The influence of the styles of Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky on jazz composition and improvisation

by Sebastian Noelle
April 2002

Contents:

1. Traces of Stravinsky's/Schoenberg's musical language in the history of jazz

- Charlie Parker
- Cecil Taylor
- Joe Maneri
- West Coast

2. Survey of jazz pieces related to their styles or method's

a) Stravinsky
b) Schoenberg

3. Two examples of contemporary jazz composers influenced by Schoenberg/Stravinsky

a) Bob Brookmeyer, interview on April 17th, 2002
b) George Russell, interview on April 26th, 2002

1. Traces of Stravinsky's/Schoenberg's musical language in the history of jazz

The bebop movement, started by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, was concerned with a new harmonic language for jazz. While improvisations until then consisted mainly of chord tones, Parker enriched the melodic lines with chromatic passages, while still outlining the chord. Martin Gray tells us in his book "Blues for Bird" about Stravinsky's influence on him:

"The singer Sarah Vaughan saw Parker when he sat on bus or train with scores. They were Stravinsky ones. Then when he came on stage he'd play The Rite of Spring or Firebird Suite to fans but had a special way, a way was all his own. Parker said he flipped when first he came upon Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. 'That's music at his best!' then added to his list 'Sergei Prokofiev Hindemith Ravel Debussy Wagner Bach.'
In later years he said that Bartok was his man. As music is so rich 'What you hear depends so much upon yourself.' From thenceforth he heard no jazz
when tuned to radio, his focus became classical music.
His Confirmation brings some Firebird elements to incandescent blaze."

It was not until the late 50s/early 60s that jazz players and composers became more generally aware of the potential that lied beyond the boundaries of jazz tradition. The free jazz movement started by people like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy opened up a whole new intervallic world. The improvisations were not trapped inside tonal systems anymore. The chord-scale theory, that was predominant in jazz improvisation until then, was broken.
Naturally this development didn't come out of nowhere, as it may seem. Coleman for example listened to a lot of contemporary classical composers and at the same time to bebop.
Another prominent figure in free jazz was (and still is) Cecil Taylor. from 1951-1955 he attended The New England Conservatory of Music. It was here he discovered the atonalists Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. And more modern masters such as Bartok and Stravinsky. Also during this period he was listening to Dave Brubeck and Lennie Tristano. Young Cecil learned his lesson well. Bassist Bruell Neidlinger is classically trained and has played with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He has this to say about the pianist:
"He is phenomenal. There is not a musician I've ever met, including Igor Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez, who come anywhere near having the abilities that Cecil Taylor has." Neidlinger played with Taylor from 1955-1960. He can be heard on Jazz Advance (1955), Looking Ahead (1958), and Air (1960), among other recordings. (From the jazz magazine "Jazzine", 1999)

"While Cecil credits Ellington as being the one who gave him his "concept of the piano as an orchestra," he draws significantly from Billie Holiday's awareness and mastery of various forms of "gesture," and from Thelonious Monk's expansion and dissolution of melodic structure. Among other favorites Taylor mentions Fats Waller, James Brown and Marvin Gaye, classical composers like Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Webern (as he sees it, "all the great composers have been improvisers"), and the work of jazz pianists such as Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Erroll Garner and Lennie Tristano. Charlie Parker's bebop phrasings were also formative for Taylor's notions of improvisation and melodic development. The overall range of artistic media that have contributed to shaping his musical methodology is perhaps best conveyed in Cecil's own words: "The love and respect for the creative impulse everywhere is what I'm after. I'm of American, Indian, African and English heritage, and I follow all those paths. I avoid the trap of easy definition. I try to deal with states beyond consciousness, with the element of chance, the element of magic."
(William Scott, Doctoral Candidate in the Humanities Center, John Hopkins University)

"There is beauty in discord and chaos. Although it has seen steady use in the last hundred years, atonality is rarely well received as a facet of composition. Schoenberg was mocked when he threw tonal-centered caution to the wind in favor of this radical innovation as a central piece to authorship. The same can be said of Cecil Taylor. Nearing almost five decades of public performance, Taylor continues to demonstrate, at least to the non-believer, that the absence of a tonal center can function beautifully and poetically in music not only as a means of expression, but also as an acceptably stylistic approach to composing. However, it might be perverse to think of Taylor's music as demonstrations. His performances in the studio or onstage are axiomatic entities established on their own terms."
(Cecil Taylor, Benaroya Recital Hall, review by Alan Jones Seattle (Earshot Jazz Festival), 10.26.00)

