Saturday, June 18, 2011

What's Wrong With Jazz

There is a lot right with jazz, of course: a powerful range of timbres, rhythmic vitality, cool extended melodies, moods ranging from the velvety to the steely. But for me jazz has always lacked something that would enable it to generate truly great musical compositions and it will be interesting to dig into why that might be. Intuitively, I’m not deeply attracted to jazz, even though I enjoy the occasional piece. I was just listening to a couple of classic Duke Ellington numbers, “In a Sentimental Mood” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing” which are both charming pieces. But, charming though they may be, they don’t have the things that keep bringing me back to the great classical compositions.


Here is why I think so: the roots of jazz are in popular music with the limitations that implies. Jazz players take popular tunes and chord progressions and ornament them in various ways. Harmonies are extended by adding 7ths, 9ths, 11ths and 13ths, melodies are ornamented with glissandi, shorter grace notes and by sequential extension. Rhythms are extensively syncopated. Timbres are extended. ‘Blue’ notes are used to increase expression, and so on. But while some modulation might be used, as in “In a Sentimental Mood”, the basic harmonies available in popular songs are not departed from significantly. Later on, be-bop and other modern jazz styles focused on what is unique to jazz: the rhythmic intricacy and melodic complexity at the expense of harmony. As in many world musics, the greater the tendency towards melodic and rhythmic complexity, the greater the tendency there is for harmony to be reduced to an unchanging drone. For examples, see the classical Indian raga.

The problem with jazz is that, without a deep understanding of the nature of harmonic structure and what it can contribute to musical composition, it tends to revert to pre-harmonic musical forms, with, perhaps, a fossilized harmonic structure retained from jazz’s roots in popular music.

Why haven’t jazz musicians engaged with the problems and possibilities of harmony as classical composers do? I think that the answer has to do with the function of jazz music. One of the most important components of jazz is the freedom to improvise. The satisfaction of playing jazz has a lot to do with letting yourself roam, letting the mood unfold, being in the moment. These are good things, of course, but they are contrary to subtle and deep, long-range harmonic structure. Composers of successful jazz standards cannot limit the players to the extent that they can no longer be free to improvise.

Here’s another reason: the history of harmony is tightly linked with the history of counterpoint and voice-leading. Many of the most interesting aspects of harmony have to do with the relationships between voices, which is what counterpoint is. The foundation of the study of harmony for the last two hundred plus years has been the chorales by Bach, which are harmony and counterpoint in their purest form. Each voice in a chorale, soprano, alto, tenor and bass, is independent, and the relationship between them is the harmony. Jazz, coming as it does out of popular music, does not have strong independence between the voices. Typically there is a predominant melodic line, a bass line (considered part of the ‘rhythm section’) and chords filling in the textures. True, Dixieland jazz features polyphonic improvisation, but a classical musician would be tempted to call it heterophony rather than polyphony because of the improvised nature of the parts. Or, perhaps a better description would be of two melodic instruments delivering a melody in two-part harmony with a third—often the clarinet—doing a decorated obbligato above. In any case, the deeper, structural relationship between counterpoint and harmony is not present. Also, Dixieland, apart from an occasional revival, has not persisted and developed in jazz.

I think no-one would claim that the typical features of counterpoint such as imitation between the voices that would include augmentation and diminution, inversion and retrograde, not to mention invertible counterpoint—that these features have ever been present in jazz as such.

Here I come to a deeply-rooted problem with my theory, however. Modern classical musicians do not, as a rule, improvise. They spend many years training how to analyze and interpret a musical score, not how to improvise on it. So what? Well, the problem for me is that this was not always the case. Bach and Beethoven particularly were renowned for their ability to improvise and some of their written compositions, such as Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, are the fruits of an improvisation. Bach could improvise entire fugues on a given subject as we know from his famous visit to the court of Frederick the Great in 1747, when he improvised a different fugue on each of the six pianos that Frederick the Great had just purchased and placed in different salons in his court. Beethoven too was famous for his ability to improvise entire compositions. I’m not entirely sure why we no longer cultivate this ability. But I can note one difference between these forms of improvisation and that found in jazz: in both cases and in similar cases such as improvised cadenzas in piano and violin concertos the improvising artist is an individual with complete control over the harmony and counterpoint. It may seem astounding to us that Bach could improvise a fugue, but it seems he could. Though, as we see from the Musical Offering delivered to Frederick the Great some months after his visit, in order to achieve the highest standards it was necessary to spend some time at the composition desk working out details that couldn’t be realized in the heat of the moment.


