Jazz Music

February 12, 2010

Form, Schmorm

This is a form.

The brouhaha about com­po­si­tional form has reared its head once again, as Nate Chi­nen and Gra­ham Col­lier have in the last two days invoked my post com­par­ing – almost in pass­ing – Collier’s work with John Hollenbeck’s. Both ref­er­ences are benign, so there’s no need to respond in the same way I pre­vi­ously did to another writer’s gra­tu­itous bash. I am, how­ever, still non­plussed at the con­tro­versy sparked by my orig­i­nal com­ment, which to me was a state­ment of some­thing supremely self-evident (sorry, but I don’t have the energy to repro­duce it again; by now it’s prob­a­bly scrawled on a bath­room wall at Irid­ium or per­haps sewn into a voodoo doll made in my likeness).

It might be expected that I have noth­ing more to say on the mat­ter, and that is mostly true. I cer­tainly don’t wish to expound on the rel­a­tive impor­tance of form at the expense of other aspects of music-making, except to say that I most dig groups of impro­vis­ers who share an organic sense of form, spon­ta­neously and col­lec­tively con­ceived, and that’s some­thing you gen­er­ally find in small ensembles.

I would, how­ever, like to make the point that my con­cep­tion of form is rel­a­tively ancient, hav­ing its roots not only in early free jazz but in much exper­i­men­tal clas­si­cal music of the last cen­tury — two areas in which composers/musicians/conductors freed them­selves of the tyranny of the printed note. Along those lines, a work of inde­ter­mi­nacy like John Cage’s TV Köln from 1958 is in every facet a less con­ven­tional work than Bernstein’s music for West Side Story writ­ten a year ear­lier. A sim­i­lar com­par­i­son can be made of albums like Ornette’s Free Jazz and Charles Min­gus’ Presents Charles Min­gus, both from 1960; both are great, but one is more con­ven­tional than the other. That is not to make a qual­i­ta­tive judg­ment as to the mer­its of any of these (a case for them being equally inven­tive can eas­ily be made). It is, rather, an expres­sion of the obvi­ous. I hap­pen to admire both Cage and Bern­stein, and Ornette and Min­gus (believe it or not, such a thing is actu­ally pos­si­ble!). That I’m more inspired by one is hardly a con­dem­na­tion of another.

I enjoy a wide vari­ety of music, span­ning many dif­fer­ent styles, but I’m most inspired by peo­ple who make a point of explor­ing new ways of doing things. I think for­ward think­ing is an impor­tant trait — maybe not the most impor­tant, but wor­thy of more con­sid­er­a­tion that it often gets. Per­haps because I’m a cer­tain kind of musi­cian, I value inno­va­tion more than most, and I’m per­pet­u­ally sur­prised when I dis­cover that many if not most seri­ous jazz lis­ten­ers seem to feel dif­fer­ently. Hence, my puz­zle­ment and dis­ap­point­ment when one par­tic­u­lar work (or type of work) receives exten­sive atten­tion and acclaim, while another — more unusu­ally con­ceived but of equal value — does not. My intent is not to set one artist against the other, as even a mod­er­ately care­ful read­ing of the orig­i­nal post will reveal.

Inci­den­tally, I find it kinda funny in the con­text of this whole thing that I received a review copy of Graham’s CD, while I down­loaded John Hollenbeck’s from eMu­sic. In other words, I sought-out John’s because it inter­ested me, and paid for the priv­i­lege. And it was a privilege.

Comments (5)

1. […] Chi­nen on mod­ern big bands for Jaz­zTimes, and his blog adden­dum. Also, Gra­ham Col­lier and Chris Kelsey with more, related thoughts on “formal […]

   Pingback by Around The Jazz Internet: Week In Review, Feb. 12, 2010 | My Blog — February 12, 2010 @ 7:32 pm

2. Over the years I’ve had lots of con­ver­sa­tions with Butch Mor­ris, Joe Mor­ris, William T McKin­ley, Frank Wright and heaven know who else, Roland Wig­gins prob­a­bly and there is gen­eral agree­ment that com­po­si­tion and impro­vi­sa­tion are really about time frame dif­fer­ences and empha­sis differences.

   In the first instance. Com­pos­ing is a soli­tary thing and com­posers want over­sight and con­trol. My friend Jacob William once asked Anthony Brax­ton about how much of a com­po­si­tion he wants to con­trol and Mr. Brax­ton is reported to have replied…“I want it all…” but went on to acknowl­edge with a chuckle that it wasn’t a real­is­tic expectation. 