Though Joe Maneri is better known for his microtonal system, he is a highly accomplished jazz improviser as well, with a language all his own. In 1947 he heard the music of Arnold Schoenberg for the first time. It was a seminal event for him: "I thought, 'Holy cow, he does all the wrong notes at once.' So we started a 12-tone jazz group." This was in addition to the regular work he did in various ethnic bands playing Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Armenian music. His curiosity was caught by 12-tone music, however, and he began a decade-long study of composition with the composer Joseph Schmidt (a former Schoenberg student). His talents as both composer and player/improviser caught the ears of conductor Eric Leinsdorf, who commissioned a piano concerto from Maneri, and Gunther Schuller, who had him play a David Dreck piece dedicated to Ornette Coleman.

Another style, that became a "school", is cool jazz. This phenomenon came up on the west coast of the U.S. as a reply to the aggressive sounds of bebop, that had it's home on the east coast, mainly in New York. Examples of composers that emerged from west coast jazz and are also heavily influenced by modern classical composers are Stan Kenton, Woody Herman (for whose orchestra Stravinsky wrote a piece entitled "Ebony Concerto for Dance Orchestra"), Bob Brookmeyer and Gerry Mulligan. Art Lange writes in his article "Keep on pushing! New sounds by the avant-garde":
"The growth of jazz as an idealistic art form, as well as a communicative entity reflecting the concerns of its audience, has always been dependent upon new ideas, expanding interests and increasing resources. Open-minded and adventurous Third Stream musicians such as Bob Graettinger, Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, John Lewis and others stretched jazz's formal and expressive capacity by blending jazz rhythms with harmonies and structural details identified with classical composers like Bartok, Milhaud, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. The Stan Kenton and Woody Herman big bands, among others, were like breeding grounds for experimental composers and arrangers. The West Coast was a particularly fertile place for experimentation (which is one of the reasons why "West Coast jazz" got a bad name among bebop and mainstream jazz fans). Today, artists as distinctive as George Russell, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn and Butch Morris have drawn upon these precedents of musical organization. "

2. Survey of jazz pieces related to the styles or methods of Schoenberg or Stravinsky

a) Stravinsky

From reading biographies and doing the Brookmeyer/Russell interviews I get the feeling that jazz composers tend to gravitate towards the harmonic realm of the French "impressionists" Ravel and Debussy. The reason for this might be that it isn't as complex and polytonal as Stravinsky's (or even Schoenberg's, for that matter). Despite this observation there are examples of Stravinskian harmonies in jazz. The "Petrouchka chord" (two major triads a tritone apart) can be found in the vocabulary of many players, often used as dominant (e.g. F#/C to F maj or min).
Stravinsky's rhythmic inventiveness (odd measure phrases, syncopations, odd meter, unpredictable accents) is something that is very close to jazz aesthetics, that, with their African origin, put the importance of rhythm over anything else.

- Larry Corryell recorded solo guitar versions of Stravinsky's ballets "Firebird Suite", "Rite of Spring" and "Petrouchka" that use the thematic material as a point of departure for improvisation.

- "There's a Bird in Igor's Yard" by George Russell. This piece for big band connects bebop melodies in the style of Charlie "Bird" Parker with Stravinsky's progressive harmony. The title refers to the anecdote that says, that Parker, while having a day off in LA, went to Stravinsky's appartement in order to ask him for a lesson, but then was too shy to knock on the door and just waited in his garden and, as Igor didn't come out, went home again.

b) Schoenberg

Jazz compositions that use twelve tone rows in more loose way, i.e. as the basis for improvisation or motivic development of their intervallic content turned out to be easier to find than works that follow his actual method of twelve tonal composition, which include the law, that a pitch can only be used again after all of the other eleven have been used.

Some examples of jazz compositions that employ a twelve tone row are:

- "Twelve Tone Tune" and "Twelve Tone Tune Two" by Bill Evans. I included the lead sheets of these compositions in the appendix. In these tunes Bill Evans harmonizes his row with cadence-like strandard jazz chord progressions.

- "Electric Sonata for Souls loved by Nature" by George Russell. In this composition the acoustic bass introduces a twelve tone row as a walking bass line (in Event II) while the bass clarinet improvises on the row. The piano accompanies with trichords based on the row's intervallic content.

