[Dixielandjazz] Improvisation = Jazz?

[Dan Augustine]

"From: "Patrick Cooke" <patcooke at cox.net>
Improvisation is what defines the music as jazz."

     I don't think so.  Sorry to disagree with another bass player, 
but to me, improvisation is as old as music is.  In fact, 
improvisation probably existed before written music.  (However, to me 
'dixieland' is *collective* improvisation, which as far as i know was 
a technique new to the world in the early 1900's.)

     _The Harvard Dictionary of Music_ (1974, my edition) says in part:

     "masters such as Bach, Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven
      were as famous for their improvising as for their
      written compositions."

     "Early musicians famous for their improvisation were
      Francesco Landini and Paulus Hofhaimer.  In the 16th
      century the ability to improvise in fugal style was
      a common requirement for an appointment as an organist."

     "Bach is known to have improvised a prelude and a fugue,
      an organ trio (i.e., a piece in three obligato parts),
      a chorale prelude, and a final fugue, all on a single
      hymn tune.  In 1747, on visiting Frederick the Great
      in Potsdam, he extemporized a fugue on the 'royal theme'
      that he subsequently worked out in his _Musikalisches
      Opfer_.  John Hawkins is one of several writers who have
      vividly described the effect of Handel's extemporization.
      Mozart frequently extemporized fugues or variations on a
      given theme."

And in the modern era, Gershwin was said to have frequently played 
amazing improvisations on piano, only some of which made it onto 
paper.

     I think jazz is more a feeling than a technique.  Like the blues, 
it allows one to express deeper human moods and feelings than 
ordinary popular songs convey.  Technical brilliance can exist on a 
concert stage in a violinist's cadenza, but jazz can show itself in 
the sliding wail of an unlettered farmer, or the spontaneous eruption 
of scat-singing by a musician who just won the lottery.  If jazz is a 
feeling, then identical reproductions of it can occur, just as long 
as people (including the jazzer) are moved by it.

     But what is jazz to me may not be jazz to you (on this list, 
though, it's probably close).  We're all at different places.  Last 
night i tried to listen to Miles Davis on his "Tuba Band" LP, and i 
couldn't even make it through the first side.  Too cool for me.  Give 
me "Fidgety Feet" and it works every time. But it's OK with me that 
other people like/love Miles--doesn't diminish what i like, doesn't 
make me wrong to like what i like.  Whatever floats your boat....

     Dan
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**  Dan Augustine     Austin, Texas     ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu  **
**     "Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days       **
**      on nothing but food and water." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)    **
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