on contrasts

[acroyear]

Leonard Bernstein: From Mahler to the Beatles:

There is a similar effect [to Mahler's trio movement of the 6th symphony] that we find in the appearance of a children’s song (Yellow Submarine) on Revolver. In itself it’s a glorious sing-along, a beautiful pastiche of the kind of nonsense verse that Edward Lear wrote for children, with the improbable craft updated from a sieve to a submarine. But in the context of an album marked with so much ‘bitter sweet cynicism’ it sets off different resonances.

This was reinforced when the Beatles came to release a single from the album, and chose Eleanor Rigby, a song of hopeless love, loneliness, old age and death (’no one was saved…’), backed with Yellow Submarine, a song of youth, togetherness and hope (’we all live…’). Here are the two polarities between which life is lived.