Jazz in the Twentieth Century: Conflict of Materials and the Supremacy of Melody

In comparative study of world musics (and particularly those that involve some form of structured improvisation) against Western tradition, it is common to see "American Jazz" given as an example of something in the Western tradition that is analogous to the modal-improvisatory system of the studied music. However, to take such a comparison to be useful at face value is to gloss over the complexities in Jazz that are necessary in understanding it, and to inaccurately make assumptions not only about Jazz but Western tradition as a whole and the studied music itself, rendering the whole discussion uninformative and misleading. Comparisons are often given in introductions to musics such as Arabic and Hindustani, assuming that the reader accepts the degradation of improvisation in the West as fact and that he would be familiar enough with Jazz for the style to be a useful point of reference. Both of these assumptions are problematic however, and we need to take a closer look at both the phenomenon of improvisation in and outside the "West" and the historic (and very well documented) path that has taken the art of Jazz improvisation through several distinct phases, characterized by the novel resolutions in conflict of materials.

On the surface, it would seem safe to surmise that in canonical Western music literature, improvisation is not valued, encouraged, practiced or even allowed. The formal structures in Common Practice music do seem to afford the performer little flexibility, and this view of the literature and performance practice is not really superficial. But it would be wrong to conclude that there is a simple choice made to either improvise or not improvise. In fact, the eclipse of improvisatory practice in European and American classical music is largely due to the choices made by composers, performers and audiences to engage in the project of creating music based on tonal architecture and polyphonic structures where the tonal (and modal) space is in flux to the point of making improvisation impossible (or for the most part impractical, especially in ensemble music). At one point, French Baroque unmetered keyboard preludes allowed considerable freedom to the performer in both rhythm and ornamentation. Mozart's scores are quite bare and ambiguous as well when compared to the highly specific directions given in scores by Mahler and Stravinsky a century later. Parallel to the progression of non-improvised tonal music in classical European-American music is a tradition of improvisation used by organists and educators, and composers have historically used much improvisation in the compositional process. But one would be hard pressed to find a tradition of solo communal improvisation analogous to those found in those world traditions in which improvisation is so common and important.

In a musical culture such as that which is widely viewed as 'Western' in which there is such scant practice of improvisation, Jazz is naturally a likely tradition to turn to for evidence of a Western improvisatory paradigm. However, classical music audiences constantly confound the discourse between classical and Jazz styles (as if both traditions weren't already sufficiently complex as to render such discourse an unavoidable mess) by mixing ambiguous terminology such as rhythm, meter, composition and improvisation. Rhythm is treated as an ingredient ("this or that piece has more rhythm"); meter is called rhythm; improvisation is seen as a substitute for improvisation ("Jazz is spontaneous composition! They just pull melodies out of the air!"). All these statements represent both an ignorance of Jazz among classical musicians and the likely to be perpetuated misunderstanding of the elusive style.

Essentializing Jazz to the point of pinning down exactly how the modal-improvisatory paradigm actually works fails to take into account the century of tumultuous changes in Jazz style and technique, the importance of individual personalities and the co-existence of multiple Jazz styles at any moment in its history.

The vastly different Jazz styles of the twentieth century, all widely preserved and distributed on recordings, ranges from the work of such early artists as Sidney Bechet, the Hot Five, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong to popular Big Bands of the swing era such as Ellington, Goodman, Henderson, and Bassie to the be-bop of Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gilespie to the modal experimentations of John Coltraine, Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner. All along the way, there have remained adherents to any given style who practice historical performance styles in the contemporary amalgam of today's Jazz.


The development of Jazz, for the first 60 years at least, seems to be marked in a significant way by various means of reconciling conflicting materials. Although the roots of Jazz go back to West African styles, Church hymns, Spirituals, 19th century popular song and the blues, the birth of Jazz was much more spontaneous and doesn't fit well with any single-track evolutionary model. Some early artists even claim to (or are posthumously claimed to) have "invented" Jazz (and given the popular nature of Jazz in the twentieth century and the new models of dissemination of knowledge, the influence of distinct personalities must be taken seriously). The main two materials which I believe are, as a technical matter, the most significant in spawning such diversity in a style labeled so simply as "Jazz" are the tonality of early 20th century popular song (show tunes, light opera and tin-pan alley songs) and the modality of the blues.

Without attaching any political claim as to authorship or ownership, it is reasonable to say that highly chromatic, tonal popular music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a significant material aspect of Jazz before 1950. Considered "Standards" such songs as "I Got Rhythm," "All the Things You Are," and "Body and Soul" have been favorite repertoire for generations of Jazz musicians performing arrangements and improvisations in vastly different styles. These songs are highly chromatic - that is, the represent the full possibilities of key modulation and chromatic shading available in a short form. It is not uncommon for a single song to modulate through three different keys and only confirm the actual tonic at the very end (and not even, if the song in recapping avoids the tonic to propel it into the initial key by means of a turnaround). Emerging from the development of chromatic music throughout the 19th century toward an eventual circularity (as in the circle of 5ths), these songs historically coincide with the dissolution of tonality in the dodecaphonic school of Schoenberg, subverting the gravity of the tonic by means of extreme functionality while the latter subverts it by implosion. Nonetheless, the popular song material used by Jazz musicians is hyper-tonal and completely functional on the micro level.

