The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Cambridge Music Handbooks

by Allan Moore

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) represents the highpoint of the recording career of the Beatles. This is a detailed study of this album, and it demonstrates how serious discussion of popular music can be undertaken without failing either the approach or the music. Dr. Moore considers each song individually, tying his analysis to the recorded performance on disk, rather than the printed music. He focuses on the musical quality of the songs and the interpretations offered by a range of commentators. He also describes the context in which the album was written--both within the career of the group itself and within the development of popular music globally, both before and since.

Genres: Music

112 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 1997

Reviews

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extended academic study of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A sort of effort to figure out why this album became considered the greatest album of all time. I was delighted by the author's detailed study of each song, to timing, progressions, and so on but was disappointed by his overreliance on external critical work without taking too many definite stands himself. About the best we get from this book is that the reason for Sgt. Pepper's success was that it was the first significant concept album.

[Irwin Fletcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're going to read this it would probably be a good idea to get yourself a PhD in music theory. I play guitar and have an okay-ish grasp of music theory but most of this was beyond me.

Here's an excerpt from the book to give you an idea of what you may be in for: "Unusually it is Lennon's verse which, beneath the static melodic surface, suggests middleground arpeggiations of E (rather than the tonic G!), while McCartney's interpolation, beneath a mobile surface, remains focused on a small scalar motion. Example 4:14 suggests that the stasis of the melodic B is fundamental (balanced as it is between upper and lower E's), not least in its successive reharmonizations (by G, C, E, C, A, and eventually F, and ultimately even B!). The interpolation retains the B/lower E (from the verse), while the structural line falls pentatonically through A and F to E at the beginning of the vocalize. In the final verse the structural line retrieves B by way of what, in verse 1, had been notes of secondary importance"

If that makes sense to you then this may be the book you've been looking for. I still give it three stars though because I still learned some interesting things and it's not the author's fault I'm not well-read enough in music theory to understand what he's trying to tell me.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cambridge Music Handbook series usually focuses on canonical works by classical composers, but alone among popular music recordings it recognized here the greatness of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Allan F. Moore has written an overview of the record that combines the history of the recording sessions, the Beatles' place in the 1960s musical marketplace, and an analysis of each of the songs.

A major weakness of this volume is that it is only 100 pages long and most of Moore's comments are too genera. A lot has been written about Sgt. Pepper and 1960s pop music in general, and anyone wanting to read about these extramusical aspects of Sgt. Pepper can find them discussed in greater detail elsewhere.

However, the musicological commentary on each of the songs makes this volume worthwhile. Viewing the songs "Strawberry Fields" and "Penny Lane", released as a single a few months prior to Sgt. Pepper, as in the same vein as the album, he analyses them as well. To choose just a random passage from the commentary:

In the outer sections (22"-43" and from 1' 38"), this extends to a 'blue third' above G, but the melody remains static. In the central section (from 56"), the melody extends to a fourth below G. This also reverses the first section's upward tendency with the downward scale (in the brass), itself giving rise to motif 'b' in the central section (the direct reversal of the first section's melodic profile - again see Ex. 4.1). The first brass interlude approaches a structural G from below without achieving it, a process intensified in the
central section and again in the vocal version of the interlude, such that the arrival on G at 1 '38" feels exhaustively prepared, supporting the stylistic fusion mentioned above. Thus, the song neatly balances the processual and the architectural (the 12-5-12-5-12 bar layout).

If you are looking for such a detailed description of the music on this classic album, then Moore's work is where you should turn to. As a listener with an intellectual bent, Moore's careful study of the progression of each song has helped me to get more out of Sgt. Pepper.

[Chris Lockhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a brief introduction to the Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper", providing enough of look into the album and its place in popular culture for to satisfy most fans who want to get beneath the surface. For me, as a musician, the most interesting section was the Criticism, the middle-chapter, which gives a quick individual analysis of each song noting the tempo, key(s), chord progressions, rhythms, melodies, etc and how they affect the mood and interpretations. The author is careful to cite references in an informative way, which might make this a great starting point for more research.

[Tim Smolko · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best scholarly analysis of the album out there.