Style vs. Content

300 years ago, the greatest composer who ever lived was getting older.  Several of his sons became composers and became even more popular than their genius father.  They wrote in a newer, simpler style—less chromatic and contrapuntal than the old man.  300 years later J.S. Bach is revered and many musicians (myself included) consider his music to be the cornerstone of Western Music.  I learned harmony and counterpoint by studying Bach.  Not only that, but I learned how to tell a compelling and satisfying story from hours and hours of letting those wonderful complex textures seep into my soul. 

As far as Bach’s sons, I did learn a few of their piano pieces when I was young, but the Bachs were soon eclipsed by Haydn and Mozart.  The popular tastes of J.S. Bach’s later years moved on to the Classical style and his scores were used to wrap fish in.  Younger composers knew of Bach, but it wasn’t until Mendelssohn canonized Bach, that he took his rightful place in the pantheon.  

Bach is known as a consolidator.  He absorbed all the Baroque and Pre-Baroque techniques and conventions, and put them together in a more sophisticated and meaningful way.  He didn’t invent the string quartet or the symphony like Haydn.  Nor did he expand development and create Romanticism like Beethoven.  He used the forms of his day (dance suites, hymns, inventions, fugues, etc.), was creative within them and was so much better than his contemporaries that his music transcended the style.  To paraphrase Thelonious Monk, he wasn’t looking for something new, just something good. 

In the 20^th century Duke Ellington was also labeled a consolidator.  For the most part, he was content to compose within the established forms of his day.  He loved the jazz tradition, and had no desire to abandon any of it.  He kept adding, but never subtracted.  Although he was deemed “old fashioned” by the advent of bebop in 1945, Ellington remained active on the scene until his death in 1974 at the age of 75.  Even so, he was consistently voted best composer and arranger in the Downbeat critics poll right up to the end.  The following year “Best Composer” skipped a couple of generations and went to Carla Bley.  By this time, jazz had become irrelevant to 90% of Americans.  My baby boomer friends saw 1960s and ’70s Ellington as a dinosaur.  They were into simpler music with less complex harmonies and counterpoint.  Sound familiar?

Tell me, when was the last time you listened to Sonny & Cher or The Jefferson Airplane, or even Janice Joplin, Cream or Jimi Hendrix?  All that stuff was incredibly popular in the late ’60s.  What about Bitches’ Brew?  I saw that band a few times, and haven’t listened to those recordings since I graduated from college in 1971.  But do I listen to Impressions of the Far East (Far East Suite)?  Not only do I love listening to it, but I’ve transcribed it and performed it while I was conductor of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.  It