Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ Turns 50 | Album Anniversary

By Jeremy Levine

Happy 50th Anniversary to Pink Floyd’s eighth studio album The Dark Side of the Moon, originally released in the US March 1, 1973 and in the UK March 16, 1973.  

Lately, I’ve been thinking about chaos. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about the vast interiority of a person, and how it’s impossible to fully map the terrain of oneself. Relationships and interactions are collisions of people-in-progress, and fully knowing another person, let alone the world at large, is an impossible order.

Or, as Tolstoy put it, “A sudden, vivid awareness of the terrible opposition between something infinitely great and indefinable that was in him and something narrow and fleshy that he himself…was.” 

This thing is infinitely great and indefinable—hard to articulate—but there is a pretty good representation of it, and it’s The Dark Side of the Moon. 

Enough of this record’s legend has circulated in popular culture in the last fifty years, so if you’re looking for another piece on its influence on rock history, this isn’t that. It’s obviously an enormous aesthetic and technological achievement, a band at the height of their powers wielding the full weight of their medium. But the legend of Dark Side of the Moon is, in my experience, a detriment to getting to its core.

I first came to the record at age fifteen, more than thirty years after it was established as a visionary moment in the history of rock music (and t-shirt design). Indeed, in those early days, it was impossible to process Dark Side without thinking about it as an achievement. My favorite moment on the record was the final couplet, with the lyric “but the sun is eclipsed by the moon,” which to me represented the power of the album to overshadow everything in the rock music landscape. It was a celebration of itself, a victory lap, acknowledgement of a monumental artistic achievement. A moment of certainty and definition.

During a sleepless night a few weeks ago, I put the record on for the first of many listens in explicit preparation for this article. I knew I had a lot to look forward to, like Clare Torry’s cathartic vocal solo on “The Great Gig in the Sky” (still a highlight) and the genius contrast between hard rock and sensitivity on “Time.” 

But the tune that got me this time around was “On the Run,” an instrumental that I used to think of as a few minutes of nothing between the album’s overture and its unprecedented middle suite of “Time,” “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and “Money.” On this listen, the literal breathlessness of “On the Run,” the footsteps, and the Doppler-like sound of the synthesizer, produced a feeling of complete disorientation. The anxiety of this instrumental communicated to me more clearly than any of the album’s lyrics did. I realized that this was the sound of the thing I had been feeling: of searching for a way to connect to oneself and, by extension, other people, but having a hard time doing so because of the fundamental disorientations of life. 

Pink Floyd released one of the most successful albums of all time in 1973, and they had to follow it up in 1975. 

(Supplied: EMI)

“On the Run” had never felt like a part of the album’s legend. Maybe at that time I hadn’t been through enough for it to resonate with me. The more in-your-face lyrical tracks seemed like the essence of the message, but they were also the ones that I heard on the radio and knew as defining Pink Floyd cuts. 

Before Dark Side of the Moon became what it was, this record was an earnest attempt to capture that elusive feeling that I still can’t name; “On the Run” was just as integral to that story as “Time” and “Eclipse.”

I should note here that “On the Run” is not exactly a subtle piece of music. The footsteps and whirring synthesizer, along with the airline announcements, make it clear that this is supposed to be an anxiety-producing piece. But through the way that the album circulated in the popular discourse, I just assumed that it was filler that didn’t add as much to the narrative as the rest of the work. But when you think of it as the center of the album, everything else begins to make a lot more sense. 

The paralyzed uncertainty of “On the Run” makes the other tracks stronger. For example, it supplements “Money” by adding a referent to the instrumental interlude “Money.” As with “On the Run,” David Gilmour’s guitar work in the bridge of “Money” is intentionally disorienting, avoiding the melodic approach that makes up his signature sound. By the time you get to the end of the second guitar solo and crash back into the verse, a few things happen at once. 

