairway to Bach. He has acquired a reputation for presenting unconventional programs, so a project like Stairway to Bach would seem to be a natural undertaking for him. We at Perfect Sound Forever found Mikkelsen's album thought-provoking, and wanted to ask him about the relationship between Bach and rock, and about his own relationship to rock and to the songs he chose for the project. We conducted an email interview with him during the first week of June, the results of which follow.


PSF: I'd like to start at the beginning, or even before the beginning - call it the prehistory of Stairway to Bach. Was rock an early part of your musical formation?

S-IM: I have been playing classical organ/pipe organ since I was 8 years old. But as a teenager, I listened to a lot of rock music, and I was particularly interested in the rock bands that were inspired by classical music, i.e. Procol Harum, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd etc., and I actually also played a bit in an amateur band rock band. I was interested in the relationship between the classical pipe organ and the Hammond organ, and in fact as a teenager I made my first organ arrangements of Procol Harum "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and Jethro Tull "Bourée."

PSF: So I think it would be fair to say that you didn't have much trouble bringing together these two sides of your musical personality - the classical and the rock sides. And I can see how that would be so, given that classical does show up as a kind of trace element in a lot of rock. Would you say then that your arrangements on Stairway to Bach don't put rock songs into dialogue with another, somewhat alien tradition, but instead bring out in them something that was always there, perhaps latently, within them?
S-IM: My arrangements on Stairway to Bach in no way put the rock songs in dialogue with a kind of alien tradition. On the contrary, I am trying to show that these are two sides of the same tradition. Many of the old rock musicians were classically trained, and they used their classical background as a foundation for the new sound universe that they developed. But the classical background was not denied, and often the rock songs are based on direct classical quotes. On this basis, new songs were developed which have gone on to become classics. What I find interesting is to bring these new songs "back" to the classical sound, which my instrument, the pipe organ, can contribute. It is here that I try to emphasize the kinship between the two genres by weaving Bach quotes into the rock songs, also in places where they were not before.

PSF: Did all the rock songs you chose to arrange contain passages taken from or inspired by Bach - already had Bach encoded in their DNA? Or did some suggest Bach perhaps more indirectly, as in a kind of family resemblance of some sort?

S-IM: Not all songs on my album contain direct passages of Bach. In some cases, it is just the idiom that is classically based or inspired. For example, the introduction to The Doors' "Light My Fire" does not contain direct Bach quotes, but when I listen to it, I get a direct association with Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No. 2," and here I have allowed myself to mix it all together, so we have some direct Bach quotes, but incorporated into the music so that it blends together in a way that you don't quite realize when it's Bach and when it's The Doors. Also Procol Harum "Homburg" does not originally contain any direct Bach quotes, but the tonal language is so classical and Bach-like that I have found it interesting to mix the music together with the Largo movement from Bach's harpsichord concerto BWV 1056 and in that way present the rock songs as well as Bach's music in a new light.

PSF: I think the album does present the rock songs in a new light. In fact one of the nice features of the album is that you've included Bach selections along with the rock songs, so we can hear the connections between the two genres more clearly. I'm thinking in particular of the Bourée from the E Minor lute suite (BWV 996), since its melody or harmonic progression shows up in so many rock songs. I've probably heard The Doors' "People Are Strange" a million times, but after listening to Stairway to Bach I now can hear the Bourée in it. As an improviser myself, I'm naturally interested in the fact that Baroque music, like rock, made substantial use of improvisation. When you arranged these rock songs did you leave room for yourself to improvise at any point?
S-IM: I am trained as a classical musician, and therefore written music is my primary starting point. But as an organist, I also work with improvisation in different styles, among other things inspired by the different forms of baroque music. I like to work systematically with things, which is why I also play my arrangements on Stairway to Bach based on written arrangements. But there is always an improvisational element behind it, and therefore the music is always slightly different from time to time, all depending on the instrument and the current mood of the concert situation.

PSF: Yes, that ability to take the circumstances of the moment and transform them into music is one of the beauties of improvisation. Back in the 1980's, there were a couple of albums that presented Beatles songs recast in a Baroque style, and I seem to recall that even earlier than that, there were other albums that attempted to come up with a crossover between rock and classical music. Did any of those earlier albums influence you, assuming you were aware of them?

S-IM: I have definitely been inspired by many of the cross-over arrangements that I have heard over time. There have been a large number of concerts with rock bands together with symphony orchestras, where you can say that rock music has been mixed with the classical tonal language. But it has actually been even more inspiring to hear rock songs arranged for a small ensemble such as a string quartet. But perhaps one of the things that has inspired me the most is actually the rock music that was carried by the Hammond organ sound. Here I have always connected what I heard with my own instrument, the pipe organ. Something else that has inspired me is that when I hear a rock song, I also sense the underlying structure, and in many cases I recognize the structural forms from classical music. A good example is Procol Harum “Repent Walpurgis,” which is built up like a Chaconne, which is a classical form (originally a dance), where a simple bass figure forms the basis for a large number of variat“ons (such as Pach”lbel "Kanon"). But in Procol Harum’s song, a middle part has been added, consisting of the well-known Bach prelude in C major, and in the last part, fragments from Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto are deliberately added. I mention it as an example that the mutual inspiration between today’s rock musicians and classical music has always taken place and has always gone both ways.

PSF: In essence, good structure is good structure regardless of genre, which explains the appeal of classical structures for more demotic musics like rock. Going in the other direction, the influence of rock on classical is a more recent development. I think we’re both old enough – well, I sure am, at least – to remember when the classical music world thought of rock as not-quite-music. Of course things change. Since the late ‘60’s, rock became more sophisticated – at least in part because of its classical borrowings – by the ‘80s, rock was everywhere, and now it’s safe to assume that the majority of musicians coming out of the conservatories grew up with it. Given your vantage point, which quite comfortably straddles both worlds, what’s your perception of how the classical world currently sees classic rock?

S-IM: The classical music world's relationship with alternative forms of music such as pop-rock music has changed a lot over the years. Composers such as Debussy and Stravinsky, for example, were inspired by jazz music, and if we go further back in music history, we find plenty of examples of how melodies that were sung in the streets and marketplaces were used as the basis for classical compositions in concert halls and churches. When I was a music student, there was a clear separation between the world of classical music and rock music. Here, it was the rock musicians who took classical music to heart. But a lot has changed, and especially within the last ten years I sense a greater openness and interaction between the different genres of music. Today, I find that the classical music world has a great understanding of the quality of classic rock. For my Stairway to Bach release concert, many classical musicians came who had nothing to do with rock music. It was my impression that here I succeeded in breaking down some boundaries. And what I could also ascertain was that there were many rock enthusiasts who had no connection to classical music. Here, too, I believe and hope that we succeeded in breaking down boundaries, so that in future many will go to good concerts in both traditional classical concert halls and good jazz-rock venues.

PSF: "Breaking down boundaries": I think that's a nice note on which to end -- a Picardy third.