Relationship between Modernism and jazz
Michael
do you think he and the others making comments in the series should
have dealt with the influence of Modernism (e.g. Debussy, Stravinsky,
the Slonimsky book, the 12-tone composers) on jazz and the influence
of jazz on Modernist composers (e.g. Gershwin - yes, I think he was a
Modernist in "Porgy and Bess" - Weill, Debussy, Ravel, Milhaud,
Stravinsky)? How would any of you - RMMJers as well as RMCCers - deal
with this question yourself? For example, which Modernist composers do
you think Ornette Coleman was most influenced by, and did he and his
quartet influence other Modernist composers in turn? I missed most of
today's show, but I understand from a friend that the influence of
Modernism on jazz musicians has never been acknowledged in the entire
series, and the "free jazz" of Coleman was treated as if it were an
entirely original idea that sprang forth virtually out of thin air.
And yet it sounds like stuff Modernist composers were writing before
and during the 60s. By the way, did any of you see the Monday New York
Times review of a "composer portraits" concert at Columbia University
which featured works by Coleman?
Michael
To reply by email, please eliminate "NOSPAM" from my address. Personal messages only!
David Smey
>you think Ornette Coleman was most influenced by, and did he and his
>quartet influence other Modernist composers in turn?
<snip>
>and the "free jazz" of Coleman was treated as if it were an
>entirely original idea that sprang forth virtually out of thin air.
In a way, there are two (or more) Ornettes. If you are talking about the
Ornette of The Shape of Jazz to Come (as I understand it, the first
Ornette), then you are talking about "tunes" in the jazz combo format that
are played without changes. From what I remember from the Litwiler bio,
there is no known inspiration from "Classical" composers. The results do
not sound anything like Cage or Stockhausen or anything being composed in
the 60s and there is no reason to believe that he couldn't have developed it
from his experience in R & B bands and his understanding of bebop. (hardly
"out of thin air" but within a different tradition.)
Then there's the later, more "experimental" Ornette, of Free Jazz, Skies of
America, etc. Biographically, we know that he was courted by the classical
establishment (Gunther Schuller? a residency at Tanglewood) and he is
probably being "turned on" to contemporary trends. Then, it's a somewhat
interesting question, but only somewhat. After all, who prefers FJ to
SOJTC? The first Ornette, to me, is much more profound. I guess I've got
my own streak of Marsalishness.
Michael
<ds...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In a way, there are two (or more) Ornettes. If you are talking about the
>Ornette of The Shape of Jazz to Come (as I understand it, the first
>Ornette), then you are talking about "tunes" in the jazz combo format that
>are played without changes.
I'm no expert on Ornette Coleman, but I agree with you. I do like some
of his tunes.
> From what I remember from the Litwiler bio,
>there is no known inspiration from "Classical" composers. The results do
>not sound anything like Cage or Stockhausen or anything being composed in
>the 60s and there is no reason to believe that he couldn't have developed it
>from his experience in R & B bands and his understanding of bebop. (hardly
>"out of thin air" but within a different tradition.)
I agree, though it should be pointed out just how much debt the bebop
musicians owe to the Slonimsky treatise on chords, which to my
knowledge has never been mentioned in the Burns series. I also have it
on personal communication from my parents, who knew Stefan Wolpe well
and were also acquainted with Edgard Varese and other members of the
classical avant garde in the late 40s and 50s that the "Wolpe crowd"
were great fans of bebop. Since they knew the bebop musicians, could
the bebop musicians have also known their work? Maybe I should ask it
the other way: Is it likely that none of them knew the Modernists'
work, and that their use of dissonance and disjunct melodic lines owed
nothing to Modernist procedures? Don't misunderstand me: I don't mean
to take anything away from Bird, Dizzy, and Art Tatum, all of whom I
think were brilliant and original, but I do think that they were
operating within a music world that included more than jazz alone.
>Then there's the later, more "experimental" Ornette, of Free Jazz, Skies of
>America, etc. Biographically, we know that he was courted by the classical
>establishment (Gunther Schuller? a residency at Tanglewood) and he is
>probably being "turned on" to contemporary trends. Then, it's a somewhat
>interesting question, but only somewhat. After all, who prefers FJ to
>SOJTC? The first Ornette, to me, is much more profound. I guess I've got
>my own streak of Marsalishness.
