Rob van Gerwen wrote:
Jazz and classical music
While listening to John Coltrane, this thought came up: jazz musicians play on a favourite instrument. And, sometimes, the instrument they pick does not really connect with them. [Multi-instumentalist Anthony Braxton seems best when playing on a soprano; Coltrane on a tenor sax, etc.]. This is not merely due to an accidental preference on behalf of the musician, but, rather, to how their bodies connect with this instrument. We shall discuss the notion of ‘individual style’ that is connected with this line of thinking.
In class, we discussed Mozart’s Concerto for clarinet. Nanny argued that the timelesness of this work has to do with how Mozart in it gets the best of the instrument. It is interesting to realize that Mozart succeeds through a score that instructs an infinite number of musicians to play the work. Thus, he brings out the best of various musicians’ playing (on the clarinet) irrespective of the particular musician (assuming that she controls the instrument to sufficient degree).
Listening to John Coltrane confronts me with the thought that Coltrane gets the best of the soprano that he is playing on. We also discussed, however, that it is difficult to conceive of any other musician to play an improvized part in exactly the same way–not difficult as in ‘hard to master’, but difficult as in ‘inconceivable’: such playing would be a form of ‘copying’ instead of ‘performing’ the relevant music. One way or the other, that would amount to a kind of forgery. The improvization in a piece of jazz is not notated in a score; that would be superfluous, would go against the nature of this music.
Would it be too far-fetged to think of jazz as a domain in music-making that has tried to make instrument-playing more dependant on the particular musician’s embodiment?
Coltrane’s improvizing is in “Spiritual”, on The Other Village Vanguard Tapes, Impulse!, 1961
(Previously published on the internet)
Giacomo di Lindini replied:
In answer to Rob van Gerwen
If one speaks the language of music, the instruments with which the musical statements are made is of no importance. However, one can defend the opinion that the type of statement to be made is of influence on the musical instrument used. Every instrument has its own ‘voicing’, quite similar to the emotional plurality of human voices. It is in this context that the diversity of musical instruments finds its origin, and not, as Rob van Gerwen states, in the physical interaction between instrument and musician. I do believe, moreover, that the timelessness of music lies in the possibility of different interpretations through time and culture and not in the interaction between musician and instrument, as directed by the composer. If possible, it would be preferable to ‘encounter’ music which has not been composed, instead of music which has been composed by an intentionalist musician. Perhaps a composer should strive to making music which he himself does not understand, as to prevent the listener to cope with the understanding of the composer and have his undivided attention on understanding the music.
There can be no music without an audience listening or a musician performing. Written music is a semantic reflection of a musical formalization of intentionality, interluded between compositional rizomatic conceptualism by the composer and interpretability by the performer. If the audience likes the performers it agrees with (or responds to-) the rizomatic intentionality and the interpretation thereof by the performer. Some performers interpret in a way that is particularly interesting for a certain target group, others perform more esoteric. (I purposedly hesitate to qualify performances in evaluistic terms)
The question raised is: How is it, that some music is better than other? Let us limit the problem by stating that the composer and the performer are the same, and that the music is improvised.
Does changing the question to ‘How is it, that some music sounds better than other?’ make answering easier of more difficult? In a way, can some music be better than other? Is it possible for an improvising musician to improve his music by technical means, that is, by becoming a better player of the instrument? Is instrumental practice the key to good musicianship?
If music is language, then this must be the case. A poet writing in English cannot write in Chinese, if he doesn’t speak the language. Even if he does, the language may not ‘feel’ right to use as a tool or medium to write poems. Poems need to find the language that is feeling the best, and this may very well be his native language. If the parallel between poetry and musical improvising is correct, the skills of the musician is of great importance to the quality of the music.
I do not think this is true. The use of language in poetry and the use of instrumental skills in music are not comparable. I think, however, that there is a relationship between semantic skills and musical skills in general. Understanding the language of music, in a certain degree, is more important than understanding the musical instrument.
(Previously published on the Internet)
