From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Classical Music for modern instrument (was Re: The shortest distance between two chords is...)
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:07:20 GMT

In article <1jpbt0$1fm@agate.berkeley.edu> maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes:
>In article <1993Jan22.165442.20387@colorado.edu>, judd@wilkinson.cs.colorado.edu (Stephen Judd) writes:

>|> Is jazz so distinct from the more classical forms that the
>|> two are incompatible?

>I guess I don't know what you mean by this.  To return to my example,
>I really don't think an identifiable German 6th could be used in
>jazz except as a reference to the 18th-century classical idiom.

I suspect you could find one somewhere in an Ellington song, but you're
right in general.  You also won't find more than a hint of all the
modal and blues stuff of jazz in Piston.

Look, this is old hat.  People talked about this in the 1920's and 
1930's.  There have been lots of interesting hybrids, from Gershwin 
through Copland, Bernstein, and so on, but jazz itself is founded on
very different harmonic principles from common-practice music.

>|> Although I have never studied jazz, it seems to me to be a music that
>|> developed considerable sophistication.  Why?  My theory is that a
>|> musician with a (first) an excellent ear and (second) a creative, intelligent
>|> mind will begin to become bored with the old form, and create something new.
>|> This is what pushes the music forwards.  This certainly is why classical
>|> has developed.  I would guess the same is true for jazz.  It happens for
>|> film scores, etc.  Curiously, though, the opposite seems to be true in the
>|> popular world, for the most part.

Comment -- why do you suppose it's so popular?  Since when does mass
art *ever* represent the cutting edge of artistic invention?

>There was a brief explosion of invention in the "popular" music
>world; I think market forces began quickly to conspire against it.

There have been many explosions.  R and B, Chuck Berry, Elvis, white
teen rock, Phil Spector, Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, country rock,
whatever you wish to call CSN, Chicago, Sha Na Na (historicism!),
British Blues (Clapton, etc.), disco, punk, New Wave, and on and on and
on.    Just because we don't like them doesn't mean they don't represent
new attitudes, sounds, styles.  And most of these things involved a great
deal of invention.

>We're seeing something similar now in the world of jazz, with
>the recent wide popularity of 50's-style post-bop.  (I won't mention

We're seeing wide popularity!  Not common in the jazz world...

>the Marsalises by name.)

>|> The Beatles were an exception, certainly.  It seems clear that they became
>|> bored with the older forms, of others and of themselves, and so they
>|> expanded the medium.

>They were far from the only ones.  Anyway, I agree with you that most
>pop music is bad and unadventurous; I just want to contest your claim
>that the problem is the lack of one specific form of adventure.

For that matter, most *classical* music is bad and unadventurous.  We
just don't hear it on the radio that often.

Roger