Burkholder - Jazz y música popular

7/28/2019 Burkholder - Jazz y msica popular

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AhistoryofWesternmusic.8

thedition.J.PeterBurkholder.IndianaUniversity.DonaldJayGrout.LateofCornellUniversity.ClaudeV.Palisca.LateofYaleUniversity.Copyright2010byW.W.Norton&CompanyNewYork,London.


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CHAPTER OUTLINETHE COLD W . ~ R ~ N L JTHE S P L I N T E R I ~ C

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Postwar Crosscurrents

The central theme of Western music history since themid -nineteenth century is a growing pluralism. Witheach generation, new popular traditions emerged inresponse to changes in society, and the heirs to theclassical tradition created more diverse styles of artmusic at an ever increasing rate. This process

accelerated in the twenty-five years after the end of World War II,propelled by an economic boom in the United States and most ofwestern Europe, by ever more rapid communications, and by adesire among younger generations to explore new possibilities.Musicians developed new styles, trends, and traditions, includingforms of popular music aimed principally at young people. such asrock and roll and its offshoots; styles of jazz, from bebop tofreejazz , that demanded more concentrated listening; applications ofindeterminacy and chance in composition; increasingly complexapproaches to serial composition; music built of sound itself thatemployed new instruments, electronic music, or new sounds onorchestral instruments ; and pieces based on quotation andcollage of past music. In Europe, new music was often supportedby governments, through radio stations and institutes, while inNorth America colleges and universities became major patrons ofmusic, training young performers and music educators andsupporting composers, new music ensembles, wind ensembles,and jazz programs.


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The Cold \far and the Splinterin!( Tradition

THE COLDWA Ii A \ [) THESPI,INTFHINC THADfTIO\The postwar expansion was achieved bv generations \\-ho had suffered

through the Depression and the most global and destructive war the \\orld hadever seen. Germany. Italy. and Japan were defeated by the Allies. but at greatcost. Millions were dead: soldiers killed in action. civilians in bombing raids.and Jews and other victims in the Nazi death camps. Mucb of Europe lay inruins. and many of the buildings. artworks. and musical scores Europeans hadcreated over the centuries were destroyed. Bv dropping- atomic bombs onHiroshima and Nagasaki. the United States forced Japan to capitulate butinaugurated the atomic age. and in response the Soviet Union. Britain.France. and other nations developed their own nuclear arsenals. The horrorsof war. the Holocaust. and nuc lear weapons provoked a ,,-ide range of cult uralreactions. from the French existent ialist I t erature of Jean - Paul Sartrc andAlbert Camus to a growing fashion for horror and science fiction films.At war's end. the Soviet Union occupied most of eastern Europe. By 1948. it Til (' (,'/1111 Wu,.

reabsorbed Lithuania. Latvia. and Estonia. which were independent betweenthe wars. and installed communist regimes under its control in Poland.Czechoslovakia. Hungary. Romania. and Bulgaria. Communist governmentsalso took power in Yugoslavia. Albania. and China. Western nationsresponded with attempts to contain the expansion of communism. Interna-tional relations for the next two g'enerations were framed bv the political con-!liet. known as the Cold War. between the United States and the Soviet Unionand their respective allies. Figure 3,5.1 shO\\s the map of postwar Europe.divided between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-an alliance of theUnited States. Canada. and European democracies--and the Soviet Union'sparallel organization. the Warsaw Pact. Symbolic of the conflict was the divi-sian of Germany between a democratic. pro-Western government in WestGermany and a communist government in East Germany.New international institutions such as th e United Nations. founded in

1945. furthered cooperation but could not defuse all tensions. At times theCold War heated up. as in the Korean War (1950-,53). Cuban missile crisis

( 1 9 6 ~ ) . and Vietnam War (1954-75)' It also played out in other IYpes of competition. such as the race into space. won by the United States with the firstmoon landing in 1969. Music performance and composition. along \\ithOlympic sports. chess. and other cultural fields. were used bv both sides asarenas for competition.The United States. least damaged bv the war among the active participants. fC()/lIIlIl [( .enjoyed rapid economic growth. Technological innovations and expanded C.l" IWIl 'WI lmanufacturing capacity boosted productivitv. resulting in historically highmeomes for factory and office workers that lifted most Americans into themiddle class. Returning soldiers created both a baby boom and a housingboom. raising consumer demand. The G.!. Bill paid for veterans to go to col-lege. producing a tremendous expansion of colleges and universities and of


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35 POSTIOR CnOSSClRREHS

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the numbers of citizens with university degrees, which further fueled economic growth, The number of families owning their own homes soared, andthey bought cars, furniture, household appliances, and other goods at growingrates. Western Europe and Japan underwent similar economic growth. aidedby investments from the United States. Cooperation through the CommonMarket and NATO wove western Europe together, making old nationalist tensions increasingly obsolete.

The expansion of higher education in North America and Europe waslinked with growing access to the arts, and attendance at museums, concerts,and other cultural venues increased along with government and private support. Television and home stereo systems increasingly brought entertainmentand music into the home. The 78-rpm records (disks rotating 78 times perminute) that were the mainstay of recordings before the war were replaced bylong-playing records (LPs). which could accommodate more than twentyminutes of music per side, and 45-rpm "singles" became the main mediumfor popular songs. The invention of the transistor led to miniature, portableradios that could go anywhere. bringing broadcast music into cars and theoutdoors. "Disc jockeys" played recordings of popular songs on the radio,replacing most of the live-music shows of previous decades. Tape recorders,


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Popular Music

invented during the 1930s and widely available from the 1950S on, improvedthe sound ofrecorded music, made electronic music possible, and put into thehands of individuals th e tools for preserving and manipulating sounds.