Which returns us to jazz: in jazz the “heat of the moment” is the most important thing. But in classical music, the inspired moment of aesthetic delight is just one part of a musical composition with the rest being things like overall structure, counterpoint and harmony. In order to retain the freedom to improvise for each member of a jazz ensemble, harmony and counterpoint have to be sacrificed, returning us to what is essentially a more primitive kind of music-making.

Just a little side note: I regard some of the music of the Beatles as being of a very high order. Perhaps in time that body of work will be accepted as being, in some sense, ‘classical’. Why that and not jazz? The clue comes from their methods, I think. When they really started rolling, around the time of Rubber Soul and Revolver, they developed a new way of working. They used to write songs head to head in hotel rooms or wherever they were. But by Rubber Soul, they started to actually compose in the recording studio. They would come in with lyrics and chords but the arrangement and the structure of the song, especially in terms of how it would be put on tape, evolved in the studio. They went to great lengths to get exactly the right effect. Often they would use a voltage regulator to slightly slow down or speed up a tape in the recording so that when it was played back at normal speed it would sound slightly different. Usually the instrumental tracks were recorded at a higher speed so they would sound ‘fatter’ on playback, and the vocal tracks were recorded at a lower speed so they would be more ‘forward’ on playback. They used many other devices as well. The final product was a highly structured, finely tuned composition. This is, by the way, why ‘covers’ of Beatles songs are rarely successful. The recording is the composition.




What both the traditional methods of composition and the Beatles’ methods have in common is control over all aspects of a composition. One of the most important features of this control, as every young composer knows, is the ability to erase, strike out, and remove redundant and gratuitous elements (notes) that seem to be constantly creeping in. As Schoenberg once said to a student, pointing at the eraser of a pencil, “this end is more important than the other!” In jazz and related musics, this ability is not present. Sometimes a jazz performance can seem to almost entirely consist of the redundant and gratuitous. Fun, but not going to result in great music.

Incidentally, one of the few classical composers to write pieces inspired by jazz was Igor Stravinsky—the Ebony Concerto for clarinet and chamber orchestra is an example. But Stravinsky himself observed that the way jazz is performed is more interesting than the music itself.


22 comments:

  1. Hmmm...It seems like you're intent on finding in jazz exactly what you regard most highly in classical music. Jazz and Classical Music need to be taken on their own terms and embraced or rejected accordingly.

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  2. Hi David, thanks for dropping by. I was hoping for a lot of comments on this post, taking me to task for my silly opinions! I'm not so much intent on finding something in jazz, but yes, my aesthetic principles are founded in classical music. My post was a bit provocative because my thinking was that it might start a good discussion. For me, a good discussion can get at some ideas you wouldn't get to otherwise. I don't care who is right or wrong, or even what the final answer is (if any), but I am really interested in how we get there.

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  3. I sensed from your post that you are both a real music lover and an intelligent, questioning person, which is why I responded. That said, I would agree that focusing on what is wrong about something is probably not the best way to inspire an open conversation!(grin)
    Since you are not naturally drawn to jazz or improvisation, I wonder if you could perhaps understand it better by analogy. Is there some area in your life where you could see the advantage of "being in the moment" vs. planning something out to the letter? If so, perhaps it would give you some insight into the joys inherent in improvised music.

    Another thought...We both love Bach and, presumably, consider his compositions to be pinnacles of musical art. Yet Bach himself enjoyed improvising! If Bach felt that improvisation was a worthy use of his time, perhaps we should consider whether this aspect of music making might be more important, and more enjoyable, than we first thought!

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  4. What I hoped I did in the post, was to not only critically examine the way the improvisational aspect of jazz influences the compositional methods, but also to look at improvisation in the history of classical music. Take this paragraph from the post for example:

    "Here I come to a deeply-rooted problem with my theory, however. Modern classical musicians do not, as a rule, improvise. They spend many years training how to analyze and interpret a musical score, not how to improvise on it. So what? Well, the problem for me is that this was not always the case. Bach and Beethoven particularly were renowned for their ability to improvise and some of their written compositions, such as Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, are the fruits of an improvisation. Bach could improvise entire fugues on a given subject as we know from his famous visit to the court of Frederick the Great in 1747, when he improvised a different fugue on each of the six pianos that Frederick the Great had just purchased and placed in different salons in his court. Beethoven too was famous for his ability to improvise entire compositions. I’m not entirely sure why we no longer cultivate this ability."

    Actually, and this is just between you and me (!), David, but I do improvise myself. A lot of my compositions begin with improvisation on the instrument, trying out different things, stumbling over new techniques and suchlike.

