Aaron Copland: Music in the Twenties; 3; Jazz and Jazz Influence

i used to use the pope it is impossible to talk about the music of the

nineteen twenties without talking about jas there is as a matter of fact a great deal to say about jazz itself just american jet when my interest is not so much death as the influence of jazz had on serious music especially during the decade twenty that the very idea of the jazz can have any influence won out and serious music scene jp caught the music lovers and private concert music in their minds was one thing and jazz a very different thing and now and dreamt that the two could be combined so that when audiences first heard jazz you seriously in the concert hall came as a great shock and yet one thinks about it it's obvious that the influence of jazz on serious music didn't begin in the planet are already inklings and composer like every scene enters the american ragtime popular piano piece i was taking four dates from around nineteen eighty ten years later stravinsky davis his jacket euro version of

ragtime and a pc call right time for eleven instruments but the full impetus of jazz influence came in the twenties the more impressed we even a composer like rangel use jazz elements repeatedly in his violin sonata his piano concerto and has shot up runoff are an assaulted age the fight is that composers of the category right now toying with jackie's seemed very provocative in those days music jazz elements of the serious context was particularly appealing to those composers who had a special interest in what used to be thought of as modern ritual after all nineteenth century music from the rhythmic standpoint was a pretty cut and dry the fed it wasn't until stravinsky came along in nineteen eleven with that first job and later with the rite of spring european music suddenly became aware of a new fascination with the rhythmic side of music as i once wrote it was as

if a rhythmic hypodermic injection was applied the serious classical music gradually composers every way even stint as an unconventional an unusual rhythms you can see how that would have tied in with the interest in jazz and try to summarize the basic attractions of jazz for a serious composer i can see three main points of contact especially in the twenties in the first place composers were interested in jazz as an expression of the spirit of the times it made the zeitgeist in a way that nothing else good second video of entry by the rhythmic structure of jeff the specific polly rhythms of jets and then late the actual somebody a jazz band seemed very different and special in the previous weeks to an extent it's hard to imagine now that we've become so used to the drier sound of contemporary music it's curious to know that it was the european composer who focus the attention of americans on the possibility of using jazz as as a serious elements in their concert music

of these three aspects of jazz influence it was the rhythmic freedom that had by far the greatest attraction for composes basically it was a new way of combining rhythms which can be found in quite the same way in any other period in western music because this analogy to jazz rhythm and music of the past would've been the music of the elizabethan composes in shakespeare's time that magical music depends on speech rhythms for its accents wherever the natural accent the word false as a musical accent when you have four different voices singing four different lines at the same time you obviously are going to get very independent rhythms and each of the separate parts they don't follow simultaneously as they do in the music we're accustomed to the foundation of jazz rhythms is the symbol for four basic beat which never changes in early ragtime it was a little into a martyr them with

obvious accents on beat one in three like this in jazz the same fall for them is president of the accent is placed on two and four instead of one in three like this their displacement of a normal x and they all the difference but it's only when the basic be this combined with other independent rhythms that we get the excitement of jazz rhythm is the nature of jazz it has interest a musician now let's look more closely at the independent rhythms i spoke in conventional music rhythmic flow is based on multiples of two and three we have to fall and four four and three eight or six a butter rhythm of five four seven eight used to be considered very very similarly when a single measure of four quarters was subdivided the

subdivision was usually gone through adding up to a split up as do for you or you can go all want to do you all want to do three you can't do think was a no idea not to combine these and even the visions of eight eighth notes with the basic for college as me you get what might be called a cradle of jazz probably read them as in the foxtrot or are there now you've got to figure that of course the more complicated versions at that george gershwin's fascinating rhythm the rate would be like this that even by itself as a kind of jazz knows this which when combined with a steady for corn it is pronounced but engage in any case it's certainly has the rhythms such as

would be considered different even in serious music of the plants but as i said there was the fascination of the sound of a jazz band don't forget that when the serious composer writes the symphony orchestra he depends primarily on the sorority of the strings to get variety to his orchestration the fact that there were no strings and the early jazz bands neither the different kind of sanaa it was very possible that of a brass band much dry as an arty less ensures there's very no doubt more twenties and sound and not forgetting the string bass of course accompanied the instrument of a plucked string only emphasize the overall drives an arty of the band as a whole the more precise less lush sound of the jazz band was in itself an attraction to the serious composer of the planets all european composers attracted the jets the man who best understood what jazz is all about was that as neo

the early twenties during his day in new york he repeatedly visited holman was completely taken with the music he heard there as rizzoli composer nineteen twenty three a ballet called the creation of the world a commissioned by the swedish ballet in paris it was based on a story by blair's on the job and produce that same year with sets by a fan on lazy a neo himself said in his autobiography at last the mac rescue anymore and i had the opportunity i've been waiting for to use those elements of jazz which i had devoted so much study i adopted the same orchestra has used in holland seventeen solo instruments and i'm a wholesale use of the jazz dial to convey a purely classical feeling the first performance of the ballet got a bad press but it caused considerable hullabaloo the euro's creation has that mysterious quality difficult allies of

a piece that doesn't get hold its asked me just as fresh now as it did more than forty years ago when i first heard its premiere at that they ought to they show cities a the opening section is so and so almost envious lonely my podcasting that tunes and harmonies and rhythms the only meal could have written notice especially the field on a jazz the first given out by the bass followed by trombone saxophone trumpet notice also the lovely nostalgic noble melody in the quietly flowing slow section despite his obvious jazz are giants track i asked y'all to mourners the stamp of its composer is very distinctive personality on every play the story of the ballet is simplicity itself in x out the creation of the world according to an imaginary african legend and the production i saw the cut of the curtain rose on a murky stage

with earl morrall this massive human beings inextricably intermingle around which three giant seemed to be more of a gradually the massive bodies became tangled and what distinguishes human arms legs various parts of the body finally a whole man and a whole woman he raged and they that's surrounded by wizards and fetches at the end it was springtime and the african world i've been going to pay it's b

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the earth says oh nice these long movie una the creation of the world by the french composer various neo one might've thought more natural for an american dream up a jazz

ballet like that but i guess jazz for us in those days was just too ordinary it was something we had around the house and pay no attention to the idea of using it seriously because of its inherent musical qualities was really invented by the europeans they saw it as an exciting growth of the american sea about the same time americans like george gershwin began to see the possibilities of creating jazz seriously and american jazz and classical style is still under discussion but it all happened in the twenties the pope ms

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