The blues, as a style, genre and essence, is widely considered to be essential in the formulation of Jazz style. In identifying the blues, there are several ingredients that, while not always necessary, generally collaboratively makes the blues what it is. The blues may or may not be based on a three-part, twelve measure form; the blues is often about complaining or longing; the blues is, at least in simple forms, quite often modal, and not actively exploring various tonal spaces; certain dissonant or expressively tuned intervals evoke the plaintive nature of the music. Of course there are exceptions to each of these points, but more often than not, the importance of expression through mode in blues is superior to the ambitions of the harmony, which serve mostly to underscore the tri-part form of the text. While the twelve measure form is near universal in how common it is in blues music, there are eight measure, sixteen measure and other alternative forms. The harmony as well, involving the three primary triads in a three-part form, can be either elaborated on (specifically in the turnaround) or simplified, even to the point where only one or two chords are used. Therefore, there seems to be a fairly universal aspect of blues that melodic-modal expressivity is favored over tonal expressivity.

These two material aspects of Jazz could hardly be more at odds, yet they coexist in every form of Jazz in the first half of the century. And well-documented experiments with improvisation in various eras by various artists reveal different approaches at reconciling the extreme freedom of modality and the constant flux of tonality (which, as I mentioned earlier seems to have been a deterrent in the use of improvisation in classical music). In describing various approaches throughout history, I want to be clear that I am not looking at the change in styles as an evolution (which would imply that subsequent generations have a superior approach), but that each approach did, for its time and current aesthetic, succeed in reconciling these materials to produce music that is beautiful and valuable.

Early recordings of tune-based Jazz feature improvisation that is largely ornamentation and distortion of the melody. Preserving the melodic integrity of the tune is still valued by many performers today, and reflects both the persistence of this style as well as a backlash to the complete abandonment of the tune in the modal Jazz of the 1960's. Given the early examples, it would almost seem that "free" improvisation is not one of the salient features of Jazz, were Jazz to be defined by a specific style. Even with more personalized, non-tune improvisations, such as those by soloists with the Ellington band, the solo material sounds rehearsed and is not as spontaneous as the improvisations of later generation artists. And yet, some artists, notably Louis Armstrong (credited with the "liberation" of the solo) were compelled to explore a freer personal expression within the tonal framework of the song literature. I should also note that earlier, New Orleans style improvisations (particularly among clarinet players) feature heavy reliance on "vertical" pitch material, that is, chord tones. Extreme linearity was a less common feature, particularly at fast tempos. In larger ensemble music, the hesitancy (or, the artful restraint) served well as a textural contrast to the heavily arranged, highly active arrangements. And players were certainly able to adapt to the hyper-tonal harmonies of the tunes, which despite being difficult to improvise freely over, were remarkably consistent, falling into only a small number of schema categories.

It was not until the late 1940's when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie revolutionized Jazz improvisation with a whirlwind of technical (and computational) virtuosity. The solo was now fully disembodied from the melody (which itself might be a replacement for an older tune over existing chord changes). The results were polarizing - Parker had his admirers, and yet adherents to the older styles persisted in their taste for less confrontational music more rooted in melody. In fact, Parker's rendition of Standards would coalesce some years later into a technique for dealing with improvisation over rapidly changing nominally functional chord progressions that could be learned and taught. A well-used document explaining the technique now standard in Jazz improvisation over Standards is Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book. Rather than rapidly changing tonal spaces with the changing of chords, players look to extend linearity by finding scales (or modes) that can be used commonly over several chords in a row, thereby opening the modal space within a tonal context.

There was certainly a backlash to the aggressive technical fireworks (and arguably unmelodious) of be-bop, which was aesthetically confrontational and cerebral, besides being a departure from earlier styles on technical points. Two movements in Jazz followed Be-bop in the next decade, and the practicing and instigating artists often performed music in all three styles. These movements were Cool Jazz and Hard Bop. Aesthetically, we can see from the names of these new styles as well as hear from their respective sounds along what lines artists reacted against Be-bop. Cool Jazz does indeed evoke a cooler, less aggressive vibe, just as Hard Bop plays up the attitude. These styles also reflect the different angles from which African Americans during the civil rights movement dealt with struggle and identity, though I will limit my discussion to technical points.

Besides the more visible aesthetic features of these new styles we see two new approaches to dealing with the ever-nagging struggle between modality and harmony. A starling innovation to Cool Jazz is the creation of new, non-standard compositions which rather than challenge improvisation, actually facilitate it. The compositions of this style in effect reverse engineered the harmonic system to allow modal modulation to supersede harmonic choices. In Hard-Bop, the antagonistic aspect of more aggressive styles of Jazz is enhanced, and the virtuosity of Be-bop is maintained. However, as in Cool Jazz, the music is recomposed, shedding much of the chromatic excessiveness of the Standards repertoire. And Blues emerges in Hard-bop as a driving force in form and style.

Today, every style of Jazz ever captured on record has adherents, practitioners and fanatic lovers. While there was a progression of ideas that, over 60 years led to the creation of several distinct styles, each era in the constantly changing landscape of Jazz music had his or her own way of dealing with a legacy of modality, tonality and style, and great works were produced with every solution. It is my hope in discussing the rapidly changing, poly-stylistic body of work called Jazz along the lines of the reconciliation of conflicting materials that the casual use of Jazz as an example or counterexample in the comparative study of world music might be a more useful tool in bringing together the polarized, antagonistic, and over-essentialized musical worlds of East and West. Such understanding is beneficial, if not essential, to the translation of culture and the building of an ethical and humane world.