20TH CENTURY MUSIC

“Music of the twentieth century, considered as a whole, shows the widest possible range of different styles, techniques, and compositional philosophies. . . [and] the most distinctive aspect, and the most interesting historical fact, of the music of our own century, is the appearance in music of atonality, or absence of key, the result of more than a century of harmonic evolution and ever-widening exploration of the expressive resources of chromaticism.” ¹²¹

Musics of extended chromaticism is another name to this development, also pantonality, which includes jazz.  A longtime quid pro quo relationship has existed between 20th century composers and jazz improvisators.  Among the more well-known and established symphonic composers to be included in 20th century are Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, Elliot Carter, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Gorecky, Olivier Messiaen, and many, many others.  These are names, except Carter’s (an American), nearly as known among their respective nationals as Elvis Presley’s is known and revered throughout American Christendom. 

Some History

“With the exceptions perhaps of Boethius and John Scotus Erigena there is scarcely a sign of sound and constructive theological thinking between Augustine [c. 800], and Anselm (1033-1109).  And so Europe entered on a period of almost unrelieved barrenness. . . . . And if the drying up of classical learning freed men’s minds for scholastic theology, it withdrew from them that philosophical athleticism which had been the fourth century’s chief weapon against falsehood.  The classical revival under Charles the Great [Charlemagne] (Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, 800-814) produced a temporary access of learning. . . . The fact that the best philosopher of the period, John Scotus Erigena (c. 815-880) had his Plato from a debased edition of the Timaeus, and had no Aristotle at all, indicated well enough the degeneracy of scholarship which characterizes even this period of comparative enlightenment.

“An unconscious Platonic insight saw within the external accidents of the Church a ‘form’ or ‘idea’ of a transcendent [spiritual] Church which was the bearer of authority. . . . what was said about music, as about everything else, was said by the Church.” ¹²²

In the 10th century, Hermannus Contractus (Herman the Cripple: 1013-1054) reached the “zenith” of plainsong in the West.  His Alma Redemptoris Mater influenced music’s direction profoundly.  It was a simple matter, flattening the fourth of the lydian mode, which becomes the major scale.  Routley says that “its opening flourish is obviously the germ from which springs that great family of Genevan psalm-tunes of which Psalm 138 is probably the best known example.” ¹²³  A simple thing, half-a-step, that can effect history.  Round about 1600 Jacopo Peri (1561-1633) composed the first opera, with a new technique for a new form which would change the course of music. 

“In these works for the first time we see a solo voice, accompanied by instruments, singing an extended aria [air].  We see, in fact a ‘tune’, which is to say that we have a new emphasis placed on a single part - often an upper part - at the expense of other parts.  We have solo and accompaniment, or ‘tune’ and ‘harmony’, which is called in technical language the monodic style. 

 “. . . this was an invention foreign to England.” ¹²⁴

Schism

It was schism that was to ultimately put some pizzaz into the development of music in the West.  There had already been three mended schisms to occur between the Eastern and Western branches of the then-united Christian Church, when came the fourth and last - known as the Iconoclastic controversy, ordered by Pope Leo III (717-740), which forbade the use of “aids to worship,” mainly icons, statuary, and the like.  The fourth schism came in three parts: in 726-787; in 815-843, and, still to be resolved, in 1054. 

In a twisted bit of history it was the Muslim threat to the Eastern branch on its eastern borders which caused the Eastern branch, despite its creedal differences, to cling more tenaciously to the West and to accede more readily to Leo’s edict against the use of icons as “Aids to worship.”  Music was considered an aid to worship - “the East took the Puritan [sic] line in opposition to the West.” ¹²⁵  Therefore, in an interesting historical parallel, music became more of an underground event in the East, while music in the West under no particular threat was left to remain coursing along its usual.  Papal Edicts were easier to ignore then.  Consequently, music in the East, forced out of the establishment, got more creative.  In the West it got more fixed and formalized.  There is a lesson in this.  But, the thing to note is that the influx of Eastern Christian immigrants into the West, fleeing the Muslim invaders, which led up to the fall of the Byzantine Empire, helped to spark the Renaissance, preceded by their gathering cultural presence in southern Europe for over two hundred years.  Eventually - musical scholasticism in the West having developed the written form - instrumental music was to transcend vocal music, leaving behind words as the restraining discipline.  Church was soon to be no longer the monopoly for “serious” music. 

England, for centuries, never fully assimilated the “new” technique, which was a Continental development, mainly in Italy and France.  In England words were to remain the restraining discipline.  Not difficult to understand in a country whose tradition of theatre and spoken language was so indigenously rooted.  This attachment to words as the restraining discipline to music carried over to the English speaking New World, and is still with us today, not only in liturgical practice but also as the popular music industry, where words are the creative milieu and instrumental music mostly a supportive utility. 