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  5. Mr.Townsend, I want to Thank you for having the guts to put such a title and write such a wonderful article. I have spoken to many educated scholars and conductors of Classical Music who said similar things about jazz and discussed its flaws. Live improvisation can sound astonishing only in the hands of highly gifted & educated performers. Most Jazz players today know a lot of theory, have their chops and skills, but at the end of the day it all comes down to musicianship, which is where they fall short apart from their influences being driven from popular music. Improvisations have a different feel, fluidity etc. but they can never compete with the finely edited, carefully planned, refined and ordered structure of a classical composition that has stood the test of time. Jazz players however, sound more musical than most modern classical composers who have been lost in their deluded maze of non-tonality. Modern classical has taken a different path, while some gifted composers in the classical world ( only a handful) still remain, most are happily making eccentric and non-musical music and getting away with it since their works have some theoretical consideration. While Music and Mathematics have similar traits and can be studied in order to understand each other, they aren't the same and will never be the same.

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  6. Hi, Robert. A fellow guitarist, I see. Thanks so much for your comment. I did try and think seriously about jazz in the post and I'm glad to have your thoughts on it. I also have to agree with what you are saying about the avant-garde composers. Welcome to the blog and I hope you find other posts interesting as well.

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  7. Forgot to say, that is a very interesting observation about how great improvisation can sound in the hands of gifted musicians. True! I'm thinking of Keith Jarrett when you say that.

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  8. Great Article! I'm a classically trained jazz musician myself, and I personally do feel that Jazz cannot be compared to the ever lasting beauty of some classical masterpieces. Jazz Musician are never taught to think or look for so much structure, symmetry, order, perfection etc. rather they try to focus most of their energy on 'individual expression' while improvising in a live setting. While this can be exciting but the audience cannot always take part in being the artistic interpretive listener and can feel often disconnected. I think jazz musicians always want to have an abstract musical conversation between other musician on a theme ( topic), where classical musicians want to deliver a cinematic musical experience, one that tells a story. The two art forms are indeed very very different from one another and do not have the same social or musical purpose. Jazz is mostly heard at pubs where alcohol is served, along with a lot of commotion and classical is mostly heard at castles, halls, or specially made auditoriums where consuming alcohol will probably have u jailed or kicked out and making a whisper is often considered as shouting. While jazz players love to play swing, classical players think that swing doesn't always evoke serious emotions. But both evoke emotions, however jazz musicians have NOT been able to evolve into musical giants like Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Bach etc. But there's a possibility of doing so, only if they study a lot of classical along with jazz. But would that still make them Jazz Musicians ?

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  9. Thanks for the very thoughtful comment, Anonymous! Even though this post is over a year old, it is still getting attention. Good point about the quite different social and musical purpose of jazz and classical. To answer your last question, jazz and classical musicians are usually quite different sorts of people. But an old friend of mine, who is a very fine composer, is also a jazz pianist and does that very well too! The thing is that the two things are very separate for him: his compositions show no jazz influence and, apart from a kind of crystalline clarity in his jazz piano playing, I don't hear much classical influence there. Two different things...

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  10. On May 18, 2012 7:45 PM David wrote :

    Another thought...We both love Bach and, presumably, consider his compositions to be pinnacles of musical art. Yet Bach himself enjoyed improvising! If Bach felt that improvisation was a worthy use of his time, perhaps we should consider whether this aspect of music making might be more important, and more enjoyable, than we first thought!

    What made u think that Jazz = Improvisation ?

    Classical Musician always improvised. Classical musicians and good musicians in general love to improvise. Improvisation does not equal to jazz. I think what gave birth to jazz is swing, they often play just above the beat or just a little slower in triplet feel, along with call and response technique, influence of augmented fifth, influence of African and Latin American rhythmic patterns, live improvisation, jazz chord changes, and a new way of looking at dissonance, add to that the European influence of Notations.

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  11. Hi Chris, thanks for the contribution. This post is turning into a kind of seminar on jazz, which is rather cool. You quoted David's comment from last year. Did you notice my reply to him where I acknowledge the fact that Bach, and Beethoven and most other classical musicians well into the 19th century improvised. Since then, with the growth of a core repertoire, that ability has been de-emphasized to the point that few classical musicians today improvise.

    In my post what I focus on mainly in discussing what seemed to me to be inherent limitations in jazz was the way they approached harmony and compositional structure generally. Improvisation, as a integral option in jazz, I discuss as an influence on jazz composition, not the whole enchilada. And yes, thanks for reminding us that the rhythmic flavor of jazz is a big part of its appeal.

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  12. Wow! Talk about Musical Scholarly! My whole life I've been arrogantly telling people to shut up and stop arguing about which music is better than the other, since I had ignorantly assumed that Music is an entirely subjective whimsical ballgame. It was recently when i attended a music seminar where i learned that most people who have not achieved aural training in music, i.e. people without relative pitch and perfect pitch and a proper sense of time, do not have colored & effective hearing and have serious limitations in listening to music. I think serious listeners tend to choose from either classical and jazz, where the later seems to be having some shortcoming according to this article. I feel guilty about my past and request you write an article stating that Bach and Britney are not equally accomplished musicians and that qualitative judgement in Music is plausible. Please!

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  13. Hello Peter, and welcome to the discussion at the Music Salon. I'm trying to decide, without benefit of tone of voice or facial expression, how literally to take your comment. Or perhaps it is quite sardonic? I like sardonic, as a rule. One of the basic principles in this blog is indeed the issue of qualitative judgements in music. If you search the blog for the tag "aesthetics" you will find quite few posts. This one lays out some fundamentals:

    http://themusicsalon.blogspot.mx/2012/01/aesthetic-virtues-and-sins.html

    But perhaps what you are really saying is this stuff is just too obvious to discuss? Bach and Britney? Actually, I find that the project of trying to make qualitative judgements in music, or, rather, trying to sort out the bases for such judgements, is really quite interesting... And the fact that this post, with its challenging title, keeps sparking comments over a year later, underlines that. Keep 'em coming!

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  14. There's nothing wrong with Jazz apart from Kenny G and a bunch of other artists who would have been better off doing something else.

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  15. Excellent point, Pat! And I'm delighted that you are reading my blog. I love your recording of Steve Reich's piece Electric Counterpoint, by the way.

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  16. My two cents (which would be worth a rupee these days!):

    Jazz is largely night music. It has a narrower focus, but a sharper contrast. And if its not somatic, it is definitely visceral in the sense that it almost always moves the listener by sudden movement, by not surprise, but an almost physical shock. This is because of the timbres, the pentatonic scales, the heterophony.

    Almost all the significant music in jazz is played in solos - that's incredibly different from classical music. The only similar format I can think of is a Bach partita for violin.

    Of course, jazz is improvised, so it is hit and miss, very much so. But it would be a grand mistake to say that the deepest moments of expression in jazz music are any less significant or appealing than the best of Classical music.

    If more thought were put into jazz, it would cease to be jazz, but would become classical music. Don't know whether that would be good or bad.

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  17. This post, from way back, keeps inspiring interesting comments. Thanks, Shantanu for another interesting and fresh perspective.

    I think that is a very good point about jazz being night music. A coffee shop I often visit in the morning is always playing jazz and before 9am it sounds particularly inappropriate.

    While acknowledging that jazz has moments of deep expression, I'm not sure we can equate them with the best of classical music. I'm not even sure how we might go about trying to figure that out.

    But it might be good material for another post. Could you suggest an example of a jazz performance that we might take as a model?

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  18. Well, it'll be exciting to read about a formal analysis of a jazz piece! You might try these two pieces by John Coltrane:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qagOblqhBhk

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEftw9o1joo

    Or this one by Charles Mingus:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNIoirlauPk

    Thanks!

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  19. Are you saying that the Beatles' music includes more than primitive harmonies? How does the harmony (or counterpoint?) there differ from that in popular music and jazz? Thanks in advance!

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  20. I am a bit behind on these comments. Shantanu, while it might be interesting to do a formal analysis of a jazz piece, I'm not sure I have the time!

    K. Adams, I'm not sure what you mean by "primitive harmonies"? "Tomorrow Never Knows" from Revolver is about as primitive as you can get with a C major chord throughout, but other songs have quite interesting harmonic structures. I would refer you to the two-volume analysis of the Beatles' music by Walter Everett for the details.

    Of course, the Beatles' music is popular music, but just more sophisticated than most.

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  21. I am a casual musician and fan of many genres. While Bach is the epitome of counterpoint, and very moving in interpretations by Glenn Gould, I find piano music by Chopin and Debussy to have the harmonic complexity of jazz. Thelonious Monk, to my ears, has interesting harmonic progressions, rhythm, and textures, and approaches Classical composition in it's integrity. What do you think? I confess, I respond emotionally to music and have only rudimentary training.

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  22. Hi Anonymous,

    Lots of good music in lots of different genres. While jazz is a kind of music that feels rather alien to me, I would be fascinated to read some discussions of the style and compositions of Thelonious Monk. I really don't know much about his music. Mind you, there is a huge amount of classical music that I have only a nodding acquaintance with as well...

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