"Hmmmmmmmmm...." started last February when I decided to wrestle with a question that many musicians or music people far more qualified than I am have not solved. There have been enough not-so-successful attempts to fuse classical music and heavy metal for most of the music world to know that exloring the topic seems to do more harm than good to anyone who dares go there. So naturally, I went there. I've got no musical credibility to lose by doing this, and it's always the great ones that seem to suffer when they go there. Maybe bottom up is the better approach.
Our story begins on a very average suburban Tuesday evening. Dad comes home from work, takes his daughters to dance class, sits in the waiting area making casual polite conversation with other parents during the hour long class that is too long to sit still for, and too short to run errands during. That's when my ears caught something, and an old dormant curiosity was completely reawakened. The next day I sent this e-mail out to the most musically astute people I know because frankly, my head was running wild (and I was angry that it was Evanescence that provoked me this way, but more on that later) and I needed their input to help me start to make any sense of it.
From: Steve
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 12:34 PM
Subject: Hmmmmm......
Had a strange experience….last night I’m sitting in the dance studio waiting room while the girls were in their modern class just monkeying around on the Blackberry to kill time. There are 2 dance studios there so I usually tune out the combination of competing sounds/music coming from both of them. But amongst the white noise, I heard a few frames of music that were unmistakably from Mozart’s Requiem. “Good choice” I thought to myself while noting that it was obviously in a higher key than the way I knew it. I then recognized another unmistakable; the vocals of Amy Lee from Evanescence. So I wondered, did Evanescence incorporate the Requiem into one of their songs or am I hearing just another aggregation of noise from multiple studios? The timing of the two musical styles seemed to jibe intentionally so I concluded it was the same song and not 2 separate songs playing simultaneously. Turns out that yes, Evanescence has a song called Lacrymosa on their second album which incorporates the Lacrimosa sequence from Mozart’s Requiem but transposed from D minor to E minor.
Some of you may be saying “where have you been Steve, that song is over 4 years old” and others saying “never heard of Evanescence…where’s this going.” But now that I am caught up, I’m curious on the collective take. I’m hugely appreciative of Mozart, and not a fan of Evanescence really. That’s not to say I dislike Evanescence, I think they have something pretty unique and an artistic edge; I’ve just never felt like it was something that absolutely belonged in my record collection, which explains why I am slow on the uptake that this song existed.
It makes perfect sense to me that Evanescence would be the band to try a bold experiment like this. They are basically a heavy metal band that took the road less travelled and have a front woman, thus changing everyone’s concept of what heavy metal was when they were new. They provided raw and powerful riffs but instead of mixing them with a testosterone charged vocal performance, an edgy and emotionally charged female voice got a lot of peoples’ attention and allowed them to cross over to non-heavy metal fans. While their fans love love love her voice, I’m on the fence about it. It can be pretty, and it can sound whiny and overdramatic too, and I’m never sure whether I like it or am annoyed by it. But anyway……
Does this experiment with the Requiem succeed? My inclination is to say not quite, but the jury is still out. I like the idea of it, partly because I think there is a strong, but very unexplored link between heavy metal and classical music. But that doesn’t mean that I want to hear the Toccata and Fugue in D minor getting ripped to shreds on some rock and roll album just because Evanescence provided a commercially viable example. I don’t mind if the effort is truly inspired out of respect for the original composer’s work. This could be tried again with better results, I think; as long as the artist understands that this is not the same thing as lifting a drum track from Led Zeppelin and appreciates that they are borrowing generations of culture, and need to give it back when they are done with it. According to the Wikipedia entry on the song, Amy Lee seems to maybe understand this although the “make it cool” makes me say hmmmmmm:
“I saw Amadeus when I was nine years old and fell in love with Mozart. The part of Mozart's Requiem called "Lacyrmosa" [sic] is my favorite piece of music ever. I always wished we could cover it, but with programming and guitars and make it cool. It's our moment to try all the things I wanted to and couldn't, so I started messing with it in Protools. Terry wrote some riffs and turned it into this awesome metal epic.”
Ok, full disclosure. I read my own words and am embarrassed to see that I describe Evanescence as having an artistic edge. I'd still say they are, or once were unique in the way I describe them, and they were in front of a new genre of metal bands with female singers like Lacuna Coil. The problem is, Evanescence is mood music. It's not talent driven, theory driven, technique driven, or even musically driven. It's mood driven. It is all about an atmosphere of sound and how that makes you feel. That's ok if that is your thing, but that is why I now feel I was so incredibly wrong to say that "it makes perfect sense" that they would try something so (I believe the word I used was) "bold."
Bold? Meh. Look, what they did was take a composer's work, the work of a man who wrote the score for an entire orchestra and choir, written as a funeral Mass, and treat it like they were asked to write the soundtrack for the next installment of the Twilight Series. And.....they did it with ProTools. Listen to the true work, then the new and "cool" version. The Evanescence contribution does not enhance the original score, Mozart's work caries the entire thing, and all that is added are lyrics about teenage love angst, a 2 note riff, and a single note baseline.
W.A. Mozart Requiem Lacrimosa
Evanescence version
But the single best comment came from commenter "Mike" who said:
"Let’s think about a few popular “cover songs” that were done between different “genres” of music (though none really quite as broad a difference as classical to heavy metal)… Joey Ramone did an interesting cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”, Metallica covered Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page”, Jimi Hendrix covered Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”, Sublime did a very loose cover of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” in the song “Doin’ Time”, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers did a classic cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground.” I know what my answer is to my next question, but can you possibly imagine (when asked about covering these songs) any of these artists saying that they were trying to make these classic songs “cool”??? I would be SHOCKED to hear that. Rather, I would expect each of these artists to say (with the exception of the deceased Jimi Hendrix and Bradley Nowell from Sublime) that they covered these songs as an homage to musicians who were greater than they are. Perhaps I am reading too much into the “make it cool” comment, but to me that is very telling.
I like covers and I like crossing “genre borders”, I just prefer that it occurs out of respect for those who came before, not because the “artist” wants to make it “cool.” I also prefer when talented people cover music of other talented people… not taking a terrific piece and turning it into a “musical Hindenberg.”"
Soooo.....now that we can safely say that this attempt was a failure and also thank Evanescence for making it even more difficult for the next composer who legitimately wants to take a stab at this, we will seque into part 3 and try to explore if a path out of the wilderness can ever be forged. Check back soon!
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