‘Can You Still Keep Your Balance?’: Keith Emerson's anxiety of influence, style change, and the road to prog superstardom

Abstract

Harold Bloom's theory of poetic influence has been applied to studies of Western art music, but rarely to studies of popular music. This article investigates the applicability of his theory to the music of British progressive rock keyboardist Keith Emerson. It will be argued that, while Emerson's overtly intertextual music for The Nice cannot be well illuminated with this theory, Bloom can help us explore and interpret some delicate aesthetic aspects of the important style change from The Nice to Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP). Emerson felt the anxiety of The Nice's influence upon ELP, changed his style because of it, and led the new group to prog rock superstardom. Bloom's six revisionary ratios can indeed shed light on those subtle qualities which were necessary for a progressive rock ideology to be ‘mainstreamed’ and sold as commodity – qualities that resulted from a process of ‘misreading’.

A many-headed beast: progressive rock as European meta-genre

“…The case of progressive rock demonstrates that this need not be so, that virtual communities of taste (or 'center collectivities' to use Holt's term) such as Progarchives.com can have an equally important role to play (see also Bennett 2004). Kawamoto (2005), Macan (2006), Reising (2005), Keister and Smith (2008) and Spicer (2008). 2.…”

“…1.Examples include Cutler (1991), Josephson (1992), Martin (1996), Cope (1997, 2008), Atton (2001), Moore (2001, 2005–2006), Palmer (2001), Holm-Hudson (2002a, 2003, 2008), Borthwick and Moy (2004), Kawamoto (2005), Macan (2006), Reising (2005), Keister and Smith (2008) and Spicer (2008). …”

Endless Enigma: a Musical Biography of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. By Edward Macan. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2006. 817 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-8126-9596-0

“…Blinded to these psychological implications, Macan generally fails to see any relation between biographical events and musical styles (e.g. Kawamoto 2005). Different parts of the book are not tightly knit into a larger whole.…”

“…The dismissal of the series is problematic also because it typically features ELP's 'signature' idiom of fusing Western art music styles with their own styles. Emerson in fact embeds in the twelve-tone series not only the Second Viennese School idiom and Bachian fugal style, but also subtle intertextual references to ELP's own earlier materials such as the 'Eruption' riff ('Tarkus', via the partial use of circle-of-fifth progression (Kawamoto 2006), and to the opening motive of 'Endless Enigma' (0:07-0:15) via the opening ascent by a minor sixth (not fifth, as Macan incorrectly states on p. 203). Ignoring these and many other cuttingedge techniques, Macan's analysis misrepresents ELP's music as something the one-semester music-appreciation student could fully elucidate, i.e.…”

Estruturas musicais do samba-enredo

“…Como exemplos dessa tendência estão os trabalhos deKawamoto (2005),Larson (2003),Sharvit (1986),Trowbridge (1985Trowbridge ( /1986 e Vidili (2017).…”