The record changer (Jan-Dec 1944)

The Record Changer, October 1944 does develop. Jazz did not wait for this time but has instituted scored music before making a practice of first committing her improvisations to paper. After all, notation is a means of preservation out of which has come an art dependent upon this medium. The art coming afterwards must he a consequence of notation's primary need, that of preservation ; otherwise we get the hunting artist or arranger, hunting through the debris of European music for what he can find to syncopate and score. T have tried to show in H.R.S. Society Rag (January and February, 1941) how jazz might slowly become notated. The musicians are not yet ready and the attempts by Henderson, to which Mr. Borneman refers constitute no argument that jazz is peculiarly an improvised music and that such orchestrations as we have are proof that it cannot be notated and orchestrated. Musical notation developed with the notation of previous music. Jazz finds itself with a notation too perfect for its present needs and a kind of orchestration alien to it but useful to its commercial establishment. To say that "the European tradition has developed all alternatives of scored music to such peaks of perfection that all jazz arrangers' attempts at originality of scored writings are doomed to look like parodies of the real thing" (Italics mine) is true of jazz arrangers. But it is by no means true that "all alternatives of scored music" have been reached. The development from improvisation to scored music may follow European music very closely, but whatever difference there is, that difference together with the present new material (blues and instrumental figurations) will be enough to launch a new scored music. Like improvised counterpoint and invention, it will compare to our classic music, but it will be a state of music in its own right, satisfying something that classic music does not. Mr. Borneman feels that we are talking at cross-purposes and that if we recognized a thing for what it was we would not compare it with something of another kind. In speaking of jazz he says "it could not possibly be good by such standards as were evolved from the history of European music." (Italics mine.) Whatever new ingredient there is in jazz, and certainly there are many, the general manipulation, the general working out and those things that we can compare, put jazz in a position where, even if it did not have these other qualities, so dear to a listening public, and those special differences that Mr. Borne man has found, it would still compare "well" with early classic music. But jazz has seemingly more than early classic music had. I say "seemingly" because we cannot, as so many do, take the notated music as a faithful facsimile of all that transpired during the 17th and 18th centuries. They had their many "ways" of playing and significant playing style to which no notation could do justice. The musical literature of the period is witness to this fact. But in spite of notation's inadequacy, what came to us through it is great art. Jazz notated is comparable to this music and I have seen many musicians, though not liking jazz, still being astounded at the counterpoint and invention. I know we cannot compare something utterly new to something else but jazz, as different as it is, is not altogether far removed from the past. Mr. Borneman says : "However well the Tin Pan Alley boys arrange their jazz pieces, the academically trained composer still keeps his head start of five centuries and all attempts to beat him at his own game are therefore doomed to folly and failure." It is as though he had said that competition in orchestration is futile. Is not every jam session competing with 17th and 18th century counterpoint and is not every soloist competing with the inventive writing of those centuries? The trouble is that our orchestra men were too impatient and did not go along with jazz but wanted a quick job. They borrowed wholeheartedly and the results are our hybrid styles of orchestration which become dated over night. Mr. Borneman says that "collective improvisation compares with solo improvisation as an exciting race compares with the dull clocking of individual competition." Am I to understand this to be the case through all music or only the case in jazz? Counterpoint i^ exciting, but excitement is not the end of art. Mr. Borneman continues this subject in his June article. In speaking of duets he says : "In comparison with the tense counterpoint of these records, even the best of the solo records are disclosed in their mistaken ambition. Jazz is an orchestral music, not a solo art." No great solos in any musical art came from an art that was only a "solo art." One learns to play in an ensemble, learns to be creative, to acquire rhythmic sense and timing. We must first bear in mind that solos come after ensemble incubation and that it is not a "mistaken ambition" that prompts a soloist to take off. Unless, of course, we want to cross off 75