   In the sec­ond aspect, the empha­sis, thus, in com­po­si­tion leans to con­trol and over­sight where, in impro­vi­sa­tion, it shifts to interaction.

   A com­poser is anx­ious about his child’s han­dling in day care cen­ter of orches­tra­tion. An Impro­viser is eager to see on the fly inven­tion occa­sioned by the min­i­mal ker­nels of com­po­si­tion that shape a piece.

   Mr. Kelsey’s own tunes on Not Cool like Fem­u­late the State begin and end with great asym­met­ric melody state­ments in uni­son. These are tight and surely involve the com­po­si­tion capac­ity but it serves the moment and is happy with the capac­i­ties of the ensem­ble, a per­fectly valid call and it pays off to my ears.

   Avid impro­vis­ers are not gen­er­ally thrilled with sit­u­a­tions that want sub­or­di­na­tion to a score. And com­posers have been bitch­ing about how their baby is han­dled forever. 

   Beethoven chewed out his first vio­lin­ist, one Schu­panzig (sic), thus .. “Do you think I gave a fig about your stu­pid fid­dle when the muse spoke to me?”

   Zappa carped about every band he ever had and tried to go Kurzweil and get rid of em all.

   Zorn inter­est­ingly enough, had some cool inven­tions like ‘Archery’ that delib­er­ately handed it all to impro­vis­ers beyond a ran­dom set of cue cards built on all the numer­i­cal com­bi­na­tions of the num­ber 12 for a 12 piece ensem­ble. When all the com­bi­na­tions were exhausted, the piece was done.

   It has been my expe­ri­ence that com­posers would rather enlist less robust and adven­tur­ous play­ers to babysit their scores than to have their con­trol threat­ened and yet, this may have a para­dox­i­cal outcome.

   In other news, I’ve noticed a new sub genre of ‘hand wring­ing’ pieces in var­i­ous blogs about jazz enthu­si­asm lapses that read like some crap from that neurotic’s ban­quet ‘This Amer­i­can Life’..yay. And then rip­ples move through the blo­gos­phere of hand wring­ing about the hand wring­ing. Sweet mer­ci­ful jeebus..can’t these peo­ple get over their sta­tus decline, put noses back to grind­stones and actu­ally describe music in an engag­ing and use­ful way? …just a thought.

   Comment by Chris Rich — February 13, 2010 @ 8:45 am

3. That “time frame/reference dif­fer­ences” thing is right on …

   Music does not exist on paper. The score is the idea of sound, a blue­print, a set of rules; music is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of sound and its jux­ta­po­si­tion with silence. Music has form whether or not it’s planned or sketched or blue-printed or wholly impro­vised. The per­for­mance as it unfolds is the form.

   The written-down sec­tions of my com­po­si­tions on Not Cool are just a small part of the music itself, a jumping-off point. The form results from the deci­sions the other impro­vis­ers and myself make dur­ing the course of the per­for­mance. I give some min­i­mal direc­tion using finger-points or other hand sig­nals and an occa­sional spo­ken word; or sug­ges­tively, by empha­siz­ing cer­tain phrases, notes, dynamic aspects, tim­bres, or rhythms. The form of the per­for­mance arises organ­i­cally. That’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh uh-huh. And that’s what draws me to Graham’s music, for he does a sim­i­lar thing in a big band con­text, which is unusual.

   Comment by Chris — February 13, 2010 @ 10:35 am

4. Not to get too grammar-nerdy on you, Chris, but I believe that the mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Adler (and sub­se­quent oth­ers) stemmed from your use of the word “for­mally”. “For­mally” mod­i­fies “for­mal,” not “form” — something that is “for­mally con­ven­tional” is some­thing that is “con­ven­tional in a for­mal man­ner.” That clearly is not an accu­rate descrip­tion of Hollenbeck’s music. How­ever, upon clar­i­fi­ca­tion I agree with your point about form — that has been a stick­ing point in jazz debates ever since peo­ple started writ­ing about jazz in a musi­cally informed manner.

   Comment by Alex W. Rodriguez — February 13, 2010 @ 11:49 am

5. That’s a legit­i­mate point, Alex. I should have worded it dif­fer­ently – “con­ven­tional in terms of form” or some­thing like that (that’s what comes from hav­ing not taken a writ­ing class since fresh­man Eng­lish, circa 1979). I make no apol­ogy for the sub­se­quent mis­un­der­stand­ing, how­ever, for I feel my intended mean­ing was clear given the con­text. Cer­tainly it was gleaned by the major­ity of readers.

   Comment by Chris — February 13, 2010 @ 1:34 pm

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