TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120991/1209440.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.7 KB | 82 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 89

Bring Back Eleanor Rigby


With a little help from a friend, Paul McCartney proves that he
can turn out a serious composition -- alas, too serious

By MICHAEL WALSH


    There is something about church music that attracts even
the most agnostic British composer whenever a major statement
is called for. The choristers decked out in liturgical robes,
the angelic, sexless piping of boy sopranos, the hovering
vicars, the culturally resonant majesty of the cathedral setting
-- the whole High Church atmosphere has consistently evoked a
corresponding High Seriousness in composers as disparate as
Handel, John Stainer, Elgar and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

    The latest Englishman to have a go is Paul McCartney, the
erstwhile "cute" Beatle and Wings captain, whose quasi-
autobiographical Liverpool Oratorio is soaring on the classical
charts (Angel/EMI Classics has shipped 350,000 copies of the
two-CD album worldwide). Commissioned for the 150th anniversary
of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, the
97-minute work for soloists, chorus and orchestra was first
performed in McCartney's native city last July and recently got
its U.S. premiere at New York City's Carnegie Hall.

    Since the death of Irving Berlin, McCartney is probably
the world's most famous musical illiterate. He freely admits
that his repeated attempts to learn to read music have failed,
and this is often seized on as proof that he is somehow not a
"real" musician. Yet McCartney's reason -- "The marks on the
page failed to match up to what I was hearing, so I eventually
made up the music and someone else wrote it down" -- is
perfectly valid.

    For the oratorio, the someone else was Carl Davis, an
American-born film composer and accomplished pastiche artist.
After McCartney wrote the text and invented the tunes, Davis
arranged them slickly for soprano (Kiri Te Kanawa at the
Liverpool premiere and on the recording), mezzo (Sally Burgess),
tenor (Jerry Hadley), bass (Willard White), boy soprano, chorus,
cathedral choir and full orchestra.

    The result is a big, sprawling, high-minded and honorably
intended work that never quite comes into focus. The story
concerns a Liverpool boy named Shanty (no doubt a nod to the
high percentage of Irish Liverpudlians as well as to McCartney's
own ethnic background), born during the air raids of 1942 (Part
1, War). The second, third and fourth sections (School, Crypt
and Father) detail typical adolescent angst, including the death
of Shanty's dad. In the oratorio's second half, the hero meets
Mary Dee, marries her (Wedding), impregnates her (Work), fights
with her (Crises) and finally, after a traffic accident that
almost claims her life and that of their unborn child,
reconciles with her (Peace). "So on and on the story goes/ From
day to day throughout our lives," sings Shanty in the work's
closing pages, to which Mary Dee replies, "What can we do,
that's how it grows/ I am with you/ Our love survives."

    Shanty's wedding music stands out as a luminous love song,
but overall the oratorio is rambling and generic; there is
nothing to match the economy and effect of such "classical"
McCartney tunes as Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday, and you certainly
can't dance to it. Indeed, the piece emerges as a curious cross
between Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and the Who's
Quadrophenia, but it lacks either the former's ecstatic fervor
or the latter's nose-in-the-dirt realism. One waits in vain for
the real McCartney to loosen his tie and do something a little
rude, but the composer seems overwhelmed by the cassocks and
surplices. His vital rock roots remain very much a band on the
run.