Barzun on the "Experimental" Misnomer

"As for spotting general characteristics [of the Modernist arts], the task is difficult too. A critical term first used about Modernism tells us why: its arts have been promoted and accepted as 'experimental.' The word stand for endless efforts to be different; it is one of the many misnomers of our time. An experiment is conducted under rigorous conditions; it follows a method, relies on others' most recent research, and is subject to review by peers. The artist's effort is entirely individual and uncontrolled. It is barely trial and error, since there exist no standards by which error can be gauged and a better trial made. What Modernism achieved is no less worthy for the lack of an honorific drawn from the laboratory. It would be better described---and this for more than one reason---as suggestive art. (The French slang phrase 'launching a balloon' springs to mind.) Suggestive would cover the part that was pastiche and parody, the part that appealed by scandal, the part that embodied the obscure hints of the unconscious, and---perhaps clearest of all---the combination of parts that detach emotion from past art. Still, the word experimental proved a great convenience as a mind-opener. It made the public, inured to science, take the improbable with composure; it kept the lid down on the coffin of the philistine."

Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present.

The Bridge on Monk's "Well You Needn't"

Last week's celebration of Thelonious Monk's birthday led me, among other places, to Ethan Iverson's blog post concerning the bridge on the Monk composition "Well You Needn't." In it he discusses the prevalence of interpretations of the tune in which the first chord of the bridge is played as G7, which he attributes to the influence of Miles Davis's performances of the piece, although Monk himself played Db. Iverson goes on to discuss the particular voicing of that Db chord and other issues. 

Iverson's post raises the question of whether a voice-leading analysis can shed any additional light regarding these two divergent bridge strategies. Below are voice-leading reductions for the Monk and Davis versions of "Well You Needn't" per Iverson. 


Monk version

Davis version

In beginning his bridge with the flat submediant, Monk moves toward the subdominant key area, a common harmonic strategy for the bridges of song-form jazz pieces. Davis's bridge starts on V/V, which in moving to the sharp-key side is a less common though not entirely unusual approach. Additionally, the Davis version exhibits parallel fifths, posing a sharp contrast to Monk's (much hipper) parallel ninths. 

More importantly, the flat submediant of Monk's bridge continues the Phrygian mode-mixture initiated by the tonic-flat supertonic oscillation in the tune's A-section. The structural tones of the soprano voice (Db-F-Eb-Db) are also borrowed from the Phrygian mode. Davis's version lacks this particular connection between bridge and A-section. In Monk's bridge, the top voice has has intimations of a stepwise 8-7-6-(5) descent, whereas Davis's version does not as clearly relate to a possible linear progression or fundamental line. An additional unifying element found in Monk's version is the transfer of the bass Db in the first bar of the bridge to the soprano voice Db (C#) in the last bar of the bridge. 

Perhaps most significantly, Monk's bridge features a step up-two steps down motive in the bass, marked x' on the graph above. This motive (Db-Eb-Db-B) reflects a similar bass movement in the A-section, labelled x on the graph. As Iverson points out in his post, the F-Gb-F-Eb bass pattern is unique to Monk's performances and is missing from "G7 bridge" versions of the tune. Such a tight motivic connection between phrases surely represents the kind of musical architecture that makes Monk stand out as a composer. 

Some additional points: the melody note Eb in the second measure of the tune represents the sixth scale degree of the chord in that bar, Gb7. As we have seen, Monk's bridge also begins with the (flat) sixth scale step in the bass, and Eb is the first structural soprano pitch of the bridge. Finally, the voicing that Iverson hears Monk using for the Db chord beginning the bridge is a stark, three-voice collection containing the pitches Db, Eb, and F. This voicing is therefore a simultaneity of the structural soprano tones heard during the bridge. Such integration of horizontal and vertical is another sign of Monk's compositional profundity. 

Thus, while the Miles Davis performances of "Well You Needn't" are of course brilliant, Monk's own conception of the tune exhibits a degree of compositional integration at abstracted voice-leading levels that the former lack. 

Steve Larson Festschrift

The current issue of Music Theory Online is a Festschrift in honor of Steve Larson, whose pioneering work in applying the tools of Schenkerian analysis to jazz music is revelatory and inspiring.

http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.12.18.3/toc.18.3.html

Lee Konitz's Pedagogy

Bill Kirchner describes lessons with Lee Konitz, from an interview with Ethan Iverson:

For the first lesson I took with Lee, he pulled out the Sinatra album Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! from ’56. That’s one of the great Sinatra/Nelson Riddle records, with “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Lee said, “Here – take this home. Learn one of these tunes, exactly the way Sinatra sings it.” I learned to sing along with the record with all the time feel and inflections and everything. It’s a really musical and emotional experience that I still use with students, because it gets you away from the instrument. It gets you thinking like a singer, but also it just gets you totally away from the mechanical and just into the emotional and just purely musical. 

After my first lesson he gave me the changes to “Stella by Starlight” and we worked on that for two months.  Lee said, “Alright, for this week, you’re gonna improvise on ‘Stella’ but only using the chord tones and only using whole notes.”  The next week, “Okay, now you can use half notes”; following week – “now you can use quarter notes…now eighth notes…now eighth-note triplets, now sixteenth notes…alright, now you can mix it up….now –go back and start doing the whole thing over again with one rhythmic unit at a time, but this time you can use the scalar tones.” You really learned the tune! And you learned the idea of improvising as composition, getting away from dumb licks and stock shit of any kind, which of course is Lee Konitz exemplified.

Coltrane and Kepler?

"I'm interested in all the sciences---metaphysics, astrology, astronomy, mental physics."

Coltrane's interest in astrology and astronomy surely manifested itself in his music, but how exactly? With song titles like "Mars" and "Leo," Coltrane's last studio recording, released as Interstellar Space, provides an example of the programmatic influence of astrology. But can we find concrete musical examples?  

"Venus," another track from that duo recording, displays roughly the same melodic material as a piece recorded by the quartet a few days earlier entitled "Stellar Regions." 

Whereas the pieces on the posthumous quartet album Stellar Regions were given their titles by Alice Coltrane, it is not clear whether "Venus" (also released posthumously) was so titled by John Coltrane himself or by someone else. The question of the title is relevant because of the (admittedly tenuous) connection between the melody of "Venus" and the Harmonices Mundi of Johannes Kepler.

In his discussion of the harmonic proportions he claims to have discovered in  planetary motion, Kepler asserts that the orbit of the planet Venus can be said to produce the sound of the pitch (E). 

Interestingly, the melody of Coltrane's "Venus" emphasizes the pitch (E), as in the manner of a primary tone. As the third degree of an apparent C major tonal center, (E) starts the melodic phrase, and it is privileged above other notes in the number of repetitions it receives (including in the form of a trill with its lower neighbor tone, [D]). A transcription is available in Lewis Porter's book, John Coltrane: His Life and Music, and the voice-leading of the opening phrase can be illustrated thusly:

The phrase in question suggests a polyphonic melody, with a 3-2 stepwise descent in the upper voice accompanied by an inner voice moving by step from the dominant to the leading tone and back. The primary tone (E) returns, and seven additional variations of this thematic material are heard before Coltrane departs into wider-ranging improvisations. 

None of the other planet-titled pieces on Interstellar Space ("Mars," "Jupiter," "Saturn") evince any obvious relation to Kepler's speculative notion, and the connection between the (E) of Coltrane's "Venus" and that of Kepler's Harmonices Mundi might well be coincidental. Nevertheless, given Coltrane's astrological interests it is at least possible that he had encountered Kepler's work.