- "Electricity" by Bob Brookmeyer.

- the free improvisations by Derek Bailey. Bailey, a British guitar player, is one of the most influential figures in free atonal improvisation. In his book "Improvisation, its Nature and Practice in Music" (Da Capo Press), he describes the process of his growth as an improviser: "Beyond the immediate influence of the musicians I was playing with, the bases of my improvising language came from an interest in the music of Schoenberg's pre-serial, 'free' atonal period, the later music of Webern and also certain early electronic music composers […] I was looking, I think, to utilize those elements which stem from the concepts of unpredictability and discontinuity, of perpetual variation and renewal first introduced into European composition at the beginning of the 20th century."

Jazz improvisers/composers who weren't mentioned and draw upon the musical language of Stravinsky or Schoenberg include Dave Douglas, Roscoe Mitchell, Don Sebesky, Eddie Sauter, Bill Holman, Jim McNeely and Henry Threadgill.

3. Two examples of contemporary jazz composers influenced by Schoenberg/Stravinsky

(Author's note: These interviews reflect subjective views. The focus is on the role that Schoenberg and Stravinsky played in the development of two of the most influential and original jazz composers rather than on the accuracy and completeness of historical facts.)

BOB BROOKMEYER interview, April 17th, 2002

(Bob Brookmeyer: (reads the proposal) … wonderful …. influential … I already like it! There's a book on Stravinsky by a Dutch writer, Toon, which discusses the octatonic scale. It's a wonderful book. Especially on the early work, he spans all the way through Stravinsky's life.)

Sebastian Noelle: Is your writing/improvising in any way influenced by the techniques and styles of Schoenberg and Stravinsky? If so, in what way?

Brookmeyer: Yeah, by Schoenberg. The constant worry I have is trying to find other notes to play than the right notes. All my life I've been looking for the right wrong notes. So when I came back from rehabilitation in 1978 I had to learn a new language. I had learned Charlie Parker's, I was going to let John Coltrane go, because everybody else played John Coltrane, so I wasn't going to play John Coltrane. I began to write a long series of pitches and I was going to use them to improvise with and to compose with. And I began to use 12 tone rows to improvise with, being that I wouldn't have to decide what the next note was. I would only have to decide the shape of the phrase and the rhythmic structure, which gives the phrase its motion. So I could then approach any harmonic situation with freedom and without fear that the note I played might be wrong. So all notes became right. And then in writing: Have you ever heard "Electricity" with (John) Abercrombie? When Rainer comes in on the low synthesizer, that synthesizer melody is a twelve tone row. Later on, in "No Song", when the band comes in, that's also a twelve tone row, the melody of the guitar solo. It gave me a flavor that I wanted. It gave me consistency and honesty in that flavor so I didn't have to keep looking and making up things. I wanted to have the selection of pitch taken away from me. As Schoenberg said, when he finished solidifying the twelve tone system, one of the things he was quoted as saying was "It gives me surprises". It gives me surprises, too! And I still use it. I used it when I was writing orchestral music and chamber music in the eighties, I used twelve tone music a lot, very often, because I was used to being a normal jazz musician, I came from Dixieland, the song tradition, Count Basie, and Charlie Parker, which was also codified. So I was looking for some ways to play and also to write lines, that were not coming from George Gershwin, Charlie Parker or from any American heritage. I wanted to do something that would give me surprises, and so it did. I also use it when I teach, in a modified version, I refer back to serial music. I teach a modular system of composition, based on numbers. Numbers and music are inexorably entwined. Analyzing a group of pitches and pitch collection, the numerical content, and then using that numerical content to continue the music on, continue the line on. Say, you have something like the Beethoven sketch books for "Eroica", the different charts for Eroica and what he finally decided on. And if I have pitch collections to begin with I use three pitches as a module, then they give us numerical equivalents to up to six numbers. Then we have six numbers coming from a generating source. So instead of having to have a twelve tone row - well, one of the first things they did with Schoenberg and the twelve tone row was to begin to modify it, because Hauer and the trophes came around the same time. Around the same time Joseph Hauer, (I think he's Austrian or German) came up with the tropes which were six pitches, hexachords, in any order, it didn't matter. So eventually, sooner rather than later they began to fool around with the twelve tone system and by the time it reached America and even through Boulez , the idea of permutations and (ba da ba da ba dum) ..you know, extrapolations. They began to use it in ways that it didn't have to be all twelve tones, like Opus 21 Webern , first ten tones of the row, that's all, and the next 10 tones or the last 2 tones are the twelve tone row. So he only said notes as a rule. All those things are fascinating to a Jazz musician, to this Jazz musician anyway, because I don't like to play chord notes all the time and I don't like to write chord notes all the time, and I like surprises and I like to make surprises and have surprises. So Schoenberg was I think…the idea of serial music, the free use of 12 tones.. chromaticism became very important to me. I didn't come from Coltrane, like Dave Liebman. He took that path and he developed it, he has his own way of doing that. I had to make my own way. Also, my instrument is not very adaptable for playing John Coltrane, the trombone's a different animal. So yeah, it was important, it still is important.

