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Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that aims to separate the genre from popular entertainment, with the term typically being applied as the middle ground between mainstream and experimental rock. Art rock primarily draws influences from the wider art world and academia which includes contemporary art, art music, avant-garde art, experimental music, avant-garde music, alongside classical music and jazz.
Critics have defined art rock as a "rejection" of rock music intended solely for the purpose of popular entertainment or dancing. The term was closely associated with a specific period beginning in 1966–67, which became influential to the development of progressive rock.
Critic John Rockwell described the term art rock as referring to wide-ranging and eclectic tendencies in rock music. In the rock music of the 1970s, the application of the "art" descriptor by music critics and journalists was taken derogatorily, understood by musicians and fans as meaning that it was "aggressively avant-garde" or "pretentiously progressive". "Art rock" is often used synonymously with progressive rock. Historically, the term has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. The first is progressive rock, while the second usage refers to groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach defined by the Velvet Underground. Essayist Ellen Willis compared these two types:
From the early sixties ... there was a counter-tradition in rock and roll that had much more in common with high art—in particular avant-garde art—than the ballyhooed art-rock synthesis [progressive rock]; it involved more or less consciously using the basic formal canons of rock and roll as material (much as pop artists used mass art in general) and refining, elaborating, playing off that material to produce ... rockand-roll art. While art rock was implicitly based on the claim that rock and roll was or could be as worthy as more established art forms, rock-and-roll art came out of an obsessive commitment to the language of rock and roll and an equally obsessive disdain for those who rejected that language or wanted it watered down, made easier ... the new wave has inherited the counter-tradition.
Art rock has been described as emphasizing Romantic and autonomous traditions, in distinction to the aesthetic of the everyday and the disposable embodied by art pop. Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman's American Popular Music defines art rock as a "form of rock music that blended elements of rock and European classical music", citing the English progressive rock bands King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Pink Floyd as examples. Common characteristics include album-oriented music divided into compositions rather than songs, with usually complicated and long instrumental sections and symphonic orchestration. Its music was traditionally used within the context of concept records, and its lyrical themes tended to be "imaginative" and politically oriented. Art rock has also been noted for frequently intertwining with "serious music".
Art rock has been described as "more challenging, noisy and unconventional" and "less classically influenced", with more of an emphasis on avant-garde music, depending on what was considered avant-garde at the time of the term's use. Similarities between it and progressive rock are that they both describe a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility, and became the instrumental analogue to concept albums and rock operas, which were typically more vocal oriented.
Art rock can also refer to either classically driven rock, or to a progressive rock-folk fusion. Bruce Eder's essay The Early History of Art-Rock/Prog Rock states that "'progressive rock,' also sometimes known as 'art rock,' or 'classical rock'" is music in which the "bands [are] playing suites, not songs; borrowing riffs from Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner instead of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley; and using language closer to William Blake or T. S. Eliot than to Carl Perkins or Willie Dixon."
In the late sixties and early seventies, rock both co-opted and challenged the prevailing view of musical art, often at the same time. This is evident in a diverse body of music that includes the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper; Frank Zappa's Freak Out ... the Who's rock opera Tommy; Pink Floyd's technologically advanced concept album Dark Side of the Moon; and Miles Davis's jazz/rock fusion.
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Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that aims to separate the genre from popular entertainment, with the term typically being applied as the middle ground between mainstream and experimental rock. Art rock primarily draws influences from the wider art world and academia which includes contemporary art, art music, avant-garde art, experimental music, avant-garde music, alongside classical music and jazz.
Critics have defined art rock as a "rejection" of rock music intended solely for the purpose of popular entertainment or dancing. The term was closely associated with a specific period beginning in 1966–67, which became influential to the development of progressive rock.
Critic John Rockwell described the term art rock as referring to wide-ranging and eclectic tendencies in rock music. In the rock music of the 1970s, the application of the "art" descriptor by music critics and journalists was taken derogatorily, understood by musicians and fans as meaning that it was "aggressively avant-garde" or "pretentiously progressive". "Art rock" is often used synonymously with progressive rock. Historically, the term has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. The first is progressive rock, while the second usage refers to groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach defined by the Velvet Underground. Essayist Ellen Willis compared these two types:
From the early sixties ... there was a counter-tradition in rock and roll that had much more in common with high art—in particular avant-garde art—than the ballyhooed art-rock synthesis [progressive rock]; it involved more or less consciously using the basic formal canons of rock and roll as material (much as pop artists used mass art in general) and refining, elaborating, playing off that material to produce ... rockand-roll art. While art rock was implicitly based on the claim that rock and roll was or could be as worthy as more established art forms, rock-and-roll art came out of an obsessive commitment to the language of rock and roll and an equally obsessive disdain for those who rejected that language or wanted it watered down, made easier ... the new wave has inherited the counter-tradition.
Art rock has been described as emphasizing Romantic and autonomous traditions, in distinction to the aesthetic of the everyday and the disposable embodied by art pop. Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman's American Popular Music defines art rock as a "form of rock music that blended elements of rock and European classical music", citing the English progressive rock bands King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Pink Floyd as examples. Common characteristics include album-oriented music divided into compositions rather than songs, with usually complicated and long instrumental sections and symphonic orchestration. Its music was traditionally used within the context of concept records, and its lyrical themes tended to be "imaginative" and politically oriented. Art rock has also been noted for frequently intertwining with "serious music".
Art rock has been described as "more challenging, noisy and unconventional" and "less classically influenced", with more of an emphasis on avant-garde music, depending on what was considered avant-garde at the time of the term's use. Similarities between it and progressive rock are that they both describe a mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility, and became the instrumental analogue to concept albums and rock operas, which were typically more vocal oriented.
Art rock can also refer to either classically driven rock, or to a progressive rock-folk fusion. Bruce Eder's essay The Early History of Art-Rock/Prog Rock states that "'progressive rock,' also sometimes known as 'art rock,' or 'classical rock'" is music in which the "bands [are] playing suites, not songs; borrowing riffs from Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner instead of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley; and using language closer to William Blake or T. S. Eliot than to Carl Perkins or Willie Dixon."
In the late sixties and early seventies, rock both co-opted and challenged the prevailing view of musical art, often at the same time. This is evident in a diverse body of music that includes the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper; Frank Zappa's Freak Out ... the Who's rock opera Tommy; Pink Floyd's technologically advanced concept album Dark Side of the Moon; and Miles Davis's jazz/rock fusion.