Robert Wade, Musical Influences (September 2011) (September 01, 2011)
MUSICAL INFLUENCES
In 1957, a researcher called James Vicary claimed that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen in Fort Lee, New Jersey, had influenced people to purchase more food and drink. He asserted that, during the presentation of the movie Picnic, he had projected the words "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" on the screen for one-thirtieth of a second at five-second intervals, and that sales of Coca Cola in that particular theatre during the six-week test had increased by no less than 57.8%, while sales of popcorn had risen over the same period by 18.1%. He coined the term "subliminal advertising", and formed the Subliminal Projection Company. There were doubters. Apart from anything else, a trip to Fort Lee would have shown straight away that the small cinema could not possibly have had over 45,000 visitors through its doors in the space of six weeks, as Vicary had claimed. However, it was not until 1962 that he admitted that he had lied about the experiment and falsified the results, the story itself being a marketing ploy.
There now appears to be almost universal acceptance by experts that subliminal advertising simply does not work in the long-term. However, before Vicary's confession, so persuasive had been his supposed research, that it was banned in the USA, UK and Australia. Even after he recanted, many clearly still believed in its power. In 1974, a United Nations study concluded that "the cultural implications of subliminal indoctrination is [sic] a major threat to human rights throughout the world". In a 1973 episode of Columbo, the celebrated detective (who always had "just one more thing" to say) showed how a murderer used subliminal messaging to lure his victim to his death. In 1978, perhaps in an attempt to make life imitate art, a Wichita, Kansas TV station received special permission from the police to place a subliminal message in a report on a particularly vicious murder in an effort to try to persuade the culprit to hand himself in. Sadly, this valiant effort was met with no success whatever.
 Ozzy Osbourne, in 2010
Campaigners have suggested that subliminal messages also appear in music. In 1985, two young men attempted suicide. Their families claimed that the song Better By You, Better Than Me, by the British Rock Band, Judias Priest, had prompted the attempt, and sued the band for US$6 million. The judge said that freedom of speech protections would not apply, but that he was not convinced the hidden messages actually existed. The suit was eventually dismissed. Only a few months later, Michael Waller, the son of a Georgia minister, shot himself in the head whilst supposedly listening to Ozzie Osbourne's song Suicide Solution. In fact, he had only been listening to the album of which that was the title; perhaps oddly (or perhaps not, given the zany personality of the pop singer concerned), the actual song Suicide Solution was not on the album at all! That action was also dismissed, but the implication of the judge's ruling was that, if the song had been there, the judgment might have gone the other way.
Of course, we are well used to subliminal music. We experience its pull on our emotions every time we watch a film or switch on the television. What would the film Psycho be without that terrifying music to accompany the scene in which Norman Bates conducts his/her frenzied knife attack in the shower? When we hear the haunting strains of My Heart Will Go On, we experience again the appalling sadness and regret that accompany the sight of the HMS Titanic sailing to its fatal appointment with an iceberg. Advertising agents are well aware of the emotive effects of music, of course. The web-site www.bittersuiteband.com has a staggering alphabetical list of musical items (the letter A alone has almost 150 entries) which have been used in TV Commercials. Did you know that the chirpy little song used in the Lloyds TSB adverts is from a ballet called The Wild Swans ? No, neither did I until I had to look it up for the purposes of this article. Yet I suppose I must have heard the tune over a hundred times now, so that it has become inseperably connected in my mind with that bank. Research in 2010 showed that it was the third most performed music in UK television advertising. (In case you're wondering, Light and Day/Reach for the Sun by the Polyphonic Spree, adopted by the Supermarket chain Sainsbury's, was number one).
Of the classical composers, Verdi has his fair share of entries, as you would expect from one of his eminence. The fact this his compositions are out of copyright may help a bit, of course! The Dies Irae from his Requiem has helped to promote the new Peugeot 407 and Playstation3. Which magazine and Ragu Pasta Sauce have both benefited from the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore. His overture to La Forza Del Destino is now intextricably linked with the taste of a certain well-known Belgian lager.
