Arranging the Music of Radiohead for Classical Guitar Quartet

Abstract

For over two decades the music of Radiohead has delighted and intrigued listeners around the world. Their music is fascinating precisely for the ways in which it confounds our expectations, carefully treading the line between established norms and the unpredictable. Music that achieves this is deemed to be ‘salient’. Brad Osborn identifies four domains in which Radiohead reliably elicit salience in the listener: form, rhythm, timbre and harmony. Building on Osborn’s pioneering work into the analysis of Radiohead’s music, I developed ten arrangements of songs by Radiohead that sought to maintain these salient elements when arranged for the classical guitar quartet. In creating these arrangements, I designed an aesthetic framework from which to operate which outlined the goals and objectives of the arrangements, including limiting the scope and design of these arrangements. In creating these arrangements, I developed a number of novel solutions and techniques uncommon in the classical guitar repertoire. These solutions were developed in the pursuit of maintaining the salient elements of Radiohead’s music. At times, I also made use of the same compositional techniques that Radiohead frequently employ to create salience through the composition of original parts so that I might create more satisfying arrangements. This dissertation outlines the process of creating these arrangements while also undertaking a musical analysis of the songs arranged for this project in order to understand and preserve the salient elements. The discussion of this dissertation follows the structure of Osborn’s analysis and is appropriately divided into the four domains identified as evoking salience in the listener. This dissertation describes how in creating these arrangements for classical guitar quartet I was able to maintain the salient elements of Radiohead’s music, while creating arrangements that are appealing to a wide variety of listeners. This research shows the value in making arrangements of popular music for classical instruments and how in doing so we may develop our own instances of salience, subverting the commonly held notions of what is expected in classical music.