Sunday, December 22, 2002

#21 Mantovani, "Send in the Clowns"

Easy on my mind. High feathery strings -- the orchestra emotionally bounded in such a way that it can never express, never even hint at the existence of terribilita. But unlike all the fifties-sixties easy-listening I can remember hearing, there's an acoustic guitar. So I find it weird. Mantovani's sensibility is velvet draped on...well, velvet. With pearls. And wine. And pretty women with lipstick. But acoustic guitars have a certain degree of earthiness to them, not just in folk and the blues and all their pop progeny but even in classical settings thanks to the troubador connection. The guitar here has a purely subservient, even subliminal role, sure. It's barely audible. But When you pay attention, you can tell it adds some sonic detail to all the orchestral whispers and moans, and more importantly, adds to one's sense of rhythm of the track.

Now I'm not the most worldly man when it comes to easy-listening. Sure, I have my likes and my dislikes, but I don't yet have a grasp on how the sound evolved from the fifties to its final dying days. So I'm curious what that guitar is doing here. I may be completely wrong, Mantovani may have used guitars since the beginning, but it seems like a violation of the idea -- a subliminal sop to pop modernity, one generation's idea of the Good and the Beautiful being infected by another's. This subject is definitely one for further study. By me, I mean. I doubt anyone else is gonna care.

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