"Beautiful as the Moon – Terrible as an Army with Banners" is a 1975 song composed by Fred Frith with lyrics by Chris Cutler for the English avant-rock group Henry Cow.
A jazz interpretation of "Beautiful as the Moon" was recorded by the Michel Edelin Quintet [fr] with spoken texts by John Greaves and released on their 2019 album, Echoes of Henry Cow.
[1] "Beautiful as the Moon – Terrible as an Army with Banners" began as a composition by Frith after Henry Cow and Slapp Happy started collaborating in 1974.
[3][a] He completed the composition on a piano near the end of the Beefheart tour in the Netherlands; included in the piece was a vamp of Frith's that Henry Cow had played in their Rainbow Theatre concert in October 1973.
In the next section, the two verses beginning "Last days ...", Frith deploys a "lyrical, diatonic vocal melody" which, Piekut says, "could have been written by Weill in an alternate universe".
[6] Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell write, in Beyond and Before: Progressive Rock Since the 1960s, that the lyrics avoid "populist demagoguery" by emphasising the road to revolution and the need for "the oppressed" to recognise society's flaws.
"[19] In a review of Henry Cow's live album Concerts in All About Jazz, Brad Glanden described Krause's voice on "Beautiful as the Moon" as "majestic", "terrifying" and "so engaging" that the song's "cringeworthy lyrics ... can be forgiven".
[20] Philip Clark wrote in The Wire that the song's "stripped back instrumental texture" and its emphasis on the lyrics "planted seeds that grew into The Art Bears".