Starting with British India in 1947, European colonies throughout Asia and In d1'1)('1](1 en CI'Mrica won independence and emerged as new nations. The growing political (11111 ci\'il rip,hl.'and economic significance of Asia and Africa encouraged cultural exchanges,leading to a rising interest in music ofthe non-Western world in the West andin American popular music throughout the world. The nonviolent strategiesMohandas Gandhi developed to win independence for India were adopted byMartin Luther King Jr. and others in the effort to win equal civil rights forMrican Americans, a movement in which music played a significant role asunifier and inspiration. The Civil Rights movement in turn inspired others inthe 1960s and 1970s, from student organizations and protests against th eVietnam War to the women's and gay liberation movements.The victory over fascism. the economic boom. new technologies, and the '\II1"i('(1/ Il/lim/ismwinds of freedom helped to inspire a period of unprecedented experimenta-tion and diversification in music. Popular music splintered into traditions fordifferent regions. ethnicities. affinity groups, and ages, each owing somethingto earlier popular song, blues. jazz, or swing while forging a distinctive iden-tity. Composers of art music went in numerous directions, sharing less com-mon ground as they explored new possibilities. Urban centers, mass media,and colleges and universities allowed musicians to find a small but devotedaudience that would support speeialized types of music, creating niche mar-kets in which everything from early music groups to avant-garde rock bandscould thrive. Musicians, critics, and listeners engaged in strident debatesabout music: whether rock music was a bad innuence on the young or a sourceof freedom, whether jazz should hold to its t rad itions or search out new meth-ods, whether c:1assical composers should seek to appeal to a broad public orpursue a hermetic ideal in isolation. Among the dizzying number an d varietyof trends in this period, this chapter will describe some of the most importantand distinctive.

POPULAH MUSICIn the interwar years, popular music in the United States was c:1osely allied

to Broadway musicals and to jazz. But after the war, musicians took these traditions in separate directions.

Economic growth in the postwar years gave young people greater leisuretime and more disposable income. For the first time, teenagers became significant fo r the marketing industry, and clothing. cosmetics, magazines.movies, and entertainment were designed for and marketed to them. Increasingly, young people had their own radios and record players, and they listenedto and bought recordings of music that reflected their own tastes. Recordcompanies responded by marketing specific kinds of music to th e teen andyoung adult market that became known as pop music. Some types of music,like rock and roll, united most teenagers in the late 1950S and early 19 60s,

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35 POSTWAR CROSSCL'RRENTS

creating a "generation gap" between them and older generations. But as popular music continued to split into niche markets, people of all ages found thatthe music they listened to marked their identity as strongly as the clothes theywore and the ways they behaved. Each type of music had its own stars, fans.and radio programs, and the popularity of songs in each category was trackedon charts, weekly rankings by sales of 45 -rpm singles.

COUNTRY MUSICOne tradition, associated primarily with white southerners, was countrymusic (also called country-and-western), a type of popular music with folkmusic roots that began between the wars, spread through radio shows andrecordings, and grew in popularity after World War II. As suggested by thepainting in Figure 3 5 . ~ , country music was a blend of many sources: the hillcountry music of the southeast, based on traditional Anglo-American balladsand fiddle tunes; western cowboy songs an d styles popularized by Gene Autryand other movie cowboys; popular songs of the nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies; blues, banjo music, and other African -American traditions; big-

r l ~ U /,(,'1),:,;: The Sources of Country Music (1975). mural by Thomas Hart Benton for theCountry Music Hall 0/Fame and Museum in Nashville. Tennessee. The sources depictedinclude (counter-clockwisefrom lower left) traditionalAnglo-Amerimn ballads accompanied by Appalachian dulcimer. fiddle tunes played for dancing. cowboy songs with guitaraccompaniment, African-American song and banjo traditions, popular songs (representedby' the shows in the distant steamboat). traveling songs (represented by the train). andgospel songs and hymns. (Cuurtesvuf'Cnuntr), Music Hall ofTame@llnd Museum)


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Popular Music

band swing; and gospel songs. Such a combination of traditions across socialand ethnic lines is typically American. Country music was valued for its energy.its sincere sentiments, it s witty wordplay (part of it s heritage from Tin PanAlley), and its ability to articulate th e experience of rural and working-classAmericans in a rapidly changing world.

Typically country music centers on a singer strumming or picking a guitaraccompaniment, often joined by others singing in close harmony or backed bya band dominated by fiddles and guitars (eventually electric and pedal steelguitars). Several distinctive styles developed. includingwestem swing, honky-tonk, and bluegrass. Two stars of postwar country music, Han k Williams ( 1 9 ~ 3 -1953) and Johnny Cash ( 1 9 3 ~ - ~ 0 0 3 ) , reached both country and mainstreamaudiences. N ashvi Ile became the center of country music in part because ofimportant venues such as the Grand or Opry. made famous through radio andlater television broadcasts. By the 1970s, there were country music stations allover the United States. and country became a nationwide style with continuingregional. racial. and class associations. much as New Orleans jazz had donefifty years earlier.

RHYTHM AND BLUES AND ROCK AND ROLLThe war and postwar years saw a continuation of the Creat Migration or fJcclr/c IIluc.,African Americans to northern cities. seeking greater economic opportuni-ties. As bluesmen moved ["rom th e rural south to the urban north, many beganto play electric guitars and developed a new style known as elecl.ric blnes.Chicago was an important center for the development of electric hlues. per-sonified by the music or Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield. I


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35 POSTWAR CROSSCeRREI\'TS

Rock and roll Alan Freed. a popular radio disc jockey in Cleveland. is credited with coin-ing rock and roll as a name for a new style that blended black and white traditions of popular music. Rock and roll combined the unrelenting beat ofrhythm and blues with the milder guitar background of country music anddrew on numerous elements in both traditions. from rhythm to timbre. Theinstrumentation consisted of amplified or electric guitars fo r both rhythmand melody. backed by electric bass and drums and sometimes augmented byother instruments. Song forms drew on Tin Pan Alley as well as blues. andrhythms and vocal styles encompassed everything from boogie-woogie tocountry twangs and gospel shouts. The words. most often concerned with loveor sex. were often delivered in a raucous. sometimes wailing voice. althoughthere were also gentle romantic ballads sung in a deliberately subdued mode.Both the words and the varied styles spoke directly to teens' experiences. cre-ating a close identification between the listeners and their music.

