Bach to basics; is it time to listen without prejudice?

For a long time, classical music has been associated with luxury, expense and the tastes of the aspirational upper middle class. From its inception, chamber music was a thing for the super-rich; a gig played at your home and an opportunity to show off.

When you think of classical music in adverts, what associations arise?

When you think of classical music in adverts, what associations arise? Luxury fashion, jewellery and perfumes? Perhaps British Airways’ longstanding use of Delibes’ Flower Duet in its sonic branding [below]? 

For the older folks, Hamlet still resonates, with Bach’s Air on a G String, as does Dvorak's From the New World in Ridley Scott’s Hovis commercial.

Above: British Airway's famous Faces spot used Delibes’ Flower Duet.

However, new research suggests that due to the lingering effects of Covid lockdowns, the continuing impacts of streaming and 'the Bridgerton effect' (which highlights the importance of agility and responsiveness in ad strategy, emphasising the need to stay attuned to cultural phenomena and consumer interests, like a reported 200% uplift in stringed quartet at millennials weddings), the balance of listenership has shifted. In the last five years new and younger audiences are now outnumbering the traditional core audience for classical music.

What happens if we consider classical music in the same way we might think about iconic pop tracks?

So, what happens if, as advertising professionals, we consider classical music in the same way we might think about iconic pop tracks? We are striving to make brilliant creative work and, simply put, the role of advertising is to sell our clients’ products. 

So, when it comes to music, what we are paying for is recognisability, isn’t it? 

Above: Due to various factors, including 'the Bridgerton effect', the balance of listenership has shifted.

Copyright creativity

According to copyright laws in the UK – and variations of this are found in many other territories – copyright expires 70 years after the death of the composer (or last remaining writer in the case of co-published works).

So, while that classic pop track you’re eyeing up for your next commercial may cost £500k for the publishing and recording rights, a piece as iconic as Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, Mozart’s Lacrimosa or Debussey’s Claire-de-Lune will cost as much as it takes to produce a new recording.

There’s a great deal of potential for creative re-interpretation.

Of course, the range here can be enormous; from an ‘in-the-box' job that's reworked using digital audio workstations, arranged by a composer and played by (increasingly impressive) digital instruments, to recording the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, with fees for 100+ musicians.

The point is, there’s a great deal of potential for creative re-interpretation, by intrepid directors and creatives, as well as budget flexibility for the needfully cautious producers.

Above: There's plenty of recognisable music to be found in the classical canon.

I'll name that tune in one

We’ve written in the past about the limitations of thinking primarily in terms of recognisability when it comes to sourcing music for ads, but nevertheless, in many cases it remains a major concern. The good news is that there’s plenty of recognisability to be found in the classical canon. Pieces like Vivaldi’s Spring, or Pachelbel’s Canon in D are so deeply ingrained in our cultural consciousness that they resonate across the broadest intersections of people and identities.

And what about Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending? This iconic bit of English pastoral music has three years of copyright left in it as Williams died in 1958, but it remains the most referenced piece of music on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs series.

The oft-assumed distinction between classical and pop music is much blurrier than you might imagine. 

Classical music was pop music, and the oft-assumed distinction between classical and pop music is much blurrier than you might imagine. In fact, many of the tropes we associate with pop music – four chords, catchy melodies, short pieces compiled into long player (album) format, music as an expression of the artist’s interior emotional world – were pioneered by classical composers in the mid-18th century, people like Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Schubert.

This pioneering work was essentially generated by the shifting material conditions of the time as Europe transitioned from feudalism to capitalism. Earlier composers like JS Bach had their wages paid by aristocratic patrons whose interest was in commissioning spectacularly complex and unearthly works that celebrated both the majesty of God and the commissioners’ own earthly (feudal) hierarchy, benevolence and impeccable taste.

Above: Lauren Laverne hosts the BBC's Desert Island Discs, for which Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending is the most requested track.

When classical went pop

Composers of Mozart’s generation, on the other hand, were the first professionals, composing music to sell to a mass audience. Howard Goodall writes, for The Guardian; 

"Mozart - unlike most composers before him – was able to make a living independent of an institution or a single aristocratic patron, but he lived or died by what the public wanted to hear... He twigged that great tunes were what people were drawn to, and that if he enticed and delighted his audience, he was more likely not only to get another commission, but also people were more likely to return to hear his works a second and third time if his tunes were memorable."

Mozart’s generation stripped back the baroque complexity of Bach and his peers, composing short pieces of around three minutes, sequenced into longer narratives and built around the tonic, dominant and subdominant chords, and a catchy melody – just like modern pop.

Mozart’s generation stripped back the baroque complexity of Bach and his peers, composing short pieces of around three minutes - just like modern pop.

Meanwhile, the growth of mass publication in this period meant that sheet music was readily available to the public, and these composers’ works could be transported into people’s homes. Beethoven would set the Romantic mould by blurring the distance between composer and music, making his pieces an expression of the artist’s inner turmoil.

Above: 1984 film Amadeus gave us the quintessential rock star, Mozart.

The 1984 film Amadeus is a biopic of Mozart from the perspective of his contemporary in Vienna, Antonio Salieri. The devout Italian composer worships Mozart from afar, viewing his genius as a sign of God’s grace. But when he meets the young composer he finds him to be irreverent, boisterous, arrogant and licentious – a quintessential rock star.

All this is to say that while the last century saw a division of classical and pop music drawn across class lines, is this distinction useful or even relevant today? What if we treated classical music as the pop music of a different time? The answer, for advertising, is a whole world of creative possibility.

What if we treated classical music as the pop music of a different time?

At GAS Music, we believe that good music choices always lead with the creative. The central question is, what makes a music placement work? What mood does the picture invoke? What tonality, texture and timbre in the music can support it? What rhythm and pulse, what energy and intensity, is suggested by the edit?

The late David Lynch and his long-time collaborator Angelo Badalamenti were masters of this kind of unsettling juxtaposition. Does the imagery invite us to foreground a catchy melody or a toe-tapping rhythm? Does it ask us for broad, impressionistic brushstrokes? An atmospheric bed to conjure a vibe, or affect?

Above: Queen's synthesis of glam and prog rock was more openly indebted to classical music than any other pop act of the last century.

Queen's classical reign

When we ask these questions, ideas about genre or lyrical themes can sometimes take a backseat. Instead, instrumentation, tonality, harmony, structure or the development of theme may come to the fore. Often, in these cases, we may find that modern pop songs will have affective counterparts in classical music.

In recent times, GAS has had the pleasure of syncing Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose, a gorgeously romantic song from the 1940s which evokes all the languid sensuality and delightful sights and scents of a rose garden. Such an iconic copyright comes with a weighty price tag, however.

We may find that modern pop songs will have affective counterparts in classical music.

In our musings on this floral effect, we found similar moods in such out-of-copyright pieces as Debussey’s Claire-de-Lune, Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, or Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. Last year, Queen’s music catalogue was bought by Sony for £1bn, making it the most expensive catalogue in history. 

But the band’s synthesis of glam and prog rock was more openly indebted to classical music than any other pop act of the last century. For the camp, bombastic drama of Bohemian Rhapsody we could just as easily look to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, of Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights.