On 15/4/08 12:58, "Brian Jenkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "I find it very repetitive. In fact I suspect one learns to > play jazz partly through learning a series of rather > standard routines." > > Brian, I understand what you are saying about teaching and learning jazz but disagree with you on point of precision. There is not so much difference from classical performance in what you say. Many musicians can produce a passable, if not laudable, rendition of many pieces, but few do this masterfully. Few musicians are capable of the sensitive virtuosity demanded to recreate a composed piece. This is a difference between average craftsmanship in performance and virtuosic, artistic performance; it may be significant or slight in the act, but can immensely so in the outcome in performance. To take your one of your examples, yes Beethoven's Op. 111 can be performed masterfully, it can also be performed atrociously and also with any variation in quality of rendition in between the sublime and the awful, ambiguity intended here as a play of humour. To say the same without doubt, the performance can be any variation between the utterly superb and the utterly atrocious. Some works were completely unplayable when they were written, musical pedagogy and other improvements in technique have made them playable. Many, if not all renditions of classical pieces are marked by error of some sort, wrong notes, incorrectly struck keys, or the likes. Thus Glen Gould spent so much time patching together his best performances of pieces of a sonata or other pieces to make the best example he could produce. He could not achieve those in real time, thus did he not give up on live performance altogether. Learning the craft is the first step for jazz and improvising musicians, it is then requisite on the musician to go beyond that individually and in ensemble performances. Some musicians do, some don't, some can, some cannot, transcend their learned practices. The very fact that you found it impossible to do satisfactorily, is a measure of the effort required to achieve that transcendence from the routine to the creative. Yes, some may be fully satisfied with a mundane performance, but that is also true of classical performances. A good many prefer the Blue Danube over Beethoven's Op. 111 or Mahler's 5th symphony, but that does not make Blue Danube better music, which you know. Free jazz can often sound like chaos, and sometimes chaos is a sought goal. Or to say the same in another way, lack of structure and repetition can be a striven goal, just as abstract artists attempt to escape all traces of representation, either intentional put there or perceivable by an observer. But that attempt to escape any structure or form is mostly not the intention. As most other forms of music, free improvisation usually strive to create and present a conceptualised idea, for example, through the musical practice of musicians in ensembles. Let me make one point clear, I am not arguing that jazz and improvised music, improvised within or outwith the basic jazz bebop form and harmonies, are spontaneous reproduction of music. This is quite in error, just as the performance of Beethoven's Op. 111 is not quite the same on each occasion. It is not, this is why Cage sought to introduce elements of chance and criticised jazz. Yes, it is the creation of music usually be ensembles of musicians in performance, but it is nonsense to think this could be done in any less a structured, or structuring manner, on the spot by musicians. Must music making practices are in some ways structured, jazz and improvised music included. It is whether that produces music which is adventurous and refreshing, rather than rote and tedium that is the point. The best jazz and improvised music is not rote and tedium, the worst can be and sometimes is; I have listened to both. I do not consider that appreciating jazz makes the appreciation of other music impossible. I would hope that jazz and improvised music can be understood to add to the sound materials available to humanity, and that it creates a world of sound anew. Sorry, I do not hear what I hear in the best of jazz and improvised music in Bartok or anyone else. I always find it odd when, as did Adorno, discussion of value in music, or in any other art form, leads one to the last great composer or painter or whatever being someone who is either dead or in decline. For Adorno it was Schvnberg, and Schvnberg before serialism, which Adorno thought mechanised the process of composition. Thankfully, the composers and musicians did not take Adorno's assessments to heart and continued on to create fresh, engaging and great music which did not supplant the music of the past. Thank you for engaging, Allan.