Rock and roll was launched nationally in the 1955 film Blackboard Junglewith the hit song Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets. The firstmega -star was Elvis Presley. who enjoyed phenomenal success with his hipswiveling blend of country and rhythm and blues. By 196o. rock and r o l l ~soon simply called rock-was being heard all over the world. especially inEnglish-speaking areas. and was outselling every other kind of music. Blackrock-and -roll singer-songwriter Chuck Berry (b 1 9 ~ 6 ) caught the bravado ofthe young displacing their elders in his 1956 hit Roll Over. Beethoven: "Rollover. Beethoven. and dig these rhythm and blues."

THE SIXTIESTh e Reo tl es By the early 1960s. many of rock' s earliest stars had fallen off the pop charts.

Into the void stepped the Beatles. a quartet from LiverpooL England. com-posed of two creative singer-songwriters. John Lennon ( 1 9 4 o ~ 1 9 8 o ) andPaul McCartney (b. 1 9 4 ~ ) ; guitarist and songwriter George Harrison (1943-

~ 0 0 1 ) ; and drummer Ringo Starr (b. 1940)' "Beatlemania." already takinghold in the United Kingdom in 1963. reached the United States in February1964 when the Beatles began an American tour, shown in Figure 35.3. After afew years of touring. the Beatles began devoting their energy to studiorecordings, experimenting with techniques impossible to produce in a livesetting. The resulting albums. especially Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts ClubBand (1967). embraced a wide variety of musical styles, from British musichall songs to Indian sitar music. in songs whose level of interest to connoisseurs began to rival that of classical music. Their example encouraged otherrock bands to experiment with recording technology and to create rockbased music of depth.

Find hmnchec; 0111 The Beatles' 1964 American tour began the "British Invasion," an influxinto NorthAmerica of British bands such as the Rolling Stones. the Kinks. theAnimals, the Who. and Cream. Many of these bands were blues- based. influenced by African -American bluesmen such as Robert Johnson. The emphasison blues and an increasing focus on electric guitar solos gave rock a harderedge. Guitar virtuosos such as Jimi Hendrix ( 1 9 4 ~ ~ 1 9 7 0 ) and Cream's EricClapton (b. 1945) became for the electric guitar what Paganini and Liszt were


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Popular Music

for thc nineteenth-century violin and piano. Hendrix's stunning solo on TheStar-Spangled Banner in front of an audience 01' half a million people at theoutdoor rock festival Woodstock (ly6y) was both a protest against knee-jerkpatriotism and an assertion of virtuosic prowess. As bands sought an individual sound. they developed many new styles within th e broad tradition of rock:the California surf sty Ie of the Beach Boys; St eppcnwoH's hea.v7 met(rl style: thehard roeA; of Led Zeppelin and Acrosmith; the acid rock or PS7chcdelic roeA: ofJefferson Airplane; and the avant-go,l'de rock of Frank Zappa. Music and lyricswere youth-oriented, often expressing opposition to thc prevailing politicalculture or social expectations.

1 1 . ~ l J r ( ' TheBritish rock group theBeatles pel.forming onthe television series'The Ed SullivanShow" on February 9.1964. Already wellknown in England. theBeatles became aworldwide culturalphenomenon. Theirappearance onAmerican television usheredin what became knownas Beal.lemania. (HultOil Archi.ve/Cett.y Images)

In the postwar decCldes, rising interest in American l'olk songs led to a new rill/, (111(/kind of popular music that drew on folk traditions. Croups like thc Weavers I)m/('.,/ f i l I I . , / ( 'and Peter, Paul, and Mary performed gcnuine folk songs alongside new songsin similar styles. Although the latter by definition were popular songs (newlycomposed by known authors and sold through sheet music and recordings)rather than folk songs (which have unknown origins and are passed downorally), the whole tradition became known asJolk music. In opposition to theincreasing sophistication and professionalism of most other popular music,folk music was deliberately simple, featuring one or more singers with guitaror banjo accompaniment, and often the audience was encouraged to joinin the singing.

Like rock and roll, folk music was an important musical voice for expressing identity and ideology. Since the nineteenth century, singer-songwritershad adapted folk. popular, and hymn tunes to political ends by writing ne wtexts in support of labor unions and other social causes. Many such songs werecreated for the Civil Rights movement, including the movement's anthem WeShall Overcome, adapted from a hymn. In the 1940S and 1950s, Woody Guthrie


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35 POST\\ \R CROSSCl:RREI\TS

( 1 9 1 ~ - 1 9 6 7 ) and Pete Seeger (b. 1919)' stepsonof Ruth Crawford Seeger. were especiallyprominent as singers and songwriters of folkand protest songs.

In the 1960s, the struggles for civil rights andagainst th e Vietnam War galvanized youngermusicians such as Joan Baez (b. 1941) and BobDylan (b. 1941) who voiced the protests of theirgeneration in their songs. Dylan's songs Elowin'in the Wind ( 1 9 6 ~ ) and The Times They Are AChangin' (1963) combined traditional folkstyles with simple guitar harmonies, a roughvoice, blues harmonica, and a keen sense ofpoetry. By the mid-sixties, Dylan was usingelectric guitar in a blend of folk and rock traditions. His complex lyrics, marked by unusualrhymes, puns, alliteration, and apparently deepor hidden meanings, captivated a generationand inspired many other pop artists.

rlpl n' Ray- Charles shown performing at the piano.

The leading African -American tradition ofpopular music in the 1960s was soul, a descendant of rhythm and blues in which the intenseexpression, melismas, and ecstatic vocalizationsof gospel singing were brought over to songs onlove, sex, and other secular subjects. Among the

in a photogmph taken around 1960_ (BettmannICoriJis)

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leading exponents were singer- songwriter Ray Charles ( 1 9 3 0 - ~ 0 0 4 ) , shown inFigure 35.4, who popularized the new trend from the mid-1950s on; JamesBrown 1 9 3 3 - ~ 0 0 6 ) , the "King of Soul" ; Otis Redding (1941-1967); and ArethaFranklin (b. 1 9 4 ~ ) . Soul became closely associated with the struggle forAfrican-American equality through Brown's Say It Loud-I'm Black and I'mProud (1968) and Franklin's recording of Redding's Respect (1967).