First, the instrumental section is in 4/4, a more traditional time signature for rock music. But the verses are in 7/4, which sounds a little off to most listeners. But because 7/4 was established earlier in the song, and 4/4 is rendered so incomprehensible by the instrumental break, 7/4 actually feels like a relief. The “normal” state of things (the part in 4/4) is humanity at its most confused and disoriented. We did something unnatural (regulated the world through commerce and greed) to wrangle that feeling of uncertainty—we opted for 7/4. Because we can’t process the mania of the guitar solo, which produces the same anxieties in us that “On the Run” does and encompasses the huge unknowability of humanity, we turn to something unnatural like money that makes things seem normal.

Before I saw “On the Run” in this way, I thought of “Money” as an outlier on Dark Side of the Moon, a heavy-handed and predictable capitalism critique that didn’t get into the themes of madness and death that defines the record. But by focusing on the part of the record that I so often overlooked when I was focusing on its legend, I was able to see so much more in the legendary moments. 

I still don’t have an answer to my big question. I don’t know how you really get to know yourself, or how that helps you (or doesn’t) learn more about other people. But Dark Side of the Moon gave me more ways to process that question, and that’s where you have to start. 

What I do know is this: The mistake that I made with Dark Side of the Moon was that I thought that I knew it. It was represented to me as a definitive item, a milestone moment in music history, something by people who knew what madness and despair and death were all about. They didn’t. This is an album of questions. I’m realizing now that pretending like we know something, or someone, or ourselves, is what’s going to make it harder to see all of the layers in all of their complex beauty. I tried to do it with Dark Side of the Moon, and now I’m going to try it with myself.

First published at Albumism, February 26, 2023

Opera houses raise funds to save Villa Verdi

by Ria Andriani

Villa Verdi, the historic house built by legendary Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.
(Wikimedia Commons: Pavel Špindler)

Opera houses in Italy have banded together to save the historic villa built by legendary Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. Sant'agata Villanova Sull'arda, a house in the Italian province of Piacenza, also known as Villa Verdi, will go under the hammer in a public auction this year.

ABC Classic presenter Mairi Nicolson visited the villa of her favourite composer last October and shares its significance.

"The Villa Verdi is by local standards reasonably large, with a carriage house and extended gardens. There are more than 100 giant trees, many planted by Verdi himself, whilst his wife, soprano Giuseppina Strepponi tended the garden beds."

These days the Villa serves as both a museum and home to Verdi's descendants. "Inside the museum, you get a very strong sense of the couple's lives and Verdi's modest needs. It feels like a family home.”

 

Verdi's desk is still there with the scores of his most famous operas he composed there including Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Don Carlos, Aida and his last masterpiece, Falstaff.

"Her bedroom, with Giuseppina's original canopy bed, and his modest rooms where he slept and worked, are decorated with gifts from his travels, paintings, busts and memorabilia. If you look up to the top shelf in his study you'll see his favourite pet parrot, stuffed!"

Loss of revenue from the museum during the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with mounting renovation bills, has hastened the Villa Verdi's fate.

Verdi built the house on land he already owned in 1848. He moved in with Strepponi in 1851 and lived there until his death in 1901. The estate passed on to Maria Filomena Verdi, the composer's younger cousin. It is currently owned by four of her descendants, the Carrara Verdi who fought over what to do with the home for 20 years - but the pandemic has forced their hands.

The bidding is expected to start at €30 million ($46,144,000). Although the Italian state has the right to make the first offer, the government only allocated €20 million ($30,777,000) to purchase the nationally significant villa. Concerned Villa Verdi may be turned into a private residence, major opera houses including the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Verona Arena and La Scala in Milan are hoping Verdi's most famous works will help to save his home for the public. They are putting on a series of concerts until June 15, with proceeds to be donated to the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Born in the 19th-century, Verdi was a fervent supporter of the unification of Italy known as "Risorgimento" which saw many city states absorbed into modern-day Italy. He was a member of parliament and his music, such as Chorus Of The Hebrew Slaves, earned a significant place in the hearts on many Italians even today.