I will state for the record that I hated the free jazz they played in
the last few minutes of the episode on PBS yesterday. To me, the
elderly writer who said that art has to be about form and cannot yield
to entropy had it right. But this is not conservatism on my part. I've
heard equally dissonant music by Iannis Xenakis and liked it because
it had an orderly shape and the choice of textures was aforethought
and made sense to me. My ears told me that, whatever Coleman's Quartet
said they were doing, they might as well have been playing any old
thing any old time, and at great length.
I want to thank those who have commented so far for their interesting
remarks.
Steve Smith
> I agree, though it should be pointed out just how much debt the bebop
> musicians owe to the Slonimsky treatise on chords, which to my
> knowledge has never been mentioned in the Burns series.
Dwelling overlong on such things as this - as correct as we might know them to be -
would not serve Burns' social-historical purposes. Burns is not out to illuminate the
music itself, which is partially why he stopped short of the avant-garde and the
present. He's examining the music's role in the social fabric of American history
during a particular time, with a particular emphasis on African-American lineage and
accomplishment and on race relations. There have been a few shout-outs along the way to
unignorable confluences of art music and jazz (which he clearly defines for the most
part as pop music), such as James Reese Europe and George Gershwin. Even here some of
the facts are wrong - Burns states that there was no improvisation in the Paul Whiteman
Aeolian Hall concert at which 'Rhapsody in Blue' was premiered, but I'd thought it
common knowledge that Gershwin himself improvised often and well.
To address your further point regarding whether the boppers knew the modern music of
Wolpe et al, the answer is that yes, at least some of them did. Charlie Parker was a
Stravinsky fanatic whose greatest wish was to collaborate with Varese. I believe he'd
gone so far as trying to make contact before he died. Sadly, the closest the industry
would allow him to get to an orchestra was his "with strings" recordings. But here,
too, I think you can't really expect this kind of illumination from Burns. It would
dilute his message and lose the audience's attention. The closest we'll see is Brubeck
citing his studies with Milhaud, I'll guess.
> I will state for the record that I hated the free jazz they played in
> the last few minutes of the episode on PBS yesterday. To me, the
> elderly writer who said that art has to be about form and cannot yield
> to entropy had it right.
You're entitled to your opinion of the music. The "elderly writer" in question was jazz
scholar Albert Murray, who is notable for a great many things, but first and foremost in
this context for lending to Marsalis virtually every opinion he expresses, either
directly or via Stanley Crouch.
> I've
> heard equally dissonant music by Iannis Xenakis and liked it because
> it had an orderly shape and the choice of textures was aforethought
> and made sense to me. My ears told me that, whatever Coleman's Quartet
> said they were doing, they might as well have been playing any old
> thing any old time, and at great length.
Would you have felt the same about the cited Xenakis example if you'd only heard a few
minutes of it, with voiceovers? I'd bet not. This is the same argument I had in a jazz
course I took back in college, which was based on the music contained in the Smithsonian
Collection of Historic Jazz. This, too, included only a fraction of the lengthy piece
"Free Jazz," and earned titters and dismissal from the class, instructor included. I
argued then, and argue now, that like any piece of comparable complexity and length,
only by giving it the benefit of a complete listening can one actually follow the logic
and structure inherent in the piece. It, too, has an orderly shape, and the choice of
textures is exactly analogous to the choice of musicians with whom Coleman chose to
record the piece. Yes, it allows considerable freedom. Yes, the players play on top of
one another. Yes, it can be chaotic. But it's also ordered and respectful and
ultimately quite beautiful, if not as much so as Coleman's early compositions. Your
interpretation of the piece's mandate is mistaken, but it's understandable given what
you had to work with as supplied by Burns.
That said, you may very well still dislike it if you listen to the whole thing. But
don't think for a moment that the little snippet you heard last night was indicative of
anything at all. It was a set-up, and Murray was allowed to deliver the death blow.
As for modernism in general, tune in tomorrow, when Burns dismisses everything that
happened between 1964 (Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme') and Dexter Gordon's return to the
U.S. in the late '70s, ushering in a return to orderly values and the ascent of
Marsalis. And don't miss the slam on fellow iconoclast Cecil Taylor, who's gonna get
bitchslapped worse than Coleman did.
