Use of Classical Music Themes
Mann trained as a classical musician, and his love of classical music surfaces in references within songs. The most obvious is the use of "Jupiter" from Holst's The Planets in Masque's "Joybringer". However there are other less well-known examples:
- "Starbird" from The Roaring Silence uses a theme from Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird.
- "Questions" from The Roaring Silence uses the main theme of Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major.
- The riff in "Fat Nelly" from Nightingales and Bombers uses the opening phrase of the String Quartet No. 1 by Janáček.
- Blinded by the Light paraphrases the motif from Chopsticks by Euphemia Allen
Read more about this topic: Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Famous quotes containing the words classical, music and/or themes:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal chords.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)