Conference Report: “Come Together: Fifty Years of Abbey Road ”

• Published in: Music theory online Vol. 25; no. 4
• Main Author: Koozin, Timothy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago Society for Music Theory 01-12-2019
• Subjects: Conferences; Harpsichord music; Innovations; Interdisciplinary aspects; Keyboards; Musical instruments; Musical recordings; Popular music; Sound
• ISSN: 1067-3040; 1067-3040
• DOI: 10.30535/mto.25.4.7

Mark Spicer discussed Abbey Road as proto-progressive rock, tracing musical practices established by the Beatles that would be integral to music by progressive rock groups including Genesis, Jethro Tull, Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In analyzing Abbey Road songs, Biamonte discussed phrases that begin in successively earlier metrical positions in “Come Together,” the “double tresillo” triple groupings within duple meters in George Harrison’s “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” multiple layers of metrical dissonance in “Sun King,” meter changes in “Mean Mr. Mustard,” and tempo modulation in “The End.” Aaron Krerowicz (Ball Sate University) employed Christopher Doll’s terminology of harmonic functions in rock music, indexed to distance in predicting the tonic, to identify chords that serve multiple functions in music of the Beatles. In my own paper (Timothy Koozin, University of Houston), I employed analytical methodologies of topic theory, musical gesture, and virtual agency in an examination of keyboard playing in the Abbey Road album, showing how shifting personic environments are established in large measure through keyboard playing that evokes a range of musical topics, including 1950’s rock and roll, honky-tonk saloon piano, fantastic Moog synthesizer orchestral textures, quasi-Baroque electric harpsichord, extroverted boogie-woogie, introspective psychedelic ombra, and, thanks to Billy Preston, authentic gospel-blues Hammond organ.