 Guiseppi Verdi
Of course, it might have never happened. It would have been in the winter of 1840-41, 170 years ago, that the unthinkable almost happened. In February 1839, the young composer Guiseppe Verdi had moved to Milan from the small country town of Busetto, with his wife, Margherita, and their little son, Icilio. A daughter, Virgina, had already died at the age of only 16 months. Verdi's first opera at La Scala, Oberto, Conte di Bonifacio, was not a wild success, but good enough for him to be entrusted, by the impressario Bartolomeo Merelli, with a contract for two more works. However, Icilio died a month before the opening night of Oberto, and, while Verdi was still working on his second opera, his beloved Margherita also died. Verdi was devastated by the loss of his family. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Un Giorno Di Regno, which was supposed to be a comedy, was a total failure.
Reeling from this string of misfortunes, Verdi met with Merelli and made the momentous announcement that he was going to give up musical composition completely and move back to Busetto. Fortunately for Verdi, and for musical posterity, Merelli wouldn't hear of it. He thrust into Verdi's hands the libretto for Nabucco, which tells of the captivity of the Jewish people by the Assyrian King Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th Century BC. This libretto had already been rejected by one composer. Merelli demanded that Verdi should at least look at it.
Verdi later wrote that he returned home and threw the book onto his table, where it fell open at the words Va Pensiero, Sull'ali Dorate (Fly, thoughts, on golden wings) - the opening of what we now know as possibly the most famous of all operatic songs, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves. According to Verdi, because it was a paraphrase of part of the Bible (Psalm 137), it caught his attention. He read further before going to bed, still determined to abandon the world of opera, but found that he could not sleep, for the words of the libretto were going round his head. By the morning, he had changed his mind completely, and, over the following weeks, as note succeeded note, both the opera and his life were gradually reintegrated.
 1908 poster for Verdi's Aïda, performed by the Hippodrome Opera Company
Legend has it that, during rehearsals, workers on the stage at La Scala spontaneously put down their tools and applauded the music. Nabucco was a succès fou, and the first woman to sing the rôle of the anti-heroine, Abigail, became Verdi's mistress and, eventually, his wife. The rest, as they say, is history. It may seem almost incidental to say that Verdi's operas also served as a focal point for the development of the Italian national identity, which had been submerged by that of Austria for so long. The slogan Viva Verdi was reputed to be a secret call for Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy). Verdi died in 1901, at the age of 87. His death was observed as that of a national hero, and in excess of 200,000 people lined the streets when his body was carried to burial, and, it is said, spontaneously burst into the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves. His music is internationally famous. Most people would recognise the Grand March from Aïda, or hum along with the malevolent and lustful Duke of Mantua in the aria La Donna e Mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto - in fact, the tune has even been hijacked by Scottish football supporters. The final benediction must have been the scene in the 1990 film Pretty Woman when Richard Gere transports Julia Roberts to San Francisco for a performance of La Traviata.
Nabucco contains the music of a lost soul. Verdi wrote that he began his composition with Va Pensero, the song of the suffering Hebrews, tormented by regret and longing for what is past, and replete with repentence. We have no way of knowing which part he composed next, nor the emotions to which he was prey. But my guess would be that he kept the final scene to last, for nothing else would explain the glory and majesty of the music in which he relates the conversion of Nabucco from the worship of Baal. For even as the King of Assyria was telling the rejoicing Israelites to return to their homeland, to worship their God, Verdi must have heard a voice in his head, instructing him, after all his own sufferings, to return to his metaphorical homeland, Opera, and never forsake it. Perhaps it was the voice of Bartolomeo Merelli, to whom Italian Opera - and, indeed, the whole musical world - must owe an incalculable debt of gratitude. Not to mention the manufacturers of Stella Artois.
Robert Hilary Wade
Associate Solicitor with Keith Evans & Co, Solicitors
Tiverton Chambers
Lion Street
Abergavenny
rob.wade@keith-evans.co.uk
01873 852 239
1 September 2011
Also by Robert Wade:
"Gloom or Bust"; February 2011
"Copyright or wrong (part 2)"; August 2010
"Copyright or wrong (part 1)"; March 2010
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