Some Medievalist Roots of Pop Music
If you lived through the '90s, you probably remember that strange-upon-reflection moment where everyone was into Gregorian Chant. It's pretty strange that a religious tradition that is more than 1000 years old, and not even that common in actual Roman catholic practice these days, was suddenly a hot topic. The album Chant, recorded by Benedictine monks, was actually recorded in the '70s. It had been reissued several times over the ensuing years, but it never made much impact, until its 1994 reissue. It peaked at #3 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart. Why was it a hit? Maybe it was better marketing, maybe it was the right confluence of cultural currents—but the success was not entirely out of the blue. Medievalisms have been a part of popular music, across many genres, for decades.
The working (and workaday) title of my dissertation is Medievalism in Popular Music since 1960. In last week's post where I tried to begin defining terms, I talk about why I start with 1960. In short, because I'm primarily dealing with rock music, which was born in 1955, and because when I started digging into the influences on some weird music I'd grown up with, I dug and dug until I arrived at the '60s. It wasn't somewhere I expected to end up. The '60s seem to be ground zero for all of the neomedieval things that have sprouted in pop culture over the past few decades. But why? Why then?
The general climate of the post-war period was futuristic. After the war, the US discovered the might and awe of the atom, and the ensuing atomic age was characterized by the hope for a nuclear energy revolution and by the excitement of early space exploration. The US, UK, and Russia developed their first rockets during the '50s and sent their first satellites into orbit near the end of the decade (1962, for the UK). As a world, we simply weren't looking backwards.
But while much of the world was daydreaming about flying cars, a small group of British medievalists were quietly working on their personal literary hobbies. This group of authors, who called themselves the Inklings, began meeting in 1929. Among their members were a few people you might have heard of, such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. T.H. White (who, in spite of having an initialed name, was not a part of the club) was also drawing on his work as a medievalist to write his Arthur myths, which began in the '30s with The Sword in the Stone. Each of these authors had his greatest publication breakthroughs in the mid to late '50s, as that's when their epics were finished and could be bundled and marketed as a complete saga. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and The Once and Future King: these are the kinds of books that children in England were growing up with, the children who would become teenagers in the '60s.
The funny thing is, all of these guys wrote sci-fi, too. Science fiction was too huge to ignore. But, needless to say, that's not what made them famous. Their medievalist fiction came at a time when perhaps people were ready for a change in perspective.
So pastoral medievalisms re-flourish in the '60s and find their way into the music of youth cultures, which, as it happens, become a cultural touchstone in their own right. If not for Led Zeppelin writing about epic battles and Middle Earth, for one example, perhaps metal bands of the '80s wouldn't have thought to wear studded gauntlets and put dragons on their album covers.
And while all of this was happening in the pop music, there were concurrent early music revivals in the classical world, starting in the late '50s. This early music revival also seeps into popular music, eventually arriving at the '90s moments of techno plainchant and the proliferation of neo-classical "heavenly voices" goth bands.
The working (and workaday) title of my dissertation is Medievalism in Popular Music since 1960. In last week's post where I tried to begin defining terms, I talk about why I start with 1960. In short, because I'm primarily dealing with rock music, which was born in 1955, and because when I started digging into the influences on some weird music I'd grown up with, I dug and dug until I arrived at the '60s. It wasn't somewhere I expected to end up. The '60s seem to be ground zero for all of the neomedieval things that have sprouted in pop culture over the past few decades. But why? Why then?
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But while much of the world was daydreaming about flying cars, a small group of British medievalists were quietly working on their personal literary hobbies. This group of authors, who called themselves the Inklings, began meeting in 1929. Among their members were a few people you might have heard of, such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. T.H. White (who, in spite of having an initialed name, was not a part of the club) was also drawing on his work as a medievalist to write his Arthur myths, which began in the '30s with The Sword in the Stone. Each of these authors had his greatest publication breakthroughs in the mid to late '50s, as that's when their epics were finished and could be bundled and marketed as a complete saga. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and The Once and Future King: these are the kinds of books that children in England were growing up with, the children who would become teenagers in the '60s.
The funny thing is, all of these guys wrote sci-fi, too. Science fiction was too huge to ignore. But, needless to say, that's not what made them famous. Their medievalist fiction came at a time when perhaps people were ready for a change in perspective.
The Lord of the Rings (LotR) was especially popular. By 1962, it had caught on in the US as a bootleg paperback. It had its official paperback printing in the US and the UK in the '60s, and it became one of the most widely read and celebrated novels of the decade. (‘80s babies such as myself came of age with the second renaissance of LotR, with the release of Peter Jackson's films. Up to the release of the first film in 2003, LotR had sold 50 million copies worldwide; in the ensuing 15 years, it has sold a further 100 million copies. Tolkien is now the 5th highest grossing late author. It is no coincidence that a wave of historical and fantasy epics have followed in the wake of the film trilogy's success, a wave that has only been strengthened by the incredible success of Game of Thrones. Dragons are hotter than ever—um, pun not intended, but fully embraced.)
But why were all of these guys writing high medievalist fantasy from the '30s to '50s? Well, the case that I'm building is that medieval studies and neomedievalisms took hold in the UK in the 19th century and never really went away, and from here they encouraged trends in other countries. Each part of the Old World obviously has its vestiges of ancient roots that persist in the present, and medieval studies also flourished in France and Germany in the 19th century—but the enduring high fantasy world staples of wizards, elves, and dwarves more or less owe their success to Tolkien, whose Middle Earth is more Anglo-Saxon than Norse. (At least, he insisted that it is. He was an Anglo-Saxon philologist, after all.)
But why were all of these guys writing high medievalist fantasy from the '30s to '50s? Well, the case that I'm building is that medieval studies and neomedievalisms took hold in the UK in the 19th century and never really went away, and from here they encouraged trends in other countries. Each part of the Old World obviously has its vestiges of ancient roots that persist in the present, and medieval studies also flourished in France and Germany in the 19th century—but the enduring high fantasy world staples of wizards, elves, and dwarves more or less owe their success to Tolkien, whose Middle Earth is more Anglo-Saxon than Norse. (At least, he insisted that it is. He was an Anglo-Saxon philologist, after all.)
This is not to say that every neomedival thing that has ever happened anywhere was inspired by English men. There is no single big bang moment, and this legacy is only one sliver of a much more larger and more complex world. However, there becomes a direct line of influence in the materials I am studying. Tolkien became a cultural touchstone in the '60s that influenced the entire decade of youth. Tolkien himself was hugely inspired by William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement, which was a quasi-Utopian movement of the late 1800s that looked back to so-called simpler and purer times before industrialization. It's this legacy of Victorian medievalism (of which Arts & Crafts is only one part) that Tolkien helps new generations in the '60s to rediscover.
So pastoral medievalisms re-flourish in the '60s and find their way into the music of youth cultures, which, as it happens, become a cultural touchstone in their own right. If not for Led Zeppelin writing about epic battles and Middle Earth, for one example, perhaps metal bands of the '80s wouldn't have thought to wear studded gauntlets and put dragons on their album covers. |
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And while all of this was happening in the pop music, there were concurrent early music revivals in the classical world, starting in the late '50s. This early music revival also seeps into popular music, eventually arriving at the '90s moments of techno plainchant and the proliferation of neo-classical "heavenly voices" goth bands.
But all of that is for future posts!
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