Seb: I guess you already answered part of the second question: Can you name particular works of yours that reflect this influence?

Brookmeyer: Well, I think early on "ABC Blues". Though I didn't realize that I knew about 12 tone rows. I wanted something that sounded like that, so it turned out to be a whole twelve tone row, it's something like that. I wanted to have something that was angular and non-repetitive and that would exert pressure on the blues form, so that's where that came from. From Stravinsky, I think, "Willow weep for me". The arrangement was a big step forward for me, to have (plays chord) as a major formation, minor with the flat 5th down below , that would probably have come from Stravinsky. When I heard Debussy and Stravinsky when I was 15 years old , it completely changed my world, I couldn't believe that that could be done. I heard the "Firebird" suite, the nocturnes, so I had to learn how to do that. I went to the conservatory in Kansas city as soon as I could to find out how people did that. And I didn't really find out how they did it necessarily because it wasn't a very good school. But I learned a lot about Classical music, I got an education that I never had before. So Stravinsky, I'd say probably Count Basie and Stravinsky are the two people, and Debussy, that got me into music. Count Basie got me into Jazz music because he moved me. And then when I heard Debussy and especially Stravinsky that also moved me. I couldn't believe that could be done. I think that probably the most I took from Stravinsky unconsciously, would be the rhythmic influence of anything. On the second page of "The Rite of Spring" where about 8 or 9 things happen at once, I think that's the first time I've ever seen that, I'd ever seen that in history. I think it was the first time it was ever done. The precursor of like, Elliot Carter or you know, where all these different things happen at once, I love that. I've written some music, I wrote an orchestra piece where 75 voices are happening at once, so that was important to me, to see that done. And combine that. I wrote a little 4 bar piece, part of a piece for Mel Lewis. And everything I wrote for Mel had something in there that I was experimenting with. And this was a 12 tone row given to the whole band, all of them playing different voices, very slow, and it worked! I was very surprised, I had no idea how it would sound, but it worked, so that was a big learning experience for me. So, I think between the two, they helped us a great deal. Even going back into the 40's, which was the golden age of Jazz composition, I think. It didn't get a whole lot better. Because George Handy was writing for Boyd Raven then, and Eddie Sauter writing for Ray McKinley and Finnegan later on. Eddie Sauter for Ray McKinley I played that book on piano. And the piano book was like a Bartok Sonata. You know, amazing, it was way ahead of it's time! And all this came form their admiration, Finnegan's a Prokofiev man , but I think Sauter likes Stravinsky very much"

Seb: That already leads to the last question: Do any other Jazz composers / improvisers come to your mind that you know are influenced by Stravinsky and Schoenberg? If you know particular works that would be great.

Brookmeyer: " When we broke up, the three, with Jim Hall, and Giuffre took a year off to learn how to play clarinet, beautifully, he became a classical clarinetist. And when he started the trio with Paul (Bley) and Steve Swallow I had always thought that he had done it with serial music because it had sounded like it. And a few years ago I asked him. I said; "You know, when you changed your playing like that, was it because you were a trained composer already years ago in California?" And he said, "No, I just stopped doing everything I used to do." You know, it was a whole other world for him, his composition, everything really just changed. And it sounded like 12 tone music, so it's like "Wozzeck" it's not a 12 tone piece but it kinda sounds like it. Whereas "Lulu" is a serial work, and I'm told that "Lulu" was not a successful opera, not as much as "Wozzeck." So the use of serial techniques doesn't guarantee anything anymore than the use of electronic instruments guarantees anything. It's the composer still and the use of it… Who else, oh Holman, I wouldn't be surprised if he uses twelve tone, because he's very smart. He uses some things like that. McNeely, certainly, on my birthday CD that was a 12 tone piece. Umm, Maria? No, Maria (Schneider) is more color. She's like Gil (Evans), she goes more for color. Who is there? There aren't that many composers now that I can think of that are worth anything. Who else? Who are some other composers?