Steve Smith
ssmi...@sprynet.com
Michael
wrote:
>Michael wrote:
>
>> I agree, though it should be pointed out just how much debt the bebop
>> musicians owe to the Slonimsky treatise on chords, which to my
>> knowledge has never been mentioned in the Burns series.
>
>Dwelling overlong on such things as this - as correct as we might know them to be -
>would not serve Burns' social-historical purposes.
[snip]
I take your point, and thank you for your comments, which were
interesting..
[snip]
>> I've
>> heard equally dissonant music by Iannis Xenakis and liked it because
>> it had an orderly shape and the choice of textures was aforethought
>> and made sense to me. My ears told me that, whatever Coleman's Quartet
>> said they were doing, they might as well have been playing any old
>> thing any old time, and at great length.
>
>Would you have felt the same about the cited Xenakis example if you'd only heard a few
>minutes of it, with voiceovers? I'd bet not.
I admit that you have a point here. However, I wasn't listening
primarily to the voiceovers - remember, I'm a musician, and the music
is much more interesting to me than whatever someone is saying while
it's playing. Plus, I don't care what anyone says if it disagrees with
what my ears are telling me. Still, I do take your point. Based on
what I heard, the idea of listening to 2 sides of an LP of that is a
vision of torture, but there's no way I can absolutely assert that if
I listened to a longer stretch of it, I couldn't get beyond the
initial ugliness. When I listened to Xenakis, my first impression was
that it was loud, very dissonant, and very in-your-face, but as I
listened longer, the order became apparent, and I liked several of the
pieces I heard on an all-Xenakis concert a few years ago. Allow me my
very negative reaction to the excerpts of Coleman's free jazz that I
heard, though.
>As for modernism in general, tune in tomorrow, when Burns dismisses everything that
>happened between 1964 (Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme') and Dexter Gordon's return to the
>U.S. in the late '70s, ushering in a return to orderly values and the ascent of
>Marsalis.
[snip]
[chuckle]
Victor Magnani
Thanks!
Victor
Steve Smith wrote:
> To address your further point regarding whether the boppers knew the modern music of
> Wolpe et al, the answer is that yes, at least some of them did. Charlie Parker was a
> Stravinsky fanatic whose greatest wish was to collaborate with Varese. I believe he'd
> gone so far as trying to make contact before he died. Sadly, the closest the industry
> would allow him to get to an orchestra was his "with strings" recordings. But here,
> too, I think you can't really expect this kind of illumination from Burns. It would
> dilute his message and lose the audience's attention. The closest we'll see is Brubeck
> citing his studies with Milhaud, I'll guess.
>
> > I will state for the record that I hated the free jazz they played in
> > the last few minutes of the episode on PBS yesterday. To me, the
> > elderly writer who said that art has to be about form and cannot yield
> > to entropy had it right.
>
> You're entitled to your opinion of the music. The "elderly writer" in question was jazz
> scholar Albert Murray, who is notable for a great many things, but first and foremost in
> this context for lending to Marsalis virtually every opinion he expresses, either
> directly or via Stanley Crouch.
>
Tom Walls
says...
snip
>
>Then there's the later, more "experimental" Ornette, of Free Jazz, Skies of
>America, etc. Biographically, we know that he was courted by the classical
>establishment (Gunther Schuller? a residency at Tanglewood) and he is
>probably being "turned on" to contemporary trends.
At this point Ornette actually studied composition "somewhere" with "someone".
Then, it's a somewhat
>interesting question, but only somewhat. After all, who prefers FJ to
>SOJTC? The first Ornette, to me, is much more profound.
I prefer earlier Ornette, but I wouldn't underestimate his "harmolodic" music.
There's definitely something there whether it consistently rings my bell or
not.
I guess I've got
>my own streak of Marsalishness.
>
Hush your mouth! :<)
--
Tom Walls
the guy at the Temple of Zeus
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/zeus/
____________________________________________________________________
the rmb troll faq is at http://liquid2k.net/rmbtroll. spread the word!
Jeff Beer
least not at the outset. Although one of his Prime Time
compositions seems to quote the opening lick to Le Sacre du Printemp.