What Mairi remembers most, however, is how Verdi chose to live. "When Verdi died in January 1901 he was the richest man in Italy. So I was shocked when I did my first Verdi tour in Northern Italy and discovered how modestly he lived in the relatively humble Villa Verdi at Sant'Agata until his death. He never flaunted his wealth."

First published at ABC Classic website, February 21, 2023

The 15 greatest symphonies of all time

 

Classic FM is one of the United Kingdom's three Independent National Radio stations and is owned and operated by Global. The station broadcasts classical music and was launched in 1992.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonín Dvořák and Florence Price. Picture: Alamy

We think these are the greatest symphonies of all time – the biggest, most emotional, most impressive and plain-old flabbergasting works ever written.

From Mozart to Florence Price and Beethoven, with some lesser-known discoveries along the way, let the epicness commence…

1. Mozart – Symphony No. 41

Mozart’s final symphony was also his best – and it’s no coincidence that it’s subtitled ‘Jupiter’ either. Mozart threw absolutely everything at this epic, his longest symphony. Marvel at the five-theme fugal ending, gasp at the quotations of plainchant motifs, and simply recoil in wonder at the majesty of it all...

2. Florence Price – Symphony No.1

In 1932, Florence Price took home first prize in a competition for her glorious Symphony No.1 in E minor, a thrilling four-movement work packed with soaring melodies.

The following year, Price became the first African American woman to have her music performed by a major US orchestra, when her Symphony was performed by the Chicago Symphony. The music critic of the Chicago Daily News declared it “a faultless work, a work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion… worthy of a place in the regular symphonic repertoire.”

3. Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 (‘Choral’)

Written when the composer himself was profoundly deaf, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is without question, one of the greatest works in the classical repertoire, labelled by Classic FM presenter and Beethoven expert, John Suchet, as “the culmination of Beethoven’s genius”.

It’s his longest and most complex, and that final hymnal theme, the ‘Ode to Joy’, has come to symbolise hope, unity and fellowship across borders and through conflicts. Today, it is the official anthem for the European Union.

4. Mahler – Symphony No. 2 (‘Resurrection’)

This masterful symphony was Mahler’s most loved work during his own lifetime, and an absolute triumph at its premiere. Written across a six-year period, it represents the entire lifecycle of the human condition, ending with a triumphant, supernatural return to life.

It requires at least 10 French horns, a load of church bells, two soloists and an immense choir, alongside the gargantuan sized symphony orchestra. Suffice to say, as live music experiences go, it’s not one you’ll forget in a hurry.

Autograph manuscript of the symphony

5. Dvořák – Symphony No. 9 (‘From The New World’)

The subtitle of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 is important: it’s not ‘To the New World’; it’s ‘From’ – this is very much a symphony that looks back, from the US, to the composer’s native Bohemia.

It’s one of the most poignant, energetic, elegiac and spiritual symphonies ever composed, with some of the most glorious melodies of all time.

6. Berlioz – Symphonie Fantastique

Is it a symphony? Or a symphonic fantasy or a tone poem? And does its five-movement structure actually take it a step away from the idiom?

Well – what does matter, is that Berlioz wrote one of the wackiest pieces of music to come out of the Romantic period, while managing to make it a total hit and an artistically sound statement.

7. Brahms – Symphony No. 4

When the dust had settled from Brahms’ first symphony (he was heavily touted in his day as the successor to Beethoven in symphony land), he set about creating one of the most consistent sets of symphonies in history. The fourth and final, composed up a mountain in 1884, has to be the best one though, proving to be one of his most emotionally daring works and sealing his reputation as one of the symphonic masters.

8. Gorecki – Symphony No. 3 (‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’)

A recording phenomenon in the 1990s, Gorecki’s third is not only popular now: it’s destined to be a future classic. The concept is innovative and watertight – a soprano sings three texts inspired by themes of parents and missing children over a sparse and simple orchestral backing – but it’s the second movement that’s proved the real winner.

The text, taken from a message scrawled on the wall of a Gestapo cell in World War II, dovetails so perfectly with Gorecki’s bare-bones accompaniment that it’s impossible to imagine a future without it.

