[Dixielandjazz] Improvisation isn't = to jazz (Bach,
first jazzman?)
LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing
sign.guy at charter.net
Thu Jan 27 10:19:22 PST 2005
I had a further thought on Bach's compositions - the lost ones. Is it possible that Bach may have been like a professional photographer who ruthlessly edits his work and weeds out the shots that don't meet his standards. He may have said of some of them "this really sucks" or "what was I thinking" or the equivalent in German and round filed the ones that were bad.
----- Original Message -----
From: Charles Suhor
To: LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing
Cc: 'DJML' ; Ric Giorgi
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Improvisation isn't = to jazz (Bach,first jazzman?)
On Jan 25, 2005, at 4:47 PM, LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing wrote:
When I started college I took theory classes where the instructor would give
us, usually, a Bach Choral with figured bass . In the beginning there were
two lines of music the top being the melody line and the bottom the bass
line. We had to fill in the rest using proper voice leading etc. Later we
got the melody line with only the figured bass and we would write in the
rest. Later still we would write melodies and use figured bass with all the
inversions etc. This is very similar to the chord symbols used today.
Therefore Bach and others used this as a written aid for improv. This was a
system used at that time and I assume players of the time could read and
fill it in just as Jazz musicians use chord symbols today. What Bach
actually played is something of a mystery.
Larry clearly laid out some similarities between jazz improvisation and the composing methods in his class, but the wonder of jazz (and other non-written improvisation), which makes the difference, was once described by the songwriting great Alec Wilder.
"I wish to God that some neurologists would sit down and figure
out how the improviser's brain works, how he selects, out of
hundreds of thousands of possibilities, the notes he does at the speed
he does--how in God's name, his mind works so damned fast! And why, when the notes come out right, they are right . . .Composing is a slow, arduous, obvious, inch-by-inch process, whereas improvisation is a lighting mystery. In fact, it is the creative mystery of our age."
Wilder's comments about lightning-fast invention from innumerable possibilites also apply to the way we improvise everyday conversation. I've done several session on the musical and linguistic parallels, which would be academic stuff except for the musical explanations and examples provided Ellis Marsalis and other collaborators. We'll do the program again at the Phi Delta Kappa convention in New Orleans in November.
Charlie Suhor
Great analysis from Ric, below. Some further ramblings...
Improvisation in the classical tradition, I think, can capture the free
spirit of jazz, and like jazz improv, it can be done skillfully or
poorly. But the particular form of improv in jazz, from early jazz up
to but not including free form/avant garde jazz, is a
song-structure-based, rule-governed form that gives musicians and
listeners benchmarks whereby they can relate the improv to a base
(e.g., aaba or 12-bar blues, underlying chords) that's used to generate
the jazz line.
Also, jazz of just about every style uses African influences that
Western music didn't make use of and thought bizarre, at first. You
know the catalogue---blue tonality, bent notes, smears, growls, rips,
radical syncopation/accentuation, a voice-based conception of
instrumental tone, etc.
These were anathema to the European tradition. Early jazz introduced
new dimensions of expressiveness that were only later understood by
musical Establishments. BTW, those elements came to be incorporated in
jazz arrangements. An Ellington arrangement, then, can be " jazzier"
than a an improvisation that makes no use of at least part of the array
of African elements.
Back to Bach--okay, he wasn't a jazzman, but again, the long and
leaping lines and imaginative counterpoint of his written music were
certainly influenced by his genius as an improviser, and I think that
an analogy to jazz, though not an equation, is invited. Also, I
understand that Bach didn't write dynamic markings or tempos to many or
most of his writings, giving the performer and/or conductor the
privilege and responsibility of imagining the piece anew. Hence, the
differences in Glenn Gould's different renderings in the Goldberg
variations that Steve writes of fondly, and the marvelous adaptability
of Bach's music ton various settings and instrumentations.
Charlie Suhor
On Jan 25, 2005, at 8:25 AM, Ric Giorgi wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: Ric Giorgi [mailto:ricgiorgi at sympatico.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 9:23 AM
To: 'Steve barbone'
Subject: RE: [Dixielandjazz] Bach, The First Jazzman?
Thanks for posting this Steve.
I think there are two basic problems with this argument [Bach, The 1st
Jazzman and that "because Bach improvised so much, most of his pieces
were
not contained on paper. Some people consider that most of Bach's works
that
are on paper are not worth saving anyway, since music written for one
occasion (in Bach's case, church...)]
As a young man he walked 40 miles to be able to hear a very famous
organist
(Buxtehude) play because he was known both as a great composer and a
great
improviser. Improvisation was an absolutely necessary skill for any old
world musician well before Bach's time. It was probably the great
profusion
of bad improvisation that forced composers to insist that musicians
play
what they wrote and as performing technique became more demanding it
was
probably easier for musicians to do just that and not improvise.
The net result was that improvisation was lost to western music for
then
next 150 years until OKOM came along.
Bach never had some of his greatest work performed, namely, "The
Brandenburg
Concertos" and probably others but he did write them and what has
survived
very much the way he would have wanted them performed with some leeway
for
improvisation based on his knowledge of the probable players involved
(the
BC's were an "on spec" audition he created to try to get a gig with the
Margrave of Brandenburg). Most people agree that the 2nd movement of
No. 3
was devised to be entirely improvised by JSB or the likely keyboardist
at
the Brandenburg court. But like any composer of almost any time, he
could
only get writing gigs if musicians played his music the way he
intended it
(or better) and he couldn't be at every performance so it had to be
notated
with his intentions intact.
Ric Giorgi
-----Original Message-----
From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com [mailto:dixielandjazz-
bounces at ml.islandnet.com] On Behalf Of Steve barbone
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 9:59 PM
To: DJML
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Bach, The First Jazzman?
Bill Haesler commented that one could tap one's feet to J.S. Bach.
I've
been
googling since the weather here cancelled tonight's and tomorrow's
gigs
and
found this interesting snippet on Bach from a graduate music student
thesis,
University of California, circa mid 1990s
--- begin snip
"Bach, and many other composers of his time, were experts at
improvisation,
composing musical pieces at will, instantly, on the spot - similar to
jazz
players today. It was not considered rude to add whatever the player
desired
into the written context of the composer himself. Thus, early music
was
very
free and flexible to play. Unfortunately, because Bach improvised so
much,
most of his pieces were not contained on paper. Some people consider
that
most of Bach's works that are on paper are not worth saving anyway,
since
music written for one occasion (in Bach's case, church) should be
discarded
anyhow. But all people have a certain level of curiosity, to hear what
Bach
had to say with the language of music. More than a thousand of Bach's
works
have been saved, but it is mind-boggling to think of how many more -
and
how
much greater - his other thousand or so compositions could be."
--- end snip
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
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