As has been mentioned, Slonimsky was popular with jazz musicians after it
was discovered Trane used it. I recall reading something about Woody Shaw
liking a lot of 20th centuray classical composers (later than Stavinsky &
Bartok) and while researching Messiaen I discovered an interesting thing
that if you took some of his so-called modes of limited tranposition and
made exercises where you would build intererval sequences of perfect 4ths
and mixed them with chromatic passing tones, you could get lines which
sounded like Woody. One mode in particular consists of three augmented
chords seperated by half steps. You might look at it as an augmented triad
with the upper leading tone and lower leading tone on each note. You can
get a lot of the patterns I mentioned from that mode, along with a
minor-major and an augmented chord with a maj 7.
I don't know if this is how Woody came up with that, probably not, but it
was an interesting thing to discover.
Jeff
Marc Sabatella
> >> I agree, though it should be pointed out just how much debt the bebop
> >> musicians owe to the Slonimsky treatise on chords, which to my
> >> knowledge has never been mentioned in the Burns series.
Not that this counts, but I seem to recall a shot of Coltrane pouring over a
book that I assumed was the Slonimsky's scale book. Really, he was the only
one popularly known to have studied Slonimsky; everyone else studied
Coltrane and got it indirectly. In any case, this was considerably after
the development of bebop. One reason they may have chosen to ignore it is
that they also chose to ignore the music Coltrane played that would have
been most obviously influenced by it - the music of the "Giant Steps" era.
Relating to the original question, I agree there are similarities in
approaches, some intentional, some perhaps otherwise. I think a large
amount of "free jazz" would have happened as it did without modernism in
classical music, but we probably would not have had, for example, an Anthony
Braxton.
> >>My ears told me that, whatever Coleman's Quartet
> >> said they were doing, they might as well have been playing any old
> >> thing any old time, and at great length.
> >
> >Would you have felt the same about the cited Xenakis example if you'd
only heard a few
> >minutes of it, with voiceovers? I'd bet not.
>
> I admit that you have a point here. However, I wasn't listening
> primarily to the voiceovers - remember, I'm a musician, and the music
> is much more interesting to me than whatever someone is saying while
> it's playing.
Understood, but still, you were only getting isolated snippets of the music,
which were generally - and this might not have obvious - edited. Even in
the Charlie Parker segments, when they played his groundbreaking Ko-Ko, they
didn't just play the tune through; they spliced together a version of it
that featured his best phrases. Very weird. In the case of "Free Jazz",
they chose the most chaotic parts and spliced them together randomly.
Imagine someone trying to tell you what the Beatles sounded like by splicing
together the final orchestra crescendo from "A Day In The Life", a
guitar-heavy passage from "Helter Skelter", and the scream at the end of the
bridge of "Twist And Shout".
That said, it cannot be denied that "Free Jazz" is one of Coleman's most
chaotic albums. To be honest, I too find it rather unpleasantly for the
most part, but there is considerably more order than would one might have
concluded from what they played. I believe they chose this piece - and
their out-of-context montage of it - intentionally, to produce exactly the
reaction they got from you (agreeing with Murray's dismissal of one of the
great musical innovators of the last half century). I understand totally
how what they presented would lead one to conclude that; I just hope you
understand how they produced this conclusion in their choice of what they
played. If you sat down and actually listened to one of Coleman's albums
other than "Free Jazz", you'd probably wonder what the controversy was even
about; it is ordered almost exactly like any other jazz of the time, just
more atonal.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
Check out my latest CD, "Falling Grace"
Also "A Jazz Improvisation Primer", Sounds, Scores, & More:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
Michael
<ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote:
Thanks for a very informative post.
>Not that this counts, but I seem to recall a shot of Coltrane pouring over a
>book that I assumed was the Slonimsky's scale book. Really, he was the only
>one popularly known to have studied Slonimsky; everyone else studied
>Coltrane and got it indirectly. In any case, this was considerably after
>the development of bebop. One reason they may have chosen to ignore it is
>that they also chose to ignore the music Coltrane played that would have
>been most obviously influenced by it - the music of the "Giant Steps" era.
I was listening to the Giant Steps album last week - repeatedly. It is
a great album; probably one of the best jazz albums I've ever heard. I
borrowed it from a friend (a flute student of mine, actually). I
intend to buy it as soon as possible.
So where do you figure the bebop trailblazers got the ideas for their
harmonies from?