The sounds of Motown-a Detroit - based record company founded andowned by African -American entrepreneur Berry Gordy (b. 1 9 ~ 9 ) - d o m i n a t e dthe soul charts of the 1960s and often crossed over to top the pop charts aswell. Gordy's intention was to create popular music that would appeal to bothblack and white audiences. In -house songwriting teams and studio musiciansproduced a consistent, groomed sound for groups like Smokey Robinsonand the Miracles, the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops. and Marthaand the Vandellas. Other significant performer-composers who got their startat Motown include Marvin Gaye (1939-1984), Stevie Wonder (b. 1950), andMichael Jackson (b. 1958).

Latino-Americans produced their own styles of music, drawing on traditions from Central or Latin America. In Texas and the southwestern UnitedStates. Tex-Mex combined Mexican mariachi music with American countnmusic. In New York City and Puerto Rico, a distinctive type of dance musiccalled salsa emerged in the 1960s. Salsa is a mix of Cuban dance styles withjazz. rock, and Puerto Rican musical elements. A typical salsa ensembleincludes ten to fourteen members on vocals, piano, Cuban percussion (such


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Broadway and Film Music:

as timbales, daves, and conga drums), bass, and brass. Each instrument playsadistinctive rhythm, forming a driving dance beat of interlocking, polyrhythmie ostinatos. Championed by Tito Puente ( 1 9 ~ 3 - ~ 0 0 0 ) and other performers' salsa embodied the rich ethnic mix of New York's music scene and offeredthe Puerto Rican immigrant community a distinct musical identity.

The diversity of popular traditions shows the pluralism of modern society Plu mliwlbut also it s common threads. Although identified with a particular group of onri hdJririspeople, each of these traditions represents a blend of elements from severalsources, including common roots in prewar popular song, jazz, and blues.Popular music in other nations likewise blended local and regional traditionswith elements absorbed from American popular styles. Although the tradi-tional music of a culture or region once helped provide a sense of commonidentity for all generations, the emergence of new styles of popular music ineach region reflected and reinforced tensions between older and youngergenerations and between rural and urban populations.

BnOADWAY AND FILM MUSICBroadway musicals maintained their traditions after World War II. mostly

separa1e from trends in popular music. The emphasis on integrated musicalsthat began with Show Boat-- in which all aspects of the production support theplot-continued. As in the past, most Broadway shows were collaborations,and the great sonhrwritingteams produced hit tunes well into the 196m;, Composer Riehard Rodgers ( ] ( 1 o ~ - ] ( n 9 ) initially collaborated with lyricist LorenzHart (1895-1943) and later with Oscar ~ r a m m e r s t e i n II (1895-1960), andFrederick Loewe (1904-1988) wrote music forthe books and lyrics of Ala n .layLerner (191H-1986). Irving Berlin was still active, producing classics such asAnnie Get YOl-Lr Gun (1946) and Call Me M(ulam (1950), and Cole Porter had oneoIhis biggest hits with Kiss Me. Kate (1948), based on Shakespeare's The Tam-Ing of" the Shrew. Successful musicals tended to find their way to Hollywoodfilms within a few years and were also quickly disseminated to the publicthrough record ings and productions by touring, amateur. and, in later years,high school theater groups.

Rodgers and Hammerstein produced some of Broadway's best-lovedshows, including Oklahoma! (1943), Carou.sel (1945), South PacifLc (1949), TheKing and I (1%1), and The Sound oj"Music (1959). Shown in Fi6JUre 35.5, theirfirst collaboration, Oklahoma!, not only enjoyed a record - breaking run ofover two 1housand performances but also marked a pivotal moment in thedevelopment ofthe integrated musical. Set in the Oklahoma territory around1900, th e story is richly textured, filled with both dramatic and comedic subplots. The characters are developed not only through dialogue but alsothrough song. Dance, choreographed by famed dancer Agnes de Mille, alsoplayed a crucial dramatic role. The story's emphasis on American folk historyand th e simple pleasures of rural life appealed gTeatly to Americans duringwar time and the early postwar years.

Leonard Bernstein (1910-199) was a major presence both on Broadway

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3.5 POSTWAR CROSSClIRRE'lTS

figme 35-S: The original Broadway castfrom the 1943musical production ofOklahoma!. the first collaborationbetween Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

and in classical music. Initially known as aclassical composer, he became an overnightcelebrity in 1944 after brilliantly conductingthe New York Philharmonic as a last-minutereplacement. That same year, his Broadwaymusical On the Town opened for a run of 463performances. In addition to his career as aconductor and composer of symphonies andvocal music, Bernstein enjoyed enormoussuccess with his musical West Side Story (1957).with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (b. 193o) andbook by Arthur Laurents. Set in gang-riddenNew York City of the 1950s, West Side StOT)," is aretelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and juliet,substituting rival gangs for the warring families of the original. The setting provided Bernstein with rich opportunities for including avariety of musical styles, including AfroCaribbean dance styles, jazz, and soaringmelodies in Tin Pan Alley MBA formulas.

In the 1960s, Broadway musicals diversified their subject matter and thereforeadapted styles from other traditions. Jerry(Bettmann/Garbis) Bock evoked Jewish folk music for Fiddler on

the Roof (1964), set in a Russian Jewish village, and Galt MacDermot's Hair(1967), a picture of urban hippie life, used a rock band and emulated Motown,acid rock, and folk music alongside traditional Broadway styles.