Polish composer Henryk Gorecki. Picture: Alamy

9. Shostakovich – Symphony No. 5

Shostakovich wrote 15 symphonies in total, and he’s unique in that almost all of them made an actual cultural impact. But of them all, the fifth has to be considered the greatest: sarcastic and funereal, inflammatory yet somehow managing to toe the party line – the final movement can be seen as both a parody of Stalinist excess, and an example of it – this was the symphony that made the young Shostakovich a name, for better or worse.

10. Louise Farrenc – Symphony No.3

Farrenc’s Third is home to one of the most glorious finales in all symphonic repertoire, chocka with tense, agitated strings following a deceptively soft, melodic oboe and clarinet-based introduction.

At the time of writing, Farrenc was unable to attend composition classes at the Paris Conservatoire, as they were only open to men.

11. William Grant Still – ‘Afro-American’ Symphony No.1

American composer William Grant Still’s Symphony No.1, which weaves influences from jazz and spirituals into a classical form to tell the history, experience and struggle of Black life in America, was the first work by a Black composer to be played by a major US orchestra.

Six years after the Rochester Philharmonic performed it in 1931, the composer himself famously conducted it at the Hollywood Bowl.

12. Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 6 (‘Pathétique’)

This is undoubtedly one of the most emotionally-charged works in the symphonic repertoire. Supposedly written as a desperate musical example of Tchaikovsky’s struggle with his sexuality and personal life, it conjures the most incredible sense of yearning, nostalgia and regret throughout four movements.

It must have been an incredible undertaking for the composer, who died just nine days after its first performance.

13. Rachmaninov – Symphony No. 2

Rachmaninov’s indulgent second symphony has stealthily become a hugely popular concert favourite. It’s all the more remarkable that it’s survived because the composer himself thought the work was pretty abject.

The reviews for his first symphony had been terrible and he was nervous about how the follow-up would be received. He needn’t have worried, of course. It became an award-winner, and the slow movement contains perhaps the finest command of melody and orchestration in Rachmaninov’s entire output.

Andre Previn's 1973 recording for EMI is considered one of the greatest, interpretively.

14. Sibelius – Symphony No.5

A triumphant symphony, with an unforgettable final movement which supposedly conveys the majestic call of the whooper swan.

Conductor Paavo Järvi a great lover of Sibelius 5, said of the symphony’s unexpected ending, which ends with six massive chords: “It scares audiences who hear it for the first time. After the first chord, usually somebody starts applauding, after the second chord somebody else starts applauding, and when the piece is finished there’s total silence because people are so ashamed that they applauded after the first chord.

“But if it’s done right and if the timing is right and it’s done with conviction, it could not be more effective. It has an unbelievable sense of inevitability.”

15. Beethoven – ‘Eroica’ Symphony No.3

Composed in 1803, this victorious, revolutionary symphony closed the door on the Classical period, and ushered in the early days of the Romantic era. Widely considered the first ‘Romantic’ symphony, it was grander and more dramatic than the symphonies of his contemporaries, and inspired a new style that would hold sway in the 19th century.

An admirer of the ideals of the French Revolution, Beethoven dedicated the ‘Eroica’ to Napoleon Bonaparte. That is, until Napoleon declared himself emperor, and Beethoven sprang into a rage, scrubbing out his name from the manuscript.

First published at CLASSIC FM (UK), February 21, 2023

Charles’ coronation to feature 12 new pieces of music

King Charles… “A range of musical styles and performers blend tradition, heritage and ceremony with new
musical voices of today, reflecting The king’s life-long love and support of music and the arts,” the palace said. 
Photo: Annabel Moeller

Via Reuters in London

TWELVE newly commissioned pieces of music will play at the coronation of King Charles at Westminster Abbey this May, including Greek Orthodox music, Buckingham Palace said, with the 18th century “Zadok the Priest” also to be featured.

Six orchestral commissions, five choral commissions and one organ commission have been composed for the occasion, the palace said on Saturday, including a new Coronation Anthem by musical theatre impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber.

