Progressive Literature

The problem as I see it is one of interpretation. 

When creating a [Prog] concept album from a literary source (which practically every poster thus far has misunderstood this thread to be about) it is impossible for the [Prog] composer to translate every nuance of a 400 page novel into 60 minutes of music with perhaps 100 lines of verse in the form of lyrics. Therefore often what we get are "music inspired by..." concepts such as Music Inspired by The Snow Goose (by Camel) and Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings (by Bo Hanson and by Mostly Autumn). I tend to view these kind of albums as soundtracks to imagined films, especially the instrumental ones. Seldom do we get real narrative adaptations of these literary works into [Prog] concept albums simply because the song-suite format doesn't lend itself to linear story telling - at best the composer hires some deeply sonorous voiced actor like Richard Burton, David Hemmings or Patrick Stewart to provide a spoken narration between the toe-tapping tunes, at worse by sheer brute-force he clumsily incorporates this narrative into each song lyric with tyre-lever and sledgehammer so the final result comes over as some badly scripted comic operetta written by an angst-ridden (40 year old) teenager. More often what the [Prog] composer does is presume we all know the story (after all, that's why they choose to interpret such well known books) so he dispenses with any concept of narrative and just uses the basic chronology of the novel to hang various witty ditties upon. 

All well and good but here's the rub - unlike watching a movie adaptation of a novel, listening to any of those [Prog] concept albums will not afford you any deeper insight into the work it was inspired by or adapted from since they are simply the composers emotional interpretation conveyed as music, and they certainly are no substitute for reading the work yourself.

Now, to address your OP question, flip this around and consider re-adapting one of those adapted/inspired [Prog] concept albums back into a new piece of literature (without referencing the original work) - Could we, for example, listen to Bo Hanson's Watership Down and create a novel that even remotely resembles Richard Adams book without ever reading the original story (or seeing the later animated adaptation)? Would it even be about rabbits? Okay, silly example but I hope we can all see that recreating a narrative from purely instrumental music is completely impossible so this means for it to be even remotely achievable some semblance of the original literary novel's story-line must be retained within the lyrical content of the album. 

So... now take a [Prog] concept album that isn't based upon an existing work and attempt the same. Sure since there is no extant printed story to compare to whatever we produce is judged less harshly but since interpretation of lyrics (especially in Prog) is contentious enough on a good day that resultant story is going to be based wholly upon whatever the writer believes the songs are about and not (necessarily) what the composer and lyricist actually wrote them about. And that's the nub of the issue - [Prog] concept albums are rarely narrative. And here I believe the whole thing stands or falls flat on its arse. 

In 2013 playwright Tom Stoppard wrote a radio play called Darkside that was based upon Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon but it is neither an interpretation nor is it a adaptation, as Stoppard says: "I didn't try to make a story that was the album writ large in any way. I invented a little story in the spirit of the album, taking a cue as to what level of reality this story might be on." 

Edited by Dean - March 08 2017 at 09:38

Oh yeah, Kafka would qualify.  The dreamy, ironic, expressionistic, and bizarre agglomeration of all things  Kafka (in the right hands) would be an ideal template for a progressive rock album.