Bernstein and Gunther Schuller "Children's introduction to jazz". With Don Ellis, Benny Golson, Eric Dolphy and Richard Davis. 1964. For Dolphy this was around the time he recorded "Out to Lunch". Bernstein the great communicator. Fascinating.
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That is an extraordinary discovery, Bluesie. I hadn't heard of Larry Austin, which is a shameful admission. Bernstein had the capability of going down the avant-garde route but chose a populist one for all manner of complex reasons - discuss. As others in the largely intelligent comments section have remarked, a shame that Dolphy was not featured more on the Austin piece, given that, as Schuller mentioned, he was very "aware" of serial and other avant-garde musics of that time, more so than Ornette who was given to responding intuitively rather than theoretically to them. The Copland found the 26-yr old ostensibly attempting to out-Milhaud the latter's Le création du monde (1924) by Americanizing polytonality, which frankly by 1964 would have sounded a mess. My advice is to slide on to 38 minutes in for the Austin, an "instructive" attempt to weld jazz rhythmic approaches with post-Webernian pointillism and one which later figures such as Braxton, Barry Guy and Alex Schlippenbach would learn lessons from, namely ease up on the constructivism! I disagree with the view of one of the commentators below that the performance reflected the mood in academic musical circles Stateside two months after Kennedy's assassination - composition of this piece would have proceeded long before that.Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View Post -
There's not a lot of Larry Austin's music on YouTube (or elsewhere) and it's an area I know nothing about but I did quite like this, his composed "piano variations" from 1959. I've no idea as to it's "merit" in classical terms and others who do are obviously far better judges...
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Not the kind of stuff I would want to listen to I have to say. I didn't much like the way the piece we saw on the link led up to that harsh, aggressive juddering kind of rhythmic conclusion, though I was much impressed with Don Ellis's work. I think he was a far greater trumpet player than composer/arranger, for all the plaudits some have thrown at his adaptations of Indian tala rhythms and so on. However, the whole occasion left me wondering what the Pharaoh Sandersons and Archie Shepps made of this forced kind of musical juxtapositioning at the time - something tells me that whole October Movement would have been very hostile.Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View PostComment
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Gunther Schuller is an interesting figure, credited with the term 'third stream' meaning a genre of music between jazz and classical . I first encountered him on a Turnabout LP of his symphony and double-bass quartet, and his book 'Early Jazz' was one of the few serious books to examine the origins of jazz as music, raher than just biographies of the jazzmen, in a scholarly way.Comment
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Yes - Schuller's "Early Jazz" has been a big subject of discussion on this thread in the past.Originally posted by smittims View PostComment
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SmittimsOriginally posted by smittims View Post
I loved 'Early jazz' when i first read it. In my opinion it was a defining point in jazz critique. This approach was unique at the time and his analysis of the likes of Jelly Roll Morton remains revelatory.
There is a follow up volume called 'The Swing Era' which covered the period up to 1945 and a third volume on Bebop was never finished / published. I felt that the second volume was defeated by the shear scale of the mateeial he sought to deal with. It is inconsistent and the opinions eccentric. Glenn Miller gets a glowing review and the accordianist Joe Mooney ia praised to the hilt. Others like John Kirby are diamossed. In my opinion,.it is very uneven and not as good as the first one. The bizarre connclusions make this an akward read regardless of it not beung so interesting.
These days Schuller's reputation is somewhat diminished by those who have followed in his wake and who understand history and music in equal measure. I have a book about Fletcher Henderson which is similar in style and also features a lot of musical notation. It fascinated me because it was possible to use notation to come to opposing comclusions. The author was not accepting of some of Schuller'a conclusions. Forty years ago Schuller seemed like 'The Authority ' but the failure to match historical reasearch with musucal knowledge has meant that i just see Schuller as ine opinion against many. I still applaud his aasessments even if it is possible to have another view.
I quite the idea of jazz borrowing
heavily from classical music but Schuller's Third Stream experiments are by no means unique even in in the late 50s or even today. This has been happening since 1920s.
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Yes, I went on to read The Swing Era. It encouraged me to listen to Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Barnet and others I'd not previously heard of.
Two notable 'third stream ' works I return to occasionally are Matyas Seiber's Improvisations (writen for John Dankkworth) and Laurie Johnson's Synthesis.Of course they are both 'period pieces' now, but they retain their value.Comment
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Better atill try the Belmondo Brithers rwworking of Frwncg classical material notably Lili Boulanger. Their arranger Christophe Del Sasso has produced his own work.which is more inkeeping with serialism.Comment
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It isn't well known that Seiber experimented with 12-tone rows and jazz idioms back in the 1930s, and was actually categorised as one of the Entarte Musik composers under the Nazi régime. Seiber was tutored in composition by Zoltan Kodaly and knew Bartok, whose compositional methods he combined with those of Schoenberg; he came to live in this country and was an important teacher, introducing radical European compositional ideas to the post-Britten Walton generation.
I've no idea if this was one of the pieces Hitler objected to - hear it played by these talented 6-year olds!
And what in Bristolian would be called a Tangle, performed by one of them:
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Another pioneer o³f Third Stream was Lyle 'Spud' Murphy was created his own equal tempered system and was inspired by Schoenberg. He started off as an arranger with dance bands in the 1930s before arranging for Benny Goodman. He relocated to LA and made a handful of records for Contemporary before having a long and successful career in film music.
He became something of a guiding light with his version of serial music but is not so well known these days.
I would recommend the book on Henderson by Jeffrey Magee. 'The uncrowned king of swing.' Better than Schuller, imo.
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Gunther Schuller turns up on this superb fillum from Russell Davies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKdxiqkhq4I
all words are trains for moving past what really has no nameComment
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BTW Harry Gold's bass sax has a new home in the Netherlands.all words are trains for moving past what really has no nameComment
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