FILM MUSICFilm music also diversified in the postwar years, as composers chose stylesand sounds that were appropriate to the subject and mood. Miklos Rozsa(197-1995) developed several different styles, from an angular, contrapuntal, yet tonal modernism that helped to define the movie genre of film noirto amock-ancient style for historical epics such as Ben Hur (1959). The score toAStreetcar Named Desire (1951) by Alex North (1910-1991) popularized the use ofjazz to represent urban settings, sexual situations, and social ills from alcoholism to crime. Leonard Bernstein used a dissonant modernist style in hisscore fo r On the Wate1ront (1954), and others adopted atonal and serial musicwhere their tense emotional qualities were appropriate. Bernard Herrmann(l911-1975) became famous for his scores to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane(1941) and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), andPsycho (1960), whose dissonant tonal language drew on Ives, Berg, Hindemith, and other modernists. Westerns often featured music in the diatonicAmericanist style championed by Copland in his ballets and film scores. butthe Italian composer Ennio Morricone (b . 1 9 ~ 8 ) created a new, popinfluenced style for his Western scores, including The Good, the Bad and theUgly (1967). National and ethnic traditions helped to establish place and atmo-


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Broadway and Film Musil'

TIMELINE: POSTWAR CROSSCURRENTSMUSICAL EVENTS

Olivier Messiaen, Quartet for the End ofTime 1940-41Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! 1943

Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes 1944-45Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Anthropology 1945

john Cage, Sonatas and Interludes 1946-48Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool 1949-50

Morten Feldman, Projection I 1950First piece of musique concrete 1950

Cage, Music ofChanges 1951Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kreuzspiel 1951Samuel Barber, Hermit Songs 1952-53

Pierre Boulez, Le marteau sans maitre 1953-55Bill Haley and the Comets, Rock Around 1955

the ClockBernard Herrmann, film score to Psycho 1960

Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz 1960Krzysztof Penderecki, Threnody 1960Bob Dylan, Blowin'in the Wind 1962The Beatles' first American tour 1964

Milton Babbitt, Philomel 1964Luciano Berio, Sequenza III 1965-66

Moog and Buchla synthesizers introduced 1966Aretha Franklin records Respect 1967

The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts 1967Club Band

Karel Husa, Music for Prague 1968Half a million people attend Woodstock 1969

outdoor rock festival in Bethel, New YorkGeorge Crumb, Black Angels 1970

HISTORICAL EVENTS

1939 Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II

1945 World War II ends1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization formed

1950-53 Korean War

1953 USA and USSR both test hydrogen bombs

1958 European Common Market formed

1962 Cuban missile crisis1963 President john F. Kennedy assassinated

1968 Students riot in Paris, antiwar protests in UnitedStates

1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are first humanson the moon

sphere, from Mikis Theodorakis's score for Zorba the Greek (1964) to the blendof traditional and Western elements in the film music of India, China. andJapan. Electronic music was used frequently for psychologically upsettingevents, the strange or supernatural, and space aliens.


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35 POST"AR CROSSCURRE'HS

Popular music continued to be a strong element in postwar film. In hisjazz-influenced score to Laura (1944), David Raksin ( 1 9 1 ~ - ~ 0 0 4 ) introduceda theme song that was woven throughout the film and became a hit song in itsown right. Many later films also featured theme songs, whose presence on thepop charts could earn additional income and advertise the film. Rock andother forms of pop music appeared in movies aimed at the teen market, fromThe Blackboard .Jungle and a series of films starring Elvis Presley to the beachmovies of the 1960s. The Beatles' A Hard Days Night (1964) was a financialsuccess both as a film and as a soundtrack recording, and many other moviesfollowed a similar model of marketing the film and soundtrack together.

FROM BEBOP TO FREE JAZZThe three decades from 1940 to 1970 witnessed the emergence of several

new styles of jazz, the continuation of older styles, an d a growing consciousnessof jazz history and a desire to preserve it. Jazz lost its role as a form of popularmusic when it was replaced by rhythm and blues and other styles. Instead. jazzwas increasingly regarded as music that demanded concentrated listening.Although most of the major jazz artists were Mrican American. many of theperformers and the great majority of the audience for jazz were white.

In the years immediately following the end of World War II, financial sup-port for big bands declined sharply. More musicians now joined smallergroups, called combos.

BEBOPA new style of jazz built around virtuosic soloists fronting small combos.known as bebop or bop, emerged in the early 1940S during the waning yearsof the swing craze. In New York City, soloists playing with swing bands beganto meet in after- hours clubs after their regular engagements finished for theevening. Clubs such as Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown Houseoffered these musicians the opportunity to pit their skills against each other in"cutting contests," playing standards at blistering speed or in difficult keys toweed out the less-talented musicians. Out of these cutting contests grew a newmusical language that became known as bebop.

Characteristics Bebop was rooted in standards from the swing era. in blues progressions.and in other popular sources for contrafacts, but it was newly infused withextreme virtuosity. harmonic ingenuity. unusual dissonan ces, chromaticism.complicated rhythms. and a focus on solo voices and improvisation. A typicalbebop combo featured a rhythm section of piano, drums. bass. and one ormore melody instruments. such as trumpet or saxophone. In contrast to big-band music. bebop was meant not for dancing but for attentive listening. Thefocus was on the star performers and their prowess as improvisers. Perfor-mances in which one of the players was essentially the composer are pre-served on recordings that have become classics. listened to over and overagain. transcribed, analyzed. and reviewed in critical essays.


