The pop side of the classic: Madness, “Hall of the Mountain King”
2005 Madness – In the Hall of the Mountain King
Ska is certainly the furthest thing from classical music, not even having the epic character of certain heavy metal music, paradoxically closer to the great works of the past. The English Madness are among the few ska (or reggae, of which ska is a variant) artists to have adapted the classic songs to the Jamaican-derived upbeat rhythm.
This In the Hall of the Mountain Kingan adaptation of Grieg’s famous theme, is the second encounter between the band and classical music after that Swan Lake – that is, “Swan Lake” by Tchaikovsky – recorded for their 1979 debut album.
To return to the scene of the crime, Madness waited 26 years, in fact their arrangement of Grieg’s famous page was recorded for the album The Dangermen Sessions Volume Onereleased in 2005, an album composed of covers born almost as a joke: before recording the album, in fact, the band held a series of low-profile concerts under the pseudonym Dangermen, in which they mainly performed covers that they played during the beginning of their career, when they were still called Invaders.
In the Hall of the Mountain King However, in the end, it remained outside the album’s tracklist and was included in 2012 Forever Young: The Ska Collectiona compilation that collects, in addition to their successes, also some B-sides of the singles and two unreleased songs, one of which is their personal reworking of Grieg’s song. Madness’s version is as usual technically impeccable, with some tasty sax interventions by Lee “Kix” Thompson, and after a moderate first part, in the typical style of the band, it progressively accelerates the pace until the frenetic finale, supported by Mike “Mr B” Barson’s piano.
A piece that is difficult to listen to without getting caught up in the rhythm. Grieg, who was a student who was intolerant of rules and felt technique as a limitation to his imagination, would probably have liked it.
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This sheet is taken from the book “Rock Me Amadeus. The pop side of classical music, the classic heart of rock. When Classical meets Pop, Rock and Disco” by Davide Pezzi (Youcanprint, 252 pages, €19.50, available here) courtesy of the author.
What happens when Mozart, Bach or Beethoven come down from the podium of great music and find themselves among electric guitars, synthesizers and disco lights? “Rock Me Amadeus” explores the fascinating (and sometimes surprising) universe of pop, rock and disco reinterpretations of famous classical songs.
The book offers a journey that is both historical and curious, spanning decades of experiments, contaminations and revisitations. There is no shortage of pages dedicated to the less successful versions – testimonies of an era and a taste – which help to understand even better the inexhaustible strength of classical music as a source of inspiration.
With an accessible and documented style, the author guides the reader through anecdotes, records, musicians and arrangements, showing how the dialogue between apparently distant musical worlds can generate new forms of creativity, between genius and (sometimes) naive clumsiness.
