Artistic Music in Pop Culture: A Nostalgic and Intertextual Analysis of Gentle Giant’s Progressive Rock Song “On Reflection” from the Album Free Hand

Abstract

Gentle Giant were a British rock band continually within and around the margins of progressive rock; active in the 1970s, they released 11 studio albums. This text presents an analysis and interpretation of one of the band’s most interesting songs, “On Reflection,” from the group’s seventh album, Free Hand (1975). After an analysis of the material, structures and significant figures that make up its form, it is examined in the context of references to tradition, as well as of features characteristic of the progressive rock style. This analytical process leads to interesting intertextual conclusions. In the stylistic wit in “On Reflection”, which undeniably demonstrates the technical proficiency and musical erudition of 20th-century rock musicians, the audience hears the English musical tradition itself (through quasi-quotations of stylistic and conventional artefacts), which is put on a pedestal as a distinctly intertextual form, as a form of pastiche.