Jazz Avant-Garde by Cecil Taylor
Authors: Holotenko Pavlo 
Published: January 2021

The relevance of the subject. Jazz music is a vivid, unique and distinctive phenomenon of the world culture, which is a grand achievement of many-years musical practice of humanity. In the context of the artistic culture of the modern information society, jazz art plays an essential part and is really quite interesting. The creative activity of jazz performers has always attracted the attention of the audience, caused a diverse reaction and today has many supporters in different parts of the world. Since the middle of the XX century, more and more trends have begun to emerge in jazz music, which led to the understanding of philosophical and psychological issues, in particular, ethical, aesthetic, social and other aspects. In this connection, new styles began to form in jazz, which in fact represented the emergence of the next, radically new stage in the evolution of jazz art. In the second half of the XX century there appeared jazz avant-garde – an entirely new cultural phenomenon that has its own history and philosophy, genre and style. In musicology, this concept can also be called “abstract jazz”, “new jazz”, “free jazz”, etc. It is clear that this trend is at the crossroads of two separate types of art – musical avant-garde and jazz, so it attracts admirers from both sides. Compared to traditional classic jazzmen, many prominent musicians of jazz avant-garde are still little known. Among them are composer and pianist Cecil Taylor, who was a compelling opponent of jazz traditions. His style is unique, his music is one of the most striking examples of musical avant-garde in the history of art. Nowadays, the scientific literature has no fundamental works devoted entirely to the analysis of C. Taylor’s avant-garde art. This circumstance also enhances the relevance of studying specific features of C. Taylor’s performing style. The purpose of the research is to determine peculiarities of Cecil Taylor’s creative style and related techniques of music speech. Achieving the goal involves solving the following tasks: to determine the difference between artistic systems of classic and avant-garde jazz; to outline the main informative paradigms of C. Taylor’s creative work; to analyze the technology of expressive means of C. Taylor’s music; to reveal the significance of C. Taylor’s avant-garde activity and to identify its place in the world of modern artistic culture. Research methods. The research is based on the interaction of scientific approaches, the most important of which are: analytical, which involves elaboration of musical means of expressiveness and composition technique of sounds organization; comparative, used to compare specific features of artistic systems of jazz mainstream and avant-garde; semantic, necessary for defining the content of music pieces, their meanings, images, mood; biographical, with the help of which certain facts of the musician’s biography are specified for a better understanding of his creative personality. Results of the study confirm the fact that in the world of artistic culture Cecil Taylor is one of the greatest representatives of the radical musical avant-garde. The basis of his art is the so-called “aesthetics of opposition”, the central idea of the artistic system of jazz avant-garde, according to which any artistic truth categorically established for all others cannot exist. In this context, the individualization of style, the relativity of all aesthetic ideals and the unlimited spectrum of expressive possibilities are stated, which is conditioned by the optimal disclosure of the figurative and emotional content of the piece. At the same time, the central object of the avant-garde jazz denial is the concept of the classic jazz art, based on the so-called “aesthetics of identity”. Its main idea is to adhere to structural stamps in order to maximally approach the stylistic aesthetic ideal. Such an ideal is the given classical theme-standard. Actually, this is an artistic truth for the jazz mainstream, to which one should aspire. Avant-gardists did not agree with this situation, for them it was nothing more than imposing personal whims by adherents of jazz traditions. The main informative paradigms of C. Taylor’s avant-garde art are antiromanticism, realistic pessimism and dystopia. The essence of anti-romanticism is to deny the domination of sentimentality, subjectivity, dreaminess and escape from reality, typical for romanticism. In their place, the primacy of rationalism, collectivity and pursuit of objectivism are established. Realistic pessimism is a worldview where, basing on tragic experience attention is focused on negative aspects, which leads to a belief in the eternal dominance of evil all over the world. Anti-utopia is recognition of the deception of utopia, the denial of the achievement of social ideals and the possibility of creating the world of justice. The main means of expressiveness of this ideological content in C. Taylor’s works are atonality, disharmony and percussive pianism. Conclusions. According to the research findings, we conclude that Cecil Taylor made a significant contribution to the development of modern culture. He was a compelling opponent of jazz traditions, always remained an uncompromising fighter for new jazz. Cecil Taylor is a virtuoso pianist and prominent improviser, one of the best representatives of avant-garde jazz in the world. Cecil Taylor discovered a new bright side of musical art and stimulated the public to redefine spiritual values and view of world as a whole. His work attracts and will attract attention of all those who are interested in contemporary art.