page_title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
section_title: Composition
hierarchical_section_title: A Whiter Shade of Pale / Composition
caption_attribution_description: Photos de l'exposition "Pink Floyd Interstellar" à la Cité de la Musique (Porte de la Villette, Paris). Read the story at zdar.net. Lire le compte-rendu de l'expo sur zdar.net Hammond M-100 series Contemporary style, may be one of M-102 (Walnut) M-111 (Mahogany) M-162 (Maple)
context_page_description: "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is the debut single by the British rock band Procol Harum, released 12 May 1967. The single reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 8 June 1967 and stayed there for six weeks. Without much promotion, it reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. One of the anthems of the 1967 Summer of Love, it is one of the best selling singles in history, having sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
  With its Bach-derived instrumental melody, soulful vocals, and unusual lyrics – by the song's co-authors Gary Brooker, Keith Reid and Matthew Fisher – "A Whiter Shade of Pale" reached number 1 in many countries when released in 1967. In the years since, it has become an enduring classic. It was the most played song in the last 75 years in public places in the UK, and the United Kingdom performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited in 2004 recognised it as the most-played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years. Also in 2004, Rolling Stone placed "A Whiter Shade of Pale" 57th on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
context_section_description: The song is in moderate time in C major and is characterised by the bassline moving stepwise downwards in a repeated pattern throughout. In classical music this is known as a ground bass. The harmonic structure is identical for the organ melody, the verse and the chorus, except that the chorus finishes with a cadence. The main organ melody appears at the beginning and after each verse/chorus. But it is also heard throughout, playing variations of its theme and counterpointing the vocal line. As the chorus commences "And so it was, that later ...", the vocal and organ accompaniment begin a short crescendo, with the organist running his finger rapidly down and up the entire keyboard. The final instrumental fades out to silence – a common device in pop music of the time.
  
  The similarity between Hammond Organ line of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and J.S.Bach's Air from his Orchestral Suite No. 3 BWV1068, (the “Air on the G string”), where the sustained opening note of the main melodic line flowers into a free-flowing melody against a descending bass line, has been noted.
   
  Gary Brooker said of his composition in his interview with Uncut magazine:
  If you trace the chordal element, it does a bar or two of Bach's 'Air on a G String' before it veers off. That spark was all it took. I wasn't consciously combining rock with classical, it's just that Bach's music was in me.
  Allan Moore notes in the 2018 BBC radio series "Soul Music" that the resemblance "creates the sense of [Bach’s] music without actually quoting it." The similarity is also referred to humorously in the 1982 play The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard and in the 1991 film The Commitments. Other writers have noted similar "family resemblances" to other works by Bach: the Sinfonia which opens the cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe, BWV 156, the organ chorale Prelude "O Mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde groß" (O Man, Lament Your Sin So Great), BWV 622, from the Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book) and the Cantata Sleepers Wake, BWV140. The music also borrows ideas from "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge.
caption: The song's distinctive, Bach-inspired organ part was played on a Hammond M102.
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