>Relating to the original question, I agree there are similarities in
>approaches, some intentional, some perhaps otherwise. I think a large
>amount of "free jazz" would have happened as it did without modernism in
>classical music, but we probably would not have had, for example, an Anthony
>Braxton.
Is it really possible to consider jazz outside the context of all the
other things that were going on in the U.S. at the same time, and
being done specifically by musicians and artists who were closely
associated with the avant garde movements in jazz? As much as the
Burns series played down the relationship between jazz and any
"non-black" art form - except in order to hypocritically slam Cecil
Taylor as, essentially "too classical," by contrast with the great
classical trumpet player, Wynton Marsalis, who "rescued" jazz from the
white people who had been paying attention to Louis Armstrong, as we
were told tonight - we were told who went to the Five Spot regularly.
>> I admit that you have a point here. However, I wasn't listening
>> primarily to the voiceovers - remember, I'm a musician, and the music
>> is much more interesting to me than whatever someone is saying while
>> it's playing.
>
>Understood, but still, you were only getting isolated snippets of the music,
>which were generally - and this might not have obvious - edited.
That was not obvious!
> Even in
>the Charlie Parker segments, when they played his groundbreaking Ko-Ko, they
>didn't just play the tune through; they spliced together a version of it
>that featured his best phrases.
I was aware of this because I know the recording.
> Very weird.
Yep. And they repeated Parker's solo instead of letting us hear Dizzy
solo on the changes.
> In the case of "Free Jazz",
>they chose the most chaotic parts and spliced them together randomly.
>Imagine someone trying to tell you what the Beatles sounded like by splicing
>together the final orchestra crescendo from "A Day In The Life", a
>guitar-heavy passage from "Helter Skelter", and the scream at the end of the
>bridge of "Twist And Shout".
I understand perfectly. Thanks very much for bringing this to my
attention.
>That said, it cannot be denied that "Free Jazz" is one of Coleman's most
>chaotic albums. To be honest, I too find it rather unpleasantly for the
>most part, but there is considerably more order than would one might have
>concluded from what they played. I believe they chose this piece - and
>their out-of-context montage of it - intentionally, to produce exactly the
>reaction they got from you (agreeing with Murray's dismissal of one of the
>great musical innovators of the last half century).
[snip]
You've made your point well. Thank you.
Michael
wrote:
>I don't really hear Ornette as being influenced by anybody classical. At
>least not at the outset. Although one of his Prime Time
>compositions seems to quote the opening lick to Le Sacre du Printemp.
Proving that he knew the music.
Thanks for the remark about Woody Shaw. That mode sounds nice, and I
will work on it.
Michael
wrote:
[snip]
>As for modernism in general, tune in tomorrow, when Burns dismisses everything that
>happened between 1964 (Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme') and Dexter Gordon's return to the
>U.S. in the late '70s, ushering in a return to orderly values and the ascent of
>Marsalis. And don't miss the slam on fellow iconoclast Cecil Taylor, who's gonna get
>bitchslapped worse than Coleman did.
Every one of these things happened. (How did you know in advance?) And
I found the excerpts of Cecil Taylor - hypocritically dissed as
more-or-less "too classical," as compared to the great classical
musician (though we are told nothing about this), Wynton Marsalis -
interesting and worth listening to at greater length, in context.
I still doubt that I'd like Ornette Coleman's free jazz more if I
listened to more of it, but I do take Marc Sabatella's remarks about
how the producers butchered the music to heart.
Vincent Kargatis/Anne Larson
"Michael" <panN...@musician.org> wrote in message
news:3a794f91...@news.erols.com...
> I still doubt that I'd like Ornette Coleman's free jazz more if I
> listened to more of it
Please note that it's best to capitalize/title FREE JAZZ in this context, as
it's the album title, indeed, one picked by the record label, and not
Ornette himself, afaik. "Free jazz" as a label refers to a whole genre
which, when used in contemporary terms, usually refers to the more formless,
wilder avant-garde jazz (e.g. Albert Ayler, Art Ensemble of Chicago, etc).
Though it includes some of Ornette's music, his classic Atlantic quartet
recordings (1959-61, mostly tune-based, and quite normal sounding today) are
usually not so representative of the genre as meant using the term nowadays.