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From Bebop to Free JaZ l

ligille (" Altosaxophonist CharlieParker and tmmpeterDizzy Gillespie per-Jorming with bassistTomml- Potter andtenor saxophonist JohnColtrane. in a photo-graph taken on stage atthe legendm:v Birdlandjazz club in New YorkCity. ca. 19So. (Hil i /on/1rchi\'c/Cett)-/III(lP:es)

A characteristic example of bebop is Anthropology (N;\WM ,ILl), by alto ;\ntl}f'()fJolog)saxophonist Charlie Parker (19'2.0-'955, nicknamed "Bird") and trumpeterDizzy Gillespie (1917-1993), shown in Figure 35.6. Like many other bebopstandards, Anthropology is a eontrafael on the "rhythm changes"; that is, itfeatures a new melody over the chord progression for Gershwin's I CotRhythrn(seechapter3:3and N\\VM ' ("Jand '':''2,). A bebop performance nor-mally begins with an introduction and then 1he head., the primary tune,played in unison or oetaves by the melody ins1 rumcn1s. Players performfrom an abbreviated score called a lead sheet (shown in N '\\'\ M ,1::\;,), whieh I CD G ~includes only the head, with ehord symbols indicating the harmony. Thetune for Anthropology is typical in eonsisting of short. rapid bursts of notesseparated by surprising rests, creating a jagged, unpredictable melody. Thehead is followed by several choruses, solo improvisations over the harmony,and the piece ends with a final statement of th e head. In the classic record-ing of Anthropology, Parker played a sizzling solo of unusual length (tran-scribed in NAWM ,Inll), taking up three choruses while he surrounded thechord changes with a flurry of chromatic alterations. This solo has beenlearned by countless younger saxophonists who sought to emulate Parker'ssound and style.

In addition to Gillespie and Parker, prominent bebop musicians includedtrumpeter Miles Davis (19'2.6-1991) and in their early careers saxophonistJohn Coltrane (19'2.6-1967); pianists Thelonious Monk (1917-198'2.) and BudPowell (19'2.4-1966); and drummers Kenny Clarke (1914-1985) and MaxRoach (b. 19'2.4).


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11!f,1I1'f' C o ~ e r ofthe LP Free Jazz byOmette Coleman'sensemble, consisting oftwo quartets of reedinstruments, trumpet.bass, and drums. Onthe lower right is a holecut through the card-board. through whichcan be seen part oj'thereproduction ofJack-son Pollack's paintingWhite Light on theinside c o ~ e r . (RhinoEntertainment Company)

35 POSTWAR CROSSClJRRINTS

AFTER BEBOPMany of these musicians pioneered new jazz styles in the 1950s, seeking pathsfor individual expression by extending the methods and ideas of bebop. MilesDavis was behind a series of innovations, beginning with his album Birthof the Cool (1949-50). It s softer timbres, more relaxed pace, and rhythmicsubtleties inaugurated the trend that became known as cool jazz, soon taken upby the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck (b. 1 9 ~ 0 ) , and many others.Whereas bebop had begun as an improvising soloists' music, Birth of the Coolput the composer-arranger front and center.

A contrasting style was hard bop, dominated by drummers such as KennyClarke, Max Roach, and Art Blakey (1919-90), which focused on the percussive

and propulsive side of jazz. Miles Davis(Kind of Blue, 1959) explored yet anothernew style known as modal jazz, which fea-tured slowly unfolding melodies over sta-ble, relatively static modal harmonies. Cooljazz, hard bop, and modal jazz were allattempts to temper the extremes of bop.through mellowness, the use of elementsfrom rhythm and blues, or more freedomfor melodic and harmonic improvisation.The new jazz styles from bebop on havebeen compared by some historians to themultiplicity of modern styles in twentiethcentury classical music, and they derivefrom a similar source: a desire to say some-thing new in a distinctive style thatremained rooted in the tradition.

In the 1960s, alto saxophonist OrnetteColeman (b . 1930) and his ensembleintroduced a more radically new jazz language known as free jazz, named aftertheir landmark album Free .Jazz (1960).

which contained a single, thirty-seven-minute-Iong group improvisation.This experimental style moved away from jazz standards and familiar tunes.turning instead to a language built of melodic and harmonic gestures, innovative sounds, atonality, and free forms using improvisation that was carried onoutside the strictures and structures of standard jazz forms. The style wascompared to the free-form abstract expressionist paintings ofT ackson Pollack

( 1 9 1 ~ - 1 9 5 6 ) , made by dripping paint on canvas; indeed, the cover of Free Jazz.shown in Figure 35.7, opened up to reveal a reproduction of Pollack's WhiteLight, partly visible through a hole cut in the cover's front panel.

Around the same time, John Coltrane developed a personal avant-gardestyle based on very fast playing, motivic development, new sonorities, andgreater dissonance and density of sound. Like avant-garde composers, cre-ators of free jazz and other avant- garde jazz styles question some of the basicassumptions of the tradition yet clearly draw from it.


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Heirs to the Classical Tradit ion

JAZZ AS A CLASSICAL MUSICWhile some jazz performers were pursuing new alternatives, others maintained older styles, reviving ragtime and New Orleans jazz or continuing toplay swing. In a striking parallel to the rise of the classical concert repertoireover a century earlier, by 1970 the jazz world had developed its own roster ofclassics that were treasured on recordings and kept alive in performance. Asense of history was inculcated by written histories and recorded historicalanthologies of jazz. At the same time, audiences for jazz were shrinking; swingwas no longer the most popular kind of music, and the newer jazz styles frombop to free jazz were more esoteric, aimed at connoisseurs. As younger listeners turned to rhythm and blues and other new traditions, jazz increasinglybecame music for the w ell-informed listener. Jazz critics and historians beganto describe jazz as a kind of classical music . .l azz ensemblcs were formed atmany schools, collegcs, and univcrsities beginning in the 1950S and 1960s,and jazz history became part of the curriculum. Now rcspected as an ar t music.,jazz nonetheless retained some of the aura of the rebellious popular music ithad been half a century before.

HEIRS TO THE CLASSrCAL TRADITIONThc tradition of classical music performancc becamc stronger than ever

during the postwar years. Audiences grew. government support in manynations rose. schools of music cxpanded. and music education in primary an dsecondary schools increased in quantity and quality. But the living composerswho saw themselves as participants in the tradition sharcd less and less common ground. with little consensus on style. aesthetic. or purposc. Some composers sought to preserve and extend paJiicular aspects of the tradition, fromaudience appeal to modernist complcxity, while others focused on th e new.After two world wars. nationalism had come to seem a dangerous relic of thepast. and neoclassicism an inadequate response to modernity. In every nationthere was a diversity of styles an d approaches, an d ideas that began in onc placewere often imitated elscwhere. Thus it makes sense to divide ou r survey. not bynation, but by large trends, using individual composers as case studies.