Seb: "I don't know, I found George Russell of course. Bill Evans' 12 tone tunes…."

Brookmeyer: "Who's the guy from the "Art ensemble", tenor player uhhh. Michael Richard (?). haven't heard it, but he wrote a string quartet for the Kronos (quartet) that was interesting, but I don't know what kind of technique it was. His music is for me up and down.
Somebody told me that even Bill (Evans), in the early days of the bad drugs, he'd be waiting in the record company's lobby to get some money and be writing 12 tone rows, so I heard. He played Brahms for me one evening when we had Thanksgiving dinner at his house in '69. He played some beautiful Brahms. He was a complete musician, but he chose to work in his own element much like Mulligan. Mulligan could do a lot, he was on the cutting edge of the 40's. And then when he became rich and famous, that's when I joined the Quartet and we went on the road, then he became rich and famous and that was the end of a lot of growth. Great songwriter, but as a composer he stopped growing. So you can't be rich and famous and a composer at the same time. Roscoe Mitchell! That's the guy's name. ECM. I was curious to see what he'd do, and I don't know, it just sounded like Sam Rivers. It sounded to me like inarticulate stuff, not garbage, but it didn't make any sense to me. I thought the skill level was poor. The music didn't speak, and if music doesn't speak it's either unrehearsed like Braxton's music for orchestra or Jazz band or whatever that thing was, I do not like it. It didn't sound good. I like harsh or dissonant music that sounds good! So in classical music you have something very complex and hard to take that sounds good! That's well done! So I also listen for craft, and I don't hear a whole lot of craft from modern composers, modern Jazz composers. I hear a lot of making noise, and that's not the making noise I used to do in the 40's. Making noise in the 60's was about drugs, so…anyway that's what I think.

Seb: Thank you very much.

GEORGE RUSSELL interview, April 26th,2002

Russell (after reading the proposal): You can include the fact that they also were influenced by jazz. Did you know that? Did you know that Stravinsky wrote "Ebony concerto" (for Dance Orchestra, -the author)?

Sebastian: I didn't know that, but I heard that he went out to hear Charlie Parker.

Russell: Yeah, everybody did. So, it's a two way street. Ravel and Debussy, they were all influenced by jazz and influenced jazz. I mean those jazz players that were searching for something. Certainly they were influenced by the Europeans, especially Ravel. Gershwin loved Ravel.

Sebastian: There are twelve tone rows in your piece "Electric sonata" and you wrote a piece called "There's a bird in Igor's yard". My first question would be: Is your writing in any way influenced by the methods and styles of Schoenberg or Stravinsky?

Russell: I certainly think that they must have had some sort of influence on me. But not the kind of influence that would force me to want to be them. I didn't want to be them, but their influence made a mark.

Sebastian: Which aspects of their styles could be helpful for jazz or could be applied to jazz composition?

Russell: Well, Stravinsky's feeling for rhythm and his rhythmic innovations, his metric flows, you know what I mean?

Sebastian: Yes. George, what just comes to my mind: Maybe you could talk a bit about how you analyze twelve tone rows according to the concept ("The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization" by George Russell).

Russell: Well, I think it's just enough to say that the concept does not ignore Schoenberg, but it embraces him. It embraces him, because there is no music in the world that the concept cannot explain. So, certainly it explains Schoenberg and, furthermore, it can manifest a Lydian tonic in the row, without you being able to even detect a Lydian tonic. It can come from a Lydian tonic. I never spent hours living with either one of them's music. But the fact that they were reaching was enough. The fact that they were reaching and achieving a magnificent music for the world was enough to serve this energy for me.

Sebastian: Where did you get the idea to use twelve tone rows from, for example in "Electric sonata"?

Russell: Schoenberg is the father of the twelve tone row system. But once the father comes out… My understanding of twelve tone rows is, that the tonic is not detectable in a row. All tones are equal. That's what he said at first. But the concept derives the row based on a Lydian tonic, which proves that he was not right. We write a row that you can't tell what the tonic is, but we know, because we base the row on a tonic. But later Schoenberg changed, he came back in.