FREE JAZZ is from that period, but is an anomalous work, being an octet
(double quartet) with a simple extended structure (if you've not heard the
whole thing, it consists of 7-8 sections, one for each (dominant) soloist -
though the bassists double up, I think - punctuated by short "theme" group
sections.
vince
Victor Magnani
Jeff Beer wrote:
> I don't really hear Ornette as being influenced by anybody classical. At
> least not at the outset. Although one of his Prime Time
> compositions seems to quote the opening lick to Le Sacre du Printemp.
>
totally OT, have you ever run across the Zappa tune entitled
"In-A-Gadda-Stravinsky"? The rhythm section plays the riff from Iron
Buttefly's 'Inna-Gadda_Da-Vida" (forgive my spelling) while Frank play the
bassoon opening from the "Rite of Spring". Funny juxtaposition.
Victor
Marc Sabatella
>So where do you figure the bebop trailblazers got the
> ideas for their harmonies from?
Contrary to the popular portrayal, there was nothing particular innovative
about bebop harmony. They used the same chord progressions everyone else
did - 12-bar blues and a few simple AABA forms featuring lots of basic
I-vi-ii-V-I motion.
The thing unique about the beboppers was more in their phrasing - their use
of long stream of eighth notes with unusually placed accents, even by the
standards of the syncopation that was alrsady common to jazz. I can
certainly imagine Stravinsku influencing this. And of course, they did like
to exploit the tritone, both between the 3rd and 7th of a dominant seventh
chord and the root and flatted fifth. This is something they may have first
heard in Debussy or elsewhere, but on the other hand, it doesn't really seem
to me to be that big a deal.
>Is it really possible to consider jazz outside the context
>of all the other things that were going on in the U.S.
Well, one can "consider" it in isolation, but your are of course correct
that any art is going to be affected in some way by what is going on. It's
just that I think most of the connections are more indirect than one might
otherwise suspect. For instance, Albert Ayler was able to play what he
played because he heard other jazz musicians getting away from chords, and
somewhere down the line, it was probably exposure to atonal classical music
that created a culture in which this had some chance of being accepted. But
it's not like Ayler studied Schoenberg or anything like that - although a
few did. I would think instead of these as parallel developments that
happened roughly at the same time (historically speaking, anyhow - obviously
atonal classical music came first) because social conditions and the sum
total of the musical experience up to that point was leading that way.
Modern classical music broke ground for jazz players, but few of the early
"free jazz" players had any direct experience with that music.
> I still doubt that I'd like Ornette Coleman's free jazz more if I
> listened to more of it
Me too. Frankly, I don't enjoy it that much either. But as Vincent pointed
out, please recognize that what we are discussing is "Free Jazz"
(capitalized and quoted) - the title of one anomalous album out of the
dozens Coleman has recorded. I really do think you'd appreciate much of the
rest. Certainly virtually anything else from that period. I would
recommend "The Shape Of Jazz To Come". After hearing that, I really think
you will wondering what the big deal was.
Robert Valentine
re modernism and jazz...
I personally don't think the bop harmonic innovations were all that
profound. I think
most of them could be traced back to tin-pan alley chord styling which in
turn can be
traced back to late romantic classical harmonic practice. To improvise
swinging
melodies in that harmonic framework, fast, is of course a beast of a
different color.
Similarly, though Ornette did come to most of his 'free jazz' in a sort of
vacuum
(his self-taught notion of theory is, from what I gather, fairly particular
to his way of
thinking rather than different words for the same concepts others have),
others
that came up and were playing 'free-ish' things at the time were no doubt
cognizant
of, if not the improvisation in avante-garde classical music, at least
earlier twentieth
century classical movements, the serialists in particuar. Listenning to some
of the
sixties playing of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock shows that in many ways
they were attempting to improvise in the melodic language of Schoenberg as
the boppers had improvised in the harmonic language of Mahler.
I think in some ways this was less successful and you hear much more falling
back
on 'psuedo-atonal-patterns' (diminished scale runs, Slonimskyisms) than real
freedom
with that language. I believe you can also hear this in the later 'scratch
and sniff' free
music of the Art Ensemble and players of that ilk, who seem be improvising
more from
the more spacious style of Webern or perhaps John Cage (Haiku and prepared
piano works for instance).