There were many competing trends in th e postwar decades. and no briefsurvey can describe all of them. The following account can only begin to suggestthe spectrum from traditional media to the avant-garde. including tonality. chance, indeterminacy, extensions of serialism. the new virtuosity. newmusical resources. incorporation of non -Western elements. electronic music.music oftexture and process. quotation, an d collage.THE NEW PATRONAGEAs always, how composers made a living is part of the story. A few of them. suchas Stravinsky and Copland. were able to support themselves with commissions.royalties. and income from conducting or performances. Other composers


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35 POSrWAI1 CIlOSSCUIlRE"lTS

required patronage, but without the kings and aristocracy of earlier centuries,it had to come in new forms, In Europe, composers often were supported by thestate, through radio stations, annual subsidies, grants, arts agencies, or educational institutions, In some countries, such as the United Kingdom and mostcommunist nations, government support tended to make composers responsive to public tastes, Yet in others, such as West Germany, France, and Poland,the government sponsored the most radical new music, as part of its responsibility to support the nation's culture.

The unil'ersit)' In the United States and Canada, many composers were employed as teach-as po Iron ing faculty in universities, colleges, an d conservatories, giving them time to

compose, a ready audience, and access to performing organizations, includingensembles set up to perform new music. Since colleges and universities prizeacademic freedom, the music coming from academic composers has beendiverse, varying from traditional styles to avant-garde and experimental.Indeed, the safety of tenure and the ivory tower tended to isolate composersfrom the public an d make them independent of its support. Some saw that as avirtue, allowing music to advance in it s own terms, without having to pleasethe untutored listener (see Source Reading).

Fiplllf) OlivierMessiaen.

To a great extent, the type of music encouraged at a school varied with thecomposers who taught there. Among many refugees from Europe, Schoenbergtaught at the University of California at Los Angeles, Milhaud at Mills Collegein Oakland, California, and Paul Hindemith at Yale. Walter Piston, a NadiaBoulanger student who taught at Harvard, encouraged a neoclassicalapproach, while Princeton was dominated by approaches derived fromSchoenberg and Webern, particularly through the influence of Roger Sessionsand his student and colleague Milton Babbitt. The Universities of Illinois andMichigan were also important centers, where annual festivals of contemporary music served as forums for both avant-garde and traditional approaches.

TRADJTTON AL MED AAlthough critical discussion has often focused on new sounds and tech

niques, many postwar composers used traditional media. Like their forebears, they sought an individual voice within the classical tradition.

OLIVIER MESSIAENOlivier Messiaen (198-1992,), shown in Figure 35.8, was the most importantFrench composer born in the twentieth century. A native of' Avignon in southern France, he studied organ and composition at the Paris Conservatoire, wasorganist at St. Trinite in Paris from 1931 on, and became professor of harmomat the Conservatoire in 1941. After the waL he taught many important com-posers of the younger generation, including his fellow Frenchman PierreBoulez, the German Karlheinz Stockhausen (both discussed below), and theNetherlander Ton de Leeuw (192,6-1996). It is a tribute to the quality andimpartiality of Messiaen's teaching that each pupil went his own way.


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SOURCE READING

COMPOSITION AS RESEARCHMilton Babbitt, professor of music and of mathematics at Princeton University, argued that composers,like scientists, engage in research that advancesknowledge and should be supported for that work,even if it lies beyond most people's comprehension.His view extends in new terms the nineteenthcentury view of music as an autonomous art to. bepursued for its own sake. This excerpt is from anessay he wrote under the title "The Composer as Spe-cialist." changed by an editor at the magazine whereit first appeared to the more provocative "Who CaresIf You Listen?"

Why should the layman be other than boredand puzzled by what he is unable to understand, music or anything else? It is only thetranslation of this boredom and puzzlementinto resentment and denunciation that seemsto me indefensible. After all, the public doeshave its own music, its ubiquitous music: musicto eat by, to read by, to dance by, and to beimpressed by. Why refuse to recognize the possibility that contemporary music has reached astage long since attained by other forms ofactivity? The time has passed when the normally well-educated man without specialpreparation can understand the most advancedwork in, for example, mathematics, philosophy,and physics. Advanced music, to the extent thatit reflects the knowledge and originality of theinformed composer, scarcely can be expected toappear more intelligible than these arts and sciences to the person whose musical educationusually has been even less extensive than his

Traditional Media

background in other fields. But to this, a doublestandard is invoked, with the words "music ismusic," implying also that "music is just music."Why not, then, equate the activities of the radiorepairman with those of the theoretical physicist, on the basis of the dictum that "physics isphysics"? . . .

. . . I dare suggest that the composer woulddo himself and his music an immediate andeventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to oneof private performance and electronic media,with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separationbetween the domains would be defined beyondany possibility of confusion of categories, andthe composer would be free to pursue a privatelife of professional achievement, as opposed toa public life of unprofessional compromise andexhibitionism.

But how, it may be asked, will this serve tosecure the means of survival for the composerand his music? One answer is that after all sucha private life is what the university provides thescholar and the scientist. It is only proper thatthe university, which-significantly-has provided so many contemporary composers withtheir professional training and general education, should provide a home for the "complex,""difficult," and "problematical" in music.From Milton Babbitt, "Who Cares If You Listen?,"High Fidelity 8, no. 2 (February 1958): 39-40. In SR174 (7:5). 1305-11.