“A range of musical styles and performers blend tradition, heritage and ceremony with new musical voices of today, reflecting The King’s life-long love and support of music and the arts,” the palace said in a statement.

It also said Charles requested Greek Orthodox music, which can be traced back to the Byzantine period, to be featured in the service in tribute to his father, Prince Philip, who was born on the Greek island of Corfu. He died in 2021.

Fanfares will be played by The State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry and The Fanfare Trumpeters of the Royal Air Force, the palace said.

One of the liturgical sections of the ceremony will also be performed in Welsh to reflect Charles’s “long-standing and deeply held relationship and affiliation with Wales,” according to the statement.

Music by classical composers including George Frideric Handel, Edward Elgar, Hubert Parry and Ralph Vaughan Williams, some of which has historically featured in the service for 400 years, will be included in the programme, along with the music of living Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.

Music by Elgar, Parry, and Williams were also performed at the crowning of Charles’s late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1953.

Handel’s coronation anthem “Zadok the Priest”, which was composed for the coronation of King George II in 1727, will be played at the ceremony, the palace said.

“I have scored it for the Westminster Abbey choir and organ, the ceremonial brass and orchestra. I hope my anthem reflects this joyful occasion,” composer Lloyd Webber said of his coronation anthem in the statement.

Reprinted from Canberra City News, February 22, 2023

Golden Globe winner Raquel Welch dies aged 82

Actor Raquel Welch has died following a brief illness. (Reuters: Danny Moloshok/File)

Raquel Welch, the actor whose sultry, curvaceous looks made her a leading sex symbol of the 1960s and 70s, has died at age 82, her manager has confirmed.

Welch's manager said in a statement to AFP that she died peacefully early on Wednesday morning after "a brief illness", without providing further details.

The Golden Globe winner starred in about 30 films and 50 television series in a career spanning five decades.

Welch came to the wide attention of movie-goers for her role in the 1966 sci-fi adventure Fantastic Voyage, followed by her iconic appearance later that year in the prehistoric drama One Million Years BC.

Although Welch had just a few lines of dialogue in BC, images of her memorable appearance in a fur-skinned bikini made her a bestselling pin-up that transformed her into a global sex symbol.

"I just thought it was a goofy dinosaur epic we'd be able to sweep under the carpet one day," she told The Associated Press in 1981.

"Wrong. It turned out that I was the Bo Derek of the season, the lady in the loin cloth about whom everyone said, 'My God, what a bod' and they expected to disappear overnight."

Welch at an event in Los Angeles in 1962.(Getty Images: Michael Ochs Archives/Earl Leaf)

She didn't disappear from screens, with starring roles to follow in Bedazzled, Bandolero!, 100 Rifles, Myra Breckinridge and Hannie Caulder.

Welch also played Mrs Windham Vandermark, the murder victim's ex-wife, in Legally Blonde alongside Reese Witherspoon. 

Witherspoon paid tribute to the late actor, saying she loved working with her. 

Muppet character Miss Piggy also reminisced on her time working with the star. 

"Raquel Welch was one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever worked with," a tweet from her official Twitter account said.

"Performing a duet with her on The Muppet Show helped moi become the W-O-M-A-N I am today!

"We’ll never forget vous, Raquel!"

Actor Paul Feig described Welch as awesome, having worked with her on Sabrina The Teenage Witch. 

Welch at a Barneys New York Celebration in Beverly Hills in 2017.
(Getty Images: Barneys New York/Matt Winkelmeyer)

"Kind, funny and a true superstar whom I was pretty much in love with for most of my childhood," he said. 

"We’ve lost a true icon."

Welch pictured around six months before her death. Picture: Jeff Rayner/Coleman-Rayner

Married and divorced four times, Welch is survived by her two children, Damon Welch and Tahnee Welch, who also became an actress, including landing a featured role in 1985's Cocoon.

Wires

First published at ABC News, Thursday February 16, 2023