That is, it's based on the piece "Chasing Sheep Is Best Left to Shepherds" from the 1982 film score for The Draughtsman's Contract by the contemporary British composer Michael Nyman. This song has the distinction of being based on classical compositions "squared," so to speak. In the interview, Neil added, "By the way, Handel's chords are fantastic, amazing." He also turned a trumpet obbligato from the original into a recurring synth line.
But Chris ended up using "Handel's 64 bars of chords," though composing a completely new melody on top of them. Neil had originally intended that he and Chris should write a new song based on only the first eight bars. This song from the album Elysium is, as Neil stated in a 2012 PSB interview for Mixmag, "based on this piece of music by Handel that I heard on the radio." The specific composition turned out to be "Eternal Source of Light Divine," the opening section of Handel's 1713 work Birthday Ode for Queen Anne. Neil has noted that the concluding chord changes of this song are taken from a portion of Metamorphosen by the German composer Richard Strauss. It comes only at the very end, but I guess that's enough to earn a place in this list. As a sidenote, it's worth observing that early in their career Chris Lowe told an interviewer that he used to imagine that the spirit of Tchaikovsky composed music through him. The "new version" of the track released on the Boys' Christmas EP incorporates a few additional melodic themes from The Nutcracker as well. They also make use of the March's chord progression. 71:II), which opens the song and pops up again from time to time. The Pet Shop Boys have noted that this song on their 2009 album Yes was written by them "with a little help from Tchaikovsky." They specifically borrowed the fanfare (slightly slowed down) from the March from The Nutcracker (Op. One of my site visitors has positively identified it as Mahler's Fifth Symphony,įamiliar to many as the evocative music used extensively in the 1971 film Death Mahleras he put it, "a few bars from the adagio of one of his symphonies."Īlthough Neil stated that he's unsure which one because he chose it "at random," Has said that the strings heard in the background of this track are based on Gustav In his mind the melody for "Liberation." This caused him to leap from the tubĪnd rush downstairs to his piano.
Neil was listening to it while taking a bath at home, when those two notes "triggered" Notes"were taken from the theme for Friar Lawrence in the ballet RomeoĪnd Juliet by the twentieth-century Ukrainian/Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Neil has noted that the first two notes of this song"just the first two (As he once put it, "You can tell he was deaf when he wrote it.") But that obviously didn't stop him from making use of its chord structure.
Chris has stated how much he dislikes Beethoven's Ninth, the "Ode to Joy" portion in particular. That the melodies are not at all the same.Ĭhord structure comes from the choral "Ode to Joy" in the fourth movement of Beethoven's Symphony Number 9 in D Minor (1824). The melody bears a passing similarity to that work, but closer comparison reveals Progression are highly reminiscent of Gymnopédie Number 1one of the Trois Gymnopédies written in 1887 by French composer Satie. "a pastiche of Erik Satie," and indeed that as well as the song's overall chord Neil describes the opening piano motif as Music playing behind the spoken verses is from Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov's The chord progression and melody of this song are derived from the well-known Canon in D by the 17th-century German composer Johann Pachelbel. Pre-lyric working title for the track was "Moonlight."
Home > PSB Lists > PSB songs based on classical compositions (and some others with "classical connections")įrom the first movement Ludwig van Beethoven's 1802 work Piano Sonata OpusĢ7 No.
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