A devout Catholic. Messiaen composed many pieces on religious subjects.iuch as the Quatuor pour lafin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) for violin.larinet. cello. and piano, written at a German military prison camp in1940-1941 for performance by the composer and three fellow prisoners; Vingtegards sur 1Enfant-.Je"sus (Twenty Looks at the Infant Jesus, 1944) for piano;iis opera Saint Francis of Assisi (1975-83); and numerous works for his own


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Traditional Media

ii. DUf'(lliorw/ pol/ern ill pi(l/wr r r LLJ UJ [ [ [ ! U r r

rinstrument, th e organ. Other principal compositions include Turangalila-symphonie (1946-48) an d Catalogu.e d'oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds, 1956-58)for piano.

Messiaen sought to embody in music a stance of ecstatic contemplation. ;\1I1si(' (I SHis works typically present an experience of concentrated meditation on a few ("OIl /e l l l pi 1 I ionmaterials, like a musical mantra. Rather than developing themes, heluxtaposes static ideas. showing his heritage from Debussy and Stravinsky.Messiaen used several characteristic devices. described in his bookThe Technique orMy Musical Language (1944), that helped him achieve his goalof writing meditative music. The opening movement of the Quatuorpour lafLn du temps. titled Liturgie de cristal (Crystal Liturgy. 1\ \V M I H/I). ill us- I CD n/ 67 1 I CD 6/75 Itrates several of them. as shown in Example 35.1.

Messiaen often wrote down birdsongs in musical notation and used them [311'(/("(///Sin several composi t ions. where they co nvey a sense of contem plating the gi ftsof nature and the divine. In Example 35.1. both the violin and clarinet play fig-ures that suggest birdcalls. repeating them at irrebrular intervals.

What Messiaen called modes oj"limited tmnsposihon are collections of notes, ;\/()r/cs ujl II iledlike the whole tone and octatonic scales. that. do not changc when transposed Imns[!osili()/lby certain intervals; for example. an octatonic scale transposed a minor third.[ritone, or major sixth will yield the same set of notes. Such scales lack the dif-ferentiation of diatonic scales and so do not create a strong desire for resolu-[ion, making them well suited for music designed to suggest contemplationand a negation of desire. I n Liturgic de cristal. the cello notes arc all from a sin-

whole tone scale, in a repeating sequence of five notes ( C - E - D - F # - B ~ ) .Messiaen's harmony also avoids moving forward to a resolution. Rather, lIonllunics/O.'iIS

chord series are simply repeated to create a sense of stasis or meditation. Inthis movement, the piano plays a succession of twenty-nine chords six times(the last incomplete); the second statement begins in measure 8.

Messiaen treats rhythm as a matter of duration, not meter. Meter, as a Dum/iol l .series of beats organized in measu res, is a human or worldly thing, associ - /lo/II/e/el"aled with dance and heartbeats. When we respond to music metrically, weare in our bodies, but when we attend instead to durations we are in therealm of time, ruled by the divine. In Example 35.1, the changing note-lengths in the cello and piano do not create a sense of syncopation against ametric framework; instead. the smooth, legato playing style makes us hearpatterns of shorter and longer durations. Throughout the movement bothpiano and cello play repeated patterns of durations that resemble the talea,or repeating rhythmic pattern, of medieval isorhythm (see chapter 6). TheDiano features a series of seventeen durations played ten times, of which the


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Adclitiwandl1onrt'tmgmdoblc

rh vthm s

BC(lutitid sounds

35 POSTWAR CHOSS(l;RRlNTS

first two statements appear in Example 35.1. Against this talea, the twentynine-chord series acts like the color in medieval isorhythm. Similarly. thecello has a talea of fifteen durations, framing it s five-note color. Theserepeating pitch and rhythmic series create cyclic repetition, which ag'aininvites contemplation.

Example 35.1b and c show the piano and cello taleae written out in integralnote values (without ties). The piano talea features a device Messiaen used toemphasize duration over meter: what he called added values, such as the dot-ted eighth note amid even eighths or the lone sixteenth note, which add asmall durational value to produce units of irregular length. The cello partincludes another Messiaen trademark that he dubbed nonretrogradablerhythms, which are the same forwards and backwards: as shown by brackets.the first three notes form one such rhythm, the next twelve another. Such pat-terns preserve their identity outside of time-whether heard in normal time orreverse time, they are the same-and thus symbolize the eternaL that whichexists outside oftime.

Finally, Messiaen preferred beautiful timbres and colorful harmonies.Here, the cello plays in high harmonics (sounding two octaves above thenotated pitches), creating an ethereal sound, augmented by the gentle birdcalls in the high violin and clarinet, over soft dissonances in the piano.Messiaen invites us to meditate on these sonorous objects as they constantly recombine in new ways yet remain the same, like colorful shapes ina kaleidoscope.BENJAMIN BRITTENI f Messiaen focused on music of contemplation, English composer BenjaminBritten (1913-1976) was concerned primarily with communication. Afterstudying privately and at the Royal College of Music, Britten spent severalyears in the late 1930s writing music for films, an experience that shaped hisstyle by teaching him to communicate through the simplest means. Like Cop-land, he tempered modernism with simplicity to achieve a clear and widelyappealing idiom. Maturing in the 1930s, he was deeply influenced by humanitarian concerns and ideals of public service, manifest in his interest in writ-ing music fo r children and amateurs, his allegorical pleas for tolerance, andhis pacifism.

Hus/clor ClInateu rs The English choral tradition was nurtured in church and cathedral choirs.schools, and amateur choruses. Most of Britten's choral music was conceivedfor such groups, and works such as Hymn to St. Cecilia ( 1 9 4 1 - 4 ~ ) ,A CeremonrofCarols ( 1 9 4 ~ ) ' and Missa brevis (1959) have become standards. His one-actopera Noye 's Fludde (Noah's Flood, 1957-58), on the text of a medieval miracleplay, is intended fo r a mixture of professional performers with children ofvarious ages and includes hymns that the audience is invited to sing. Theseand his other works for nonprofessionals are melodious, challenging piecesthat suit their performers' abilities yet are not limited by them.

HO/JlOSCXlwlitl' Britten was a homosexual and was the life partner of the tenor Peter Pears(1910-1986). Shown in Figure 35.9, the two met in 1936 and lived together until

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