Classical Music

Interestingly, J.S. Bach wrote his Mass in B Minor in Lutheran Germany where there was no mass.  Neither could it be used, eventually, in Catholic liturgy when a subsequent Papal edict (Motu Proprio of Pius X, 1903] was to declare the form it was written in to be unserviceable.  So, where music was once restrained in church by words, in secular courts by social dancing, it finally came into its own as, what is called, “classical” music, where

“music has reached its full stature as an independent language, an independent medium for thought.” ¹²⁶

Beginning about the time of Mozart, Germany was to maintain the lead in classical music’s development, and to stay there until Debussy, for one, at the end of the 19th century broke free of Wagner’s dominant, personal style extending from Beethoven’s pre-Quartets period.  But Germany was to retain its dominance in England for the classical style, as it tends still today in America.  Leave it up to romanticized bio-flicks, such as Amadeus, to give one a new-found taste of classical with-it-ness.  

War and sport, two favorite pastimes of our contemporary world, are both about conflict - in sport as competition, in war as combat.  Resolution in both war and sport is called winning.  People have negated 20th century music by calling it “dissonant.”  Dissonance is music’s equivalent of conflict.  After all, arts reflect the times.  People critical of modern music have not taken, or been given, the time to discover the subtlety of 20th century musics’ resolutions or to appreciate their lack, if in fact there has been no call to resolve. 

“Indeed, it is not the preacher or the historian or the sociologist who speaks to us most clearly of the ‘crisis of civilization’ in which we are involved, but the artist.” ¹²⁷

A problem for 20th century composition in America has been the failure of teachers to teach it and, consequently, players to play it; and, when performed, the resistance of the media and established concert venues to present it.  It is the main reason the average American still thinks of art, id est fine music, in terms of its older forms, and as belonging to the “old world”; and “serious” as only that which belongs to the European classical form.  The average American knows of the Texas interpretative pianist Van Cliburn because of his well-televised winning result, during the “Cold War,” in a contest held in Moscow. 

Before leaving off, what needs to be mentioned is music heard on many movie soundtracks.  It deserves a chapter in itself, but would take us too far afield.  Suffice it to say that, unbeknownst to them, American movie-going audiences are often treated to emulations and derivations, as well as occasionally original work, of 20th Century music by way of film scores.  

JAZZ

Candidates for teaching degrees in music, BA through PhD, can graduate from American institutions without having studied anything at all of America’s first music culture. 

Jazz is high art, that is, in its more developed forms.  It is the advanced artform for musical improvisation, beginning in the  20th century.  It is also fine in the sense that the European symphonic artform is fine.  It meets the three qualifications that matter for serious music: it entertains; it is intellectually interesting; it is morally educative. [see ON MUSIC].  It is fine due to the breadth of scope it offers for a complex order of musical detail; a wide musical landscape. 

Improvisation, naturally, has to it the element of impromptu, that is, spontaneity.  The impromptu was a formal practice in the European classical tradition, extending from the Renaissance period and maintained in the cadenza through the 19th century.  The cadenza allowed the pianist to improvise within a piece, which ultimately faded away in favor of such improvisations becoming fixed as the comosition itself, certainly due to interpreters becoming less practiced in improvisation. 

Improvisation often translates to some as something temporarily tacked together in place of something that could be better given other means.  This is far from the truth of modern jazz.  It is a discipline that, depending on the esthetic and intellectual extent of an individual improvisator, can entail years of study, practice, and training, having its own discipline with a deep, effectively functional and extensive vocabulary.  There is an element of the aleatoric, that is, music by chance, but within the discipline of jazz improvisation it is carefully controlled.  It lends spice to the performance but, unlike as in “Freeform,” it is never the entire course. 

Unlike classical music, generally a music of theme and development, jazz is a music of time and development.  It is more verb than noun.  It is also a process antithetical to standard academic practice.  With jazz, notes are secondary to the time in which they are executed.  If the balance of notes to an intended or prefigured phrase will not fit within the fixed time allotted, then the notes are what are to be sacrificed - not the time. 

More verb than noun, jazz, besides having its own repertoire, has traditionally performed material from other genres, a great deal drawn from the popular, including tunes from musical theater and film, foreign and domestic.  It is this ability of jazz to absorb, and to transform, any and all from the world’s popular musics that contributes to the depth of the jazz discipline. 

A theme, or melody of a tune, is just one of the choices to be considered during the improvisating process.  The “changes” - that is, the sequence of chords that gives the melody line its depth, are more important for the improvisating process than theme.  Theme, though important, is only one element to be considered.  The use of “substitution” chords in place of the ones original to the theme is common practice, especially on popular tunes that are often lacking harmonically with their original chord changes.  When this occurs, the line can alter accordingly.  So, it is not melody that dictates in jazz as much as the underlying harmony and what it implies. 

Ideally, each performance of a piece is, in its totality, done differently.  Jazz is best demonstrated in small groups comprised of improvisators.  Big bands are interpretive units, consisting mainly of instrumentalists reading from scored arrangements, having less to do with improvisation, though big bands often feature one or more of the section players as featured improvising soloists.  Small groups, of course, can also work from written charts, which are usually sketches (some more elaborate than others) that essentially set out the melody and chord sequence  The real performance for the small group is in the improvisation, while that of the big band is in the arrangement. 