The real energy players, late Coltrane, Albert Ayler,... I'm not sure if you
can look
out and find a Western influence that connects very well. That seem much
more
reaching out to other spiritual musics.
But in a world of record players and airplanes, I think it would be pretty
presumptuous
to say any of these things evolved completely independently.
Bob Valentine
"Michael" <panN...@musician.org> wrote in message
news:3a77b063...@news.erols.com...
Michael
<ma...@outsideshore.com> wrote:
>Michael <panN...@musician.org> wrote:
>
>>So where do you figure the bebop trailblazers got the
>> ideas for their harmonies from?
>
>Contrary to the popular portrayal, there was nothing particular innovative
>about bebop harmony. They used the same chord progressions everyone else
>did - 12-bar blues and a few simple AABA forms featuring lots of basic
>I-vi-ii-V-I motion.
[snip]
Yeah, but with more suspended chords and added 2nds and such. I agree
with you about the phrasing, though. And there was something else:
People like Bird and Art Tatum continued a phrase based on one harmony
through the change into another harmony and started a phrase based on
a subsequent harmony "early" more often than earlier jazz musicians
had. At least that's my distinct impression.
>>Is it really possible to consider jazz outside the context
>>of all the other things that were going on in the U.S.
>
>Well, one can "consider" it in isolation, but your are of course correct
>that any art is going to be affected in some way by what is going on. It's
>just that I think most of the connections are more indirect than one might
>otherwise suspect.
[snip]
I understand. I kind of Zeitgeist.
>> I still doubt that I'd like Ornette Coleman's free jazz more if I
>> listened to more of it
>
>Me too. Frankly, I don't enjoy it that much either. But as Vincent pointed
>out, please recognize that what we are discussing is "Free Jazz"
>(capitalized and quoted) - the title of one anomalous album out of the
>dozens Coleman has recorded. I really do think you'd appreciate much of the
>rest. Certainly virtually anything else from that period. I would
>recommend "The Shape Of Jazz To Come". After hearing that, I really think
>you will wondering what the big deal was.
Thanks. I take your point, and perhaps I'll look for that album in the
library some time in the next few months.
Steve Smith
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2001 22:35:00 -0500, Steve Smith <ssmi...@sprynet.com>
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
> >As for modernism in general, tune in tomorrow, when Burns dismisses everything that
> >happened between 1964 (Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme') and Dexter Gordon's return to the
> >U.S. in the late '70s, ushering in a return to orderly values and the ascent of
> >Marsalis. And don't miss the slam on fellow iconoclast Cecil Taylor, who's gonna get
> >bitchslapped worse than Coleman did.
>
> Every one of these things happened. (How did you know in advance?)
Easy answer: I'm a music journalist, and we've been animatedly discussing this ever since
advance copies of the tapes were sent out to selected members of the press (though not to
me) last fall. I've attended panels where musicians expressed their feelings on the
subject in undisguised tones of outrage - they feel their life's work being dismissed out
of hand. And the New York Times ran several fairly extensive interviews in advance of
the airing that described much of what was to happen in the final episode - even as
regards the slam on Taylor.
The saddest part is that there is no one in contemporary music journalism who writes more
insightfully, poetically and convincingly on the subject of Cecil Taylor than Gary
Giddins, yet after allowing Branford Marsalis his nasty (and reportedly out of context)
rebuttal, it is left to Gene Lees - no expert in the field of avant-garde jazz - to
deliver the felling blow. Had Gary been allowed more time, something illuminating and
enriching might have come of it. This tells me that Cecil's treatment was absolutely
intentional.
> And
> I found the excerpts of Cecil Taylor - hypocritically dissed as
> more-or-less "too classical," as compared to the great classical
> musician (though we are told nothing about this), Wynton Marsalis -
> interesting and worth listening to at greater length, in context.
Agreed. You might want to give his 1966 Blue Note release 'Unit Structures' a try if
your curiosity has been whetted. It's reasonably mature Taylor, but still early enough
to mark the transition from his earlier standards-based approach to his later epic-length
piano perorations. It matches equal measures of rollicking jazz vamping and passages of
chamber music-like transparency (the presence of an oboist does a lot to further the
chamber music analogy, especially timbrally).
Steve Smith
ssmi...@sprynet.com