procol harum, “repent walpurgis”
from: procol harum, 1967
Named after a Burmese cat, Procol Harum has had thirty members come and go in there almost sixty years of existence. Their show from 1971 that featured the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and choir sold 500,000 copies.
The composer, Matthew Fisher, explains the meaning of this number:
Well, I don't think it means anything, really. As you may already know, I got the idea for the chord sequence from a Four Seasons record called Beggin'. Apart from the organ introduction it was a pretty co-operative effort. Rob, in particular, added a lot with his guitar playing. The Bach prelude was, I think, Gary's idea. We were thinking of doing the whole prelude as a separate piece but Gary suggested putting it in to break things up a bit.
How the title came about was that we were trying to decide what the mood of it was. I thought it was all very angst-ridden and hence suggested 'Repent'. Someone else (probably Gary or Keith) thought it evoked images of Walpurgis Night (demons and such). Eventually we decided to put the two together. (MF)
What Bach, who's Walpurgis?
The Bach piece referred to above is the Prelude No 1 in C major from JS Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues, Book I. In the 1967 album's version of Repent Walpurgis the piano plays the first eleven bars faithfully; a twelfth bar in similar style has been added to the Bach; it then warps back into the main piece with a (sort of) quotation from the opening of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1.
Walpurga was an English nun (she died in about 788 AD) who went as a missionary to Germany and became abbess of Heidenheim; she is celebrated on the first of May, which is coincidentally the date of the rites of an earlier (pagan) festival, one of the Celtic quarter-days, in fact. On the night before May Day, Walpurgisnacht, the witch-world holds its most elaborate revels particularly at The Brocken, high point of the Harz Mountains, in the presence of the Devil. (RC)
-Alan West-
“The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why”