So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas … the chief character is never on the stage.Ĭould it be a melodic theme? Or the theme of friendship generally? Some even suggest that it is the mathematical constant π because of the theme’s first 4 notes (the 3rd, 4th, 1st, 2nd notes of the scale). The Enigma I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played…. There are hints at that with his initialling the different variations (even though he talked about each of these explicitly). However, the funny thing about Elgar’s sublime late Victorian work (with its melancholic, British imperial sunset tone), is that he weaves an enigma into the whole anthology, without actually revealing what that enigma is. I’m not seeing/hearing things that aren’t there.
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Now, lest anyone thinks I’ve gone off the pseud-deep end, I’m certainly not suggesting that this album is anything like as musically complex or artful as Elgar nor does it even claim to use the variation form. For this, Elgar created a haunting, allusive theme and then does that classic compositional discipline of offering 14 variations on it, each evoking different individuals in his life. But it suddenly struck me that this album is a bit like Elgar’s Enigma Variations. I’ve had a stab at outlining what these influences are/might be – the highlighted songs seem to be about individuals, those in red explicitly so.īut before thinking about another song individually, a slightly mad idea occurred to me, one which will no doubt seem rather absurd to some.
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However, thematically it is a reminiscence – and this seems reflected in the design for the album’s cover and booklet – it is a skilful pastiche of a garage band’s amateur-hour demo tape, with notes typed up on a dodgy old typewriter. After all, isn’t there a sense in which every creative act is personal in some ways? But again, I’ve been thinking a lot about Beth’s recent post, which I pointed to in my previous post. If No Line On The Horizon was verging on an anthology of cameos (Parisian cops, middle eastern soldiers etc) then Songs of Innocence, often explicitly, is an album of formative influences: individuals, bands and places – these are the influences which (in Bono’s words in the album booklet) are “always tattooed under your skin.” It is not that they seem to have turned their backs on their musical shifts over the decades – there are moments in this album that one can hear echoes of every decade’s albums. I guess I’m fairly inured to celebrity guff and so I didn’t take that line seriously to begin with. The whole album is first journeys - first journeys geographically, spiritually, sexually.
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“Let’s try to figure out why we wanted to be in a band, the relationships around the band, our friendships, our lovers, our family. “We wanted to make a very personal album,” Bono told Rolling Stone‘s Gus Wenner the day before the press conference in an exclusive interview. So I’ve been pondering a lot on the fact that Bono has called Songs of Innocence a personal album.