Genres of music have their symbolic instrument.  The violin for European classical; electric guitar for rock and pop; and, for jazz, the saxophone or trumpet.  In fact, the saxophone has become the instrument by which most recent innovations in jazz has been measured - Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and others.  If one instrument is to have that distinction, I would argue that piano is historically more important than any single-note instrument for measuring innovation in jazz.  Innovation of major significance, especially considering the developments occurring in 20th century harmony, must be more than by way of a single line.  Without reference in harmony, a single line is merely an air. 

Recently, a nationally broadcast quasi-history of jazz on Public Television, entitled “Jazz,” failed to note this to any extent, crumbling to the more fashionable notion favoring single-note instruments, particularly the trumpet.  Besides being a percussive instrument, piano can handle it all, chords and melody.  A partial list of known pianists of sufficient weight, either as performers and/or composers, can include Duke Ellington, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Lennie Tristano, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, George Wallington, Phineas Newborn, Jr., James P. Johnson, Chick Corea, and dozens upon dozens of others. 

Each musician might stand the history of jazz differently, depending on his or her perspective and preferences.  It is an oral tradition, despite its fixed moments on recordings.  Unknown players can be major influences on players who become well-known.  In any case, becoming famous in modern times is the result of commercial enterprise.  There is no necessary quid pro quo ratio in America between being artistically worthy and being famous. 

The show, “Jazz,” also failed to lend sufficient credence to the bi-racial origins of America’s first universal culture.  The preponderance of African-Americans in jazz has been due in no small part to two factors: jazz, already held to be a black-only invention, was, until more recently, one of the few fields where an American of African descent could hope to succeed; and entrepreneurial white label-owners, in a climate where negro musicians were less likely to demand as much money and control, tended to produce mainly African-American musicians.  Which, of course, has resulted in jazz having such an African-American stamp to it.  The geniuses of Americans of African descent deserve being recognized.  Does that need to be said?  Perhaps so, considering the socio-political turmoil still going on.  But to choose the genius of one over another based on racial stereotyping is against everything modern men and women at their best stand for. 

The argument is not one of race but of truth and fairness.  If, in those earlier days, things were then as they occasion now, then it should not be surprising if equally worthy musicians were overlooked simply because they were white.  Jazz has never been integral to white society.  So, while white jazz musicians are marginalized by their supposed own racial kind, black jazz musicians continue to be respected by both black and white societies. 

Early on politically incorrect, jazz was the first culture in racially segregated American Christendom to socially integrate.  But, even in the best of times, white jazz musicians were, and still are, not entirely accepted by blacks.  Ironically, less accepted now than when segregation was being enforced.  Blacks can claim that white jazz musicians could never thoroughly know the black experience.  On the other hand, blacks can not know the experience of white jazz musicians living cutoff in a cultural world that is not entirely white or black, where such a thing still matters. 

Jazz is not an ethnic music, which it would be if it was the creation of a single ethnic group.  Blues, on the other hand, is an ethnic music.  Blues, a form created entirely by Americans of African descent, has influenced jazz profoundly, without which jazz would not be jazz.  But Blues is not jazz. 

Jazz is far more complex.  Recently, two African musicians were featured performing live with an African-American Blues singer-guitarist, fitting perfectly together.  One of the African musicians, interviewed after the performance, said how natural it felt playing with the American bluesman.  On the other hand, saying how much he admired jazz, admitted that he could not play it. 

The National Endowment for the Arts classifies jazz as a form of “folk” music, which is, of course, ridiculous.  As bassist Ray Brown has suggested, “Jazz is in the background or intertwined in the roots of most of the musics of the modern Western world.”  This includes jazz-influenced modern classical.  Jazz itself, though, is a separate and distinct discipline.  And it can, as European classical does, take into its form folk and popular musics of any time and place - the confluence of many cultures into the transforming receptacle of the greater form. 

New York is where jazz grew into its most sophisticated, “where a dozen or so languages were spoken by the end of the 17th century.” ¹²⁸   Despite rhetoric to the contrary, and despite political turmoil to confirm a historical canard resulting in sociological lawmaking - what Will Herberg characterizes as the “totalization” of partial histories, ¹²⁹ - jazz is a black and white invention, as unique in the history of music as America is in the history of nations; which is one of its beauties, what binds us.  It’s what makes us a people.  

Evangelical preachers have taken publicly-aired shots at jazz, regarding it as unworthy.  They do not see anything wrong, though, with the music that was regional to them during their own growing years.  What jazz they are talking about is not clear.  And theirs seems to be refutation stemming from genetic fallacy:

“. . . ’genetic fallacy,’ id est, something rejected because it is perceived to come from a bad source, that attempts ‘to reduce the significance of. . . [a] practice . . .merely to an account of its origin (genesis) or its earlier forms, thereby overlooking the development, regression, or difference to be found in it in the present situation.’” ¹³⁰

How can jazz be used in direct Christian service?

“Intrinsic in worship are awe, detachment, exaltation, inner peace, contemplation, reverence, a sense of God’s mercy, and, by no means least, mystery.  To all of these the best sacred music gives eloquent voice.” ¹³¹

It shouldn’t surprise anyone, but I suppose it will to some, that all the qualities and purposes set forth above for sacred music are intrinsic to what is also possible in jazz.