I just sent this and realized I had mistakenly professed that Eb is the dominant of Bb, I meant to point out that in the diatonic system Bb is the dominant of Eb, obviously (for the musically inclined) not the other way around.
-----Original Message----- From: Brian Jenkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:34 PM To: '[email protected]' Subject: RE: Music and all that jazz -correction I do not recall arguing any point about the obvious variability of the technical proficiency of all performers of all sorts of music, what I was most interested in was highlighting an issue I have encountered innumerable times: musicians that are not musicians. Whether playing jazz, rock, minimalist, serialist, Romantic, Classical, Baroque, etc. music, it cannot be disputed that each is based in a set of techniques, conventions, forms and objective limitations of both performing and composing. All of these forms focus on effects of tension/resolution and expansion/compression through harmonic and melodic modifications (in that order) and all still using the 12-tone even-tempered tuning. An understanding of the elements of a musical form is essential to developing it or surpassing it. If all I learn is how to move my fingers in such a way as to produce what has previously been defined as a minor pentatonic scale then I am most likely not playing with an idea of the harmonies it structures. Without a doubt one learns by hearing them, but with limited exposure to harmonic possibility the result of private intuitional teaching is severely limited. This idea I draw from both my own experience and what I have read over the years from popular forms and the musicians involved with them. It is the exposure that leads one to think only vertically and endlessly play naked I-IV-V progressions with a conceit of brilliance. Then solo technique is learned; scalar theory over those vertical structures all absorbed through tablature. And as stated before, jazz musicians intuit greater degrees of possibilities as many performers over its life so far have gone far beyond such simple models. If I was brought up on Chick Corea, I would more likely hear distant relations intuitively instead of strictly diatonic relations. Still, learning the instrument and learning the technique is the bare minimum. As I have also said before, once developing past what I consider the rudimentary knowledge of playing something like jazz on guitar (such as being able to hear anything and play coherent lines contributing to the base's material, elaborating it, and exploring its consequences, any key, but not styles--learning style is a good point of entry but the first habit to get away from), and I could not quite play past it, though I have not actually given it up altogether. (Understand though my standard of technical playing is along the lines of Al DiMeola). I emphasize the improvisation for jazz's artistic ground because it is an art of performance, again noting that the compositional art using the same material is in a different place. To speak to my interest in Bartok, I hear in his work, more so than Berg whom is closest to achieving so of the 12-tone composers contemporary with Bartok, a convincing answer to the problem of musical objectivity initiated by Beethoven, dissected by Schumann, Wagner, Bruckner, Strauss, then Mahler, and consummated with Schoenberg's cutting of the Gordian Knot. The previous lineage is obviously not remotely comprehensive but it captures the essential narrative. I cannot stress enough that the music of this tradition is known for its composers for a specific reason, that it is the development of musical composition as an art. Of course, the music guided the compositional problems raised and resolved, but nevertheless the structural, formal and harmonic material of these composers directly stemmed from other works and compositional technique until it came to such that the tonic became logically indiscernible, any chord could "resolve" or lead to any other and the tonal system appeared exhausted *compositionally*. The gaps here and the consequences of these brief remarks are the topics of myriad volumes, but I wanted to rehearse this here because I agree with its premises. Bartok's String Quartet No. 5, for instance, is an intensely dissonant piece, but even before I ever sat down with the score I found I could follow it, or rather, it lead me and moved me (in distinction from most serial music). The first movement of Bartok's 5th SQ is based on an inherited tonal relation, but instead of scalar relations, it is built around cells of pitches with tonic/dominant-like axes of Bb-B and Eb-E (where in the diatonic system Eb is the dominant of Bb). Pitch areas function here. This creates the sort of tension we're conditioned to hear and experience from diatonic music, but its construction, its gesture, grotesque at times, beautiful at others though never rich, as open as Beethoven's late quartets. It is both gripping and comprehensible, for me it rended the veil. Beyond these impressions, its compositional structure is established throughout Bartok's works yet always inchoate in form. Compositional art requires something to compose, his music carries on after the passing of chromaticism without retreating in defeat to the hordes of rampant musical nominalists and engineers dressed up as composers. (Did I mention I agree with Adorno regarding total serialism and aleatoric music?) -Brian -----Original Message----- From: Allan Sutherland [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 4:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Music and all that jazz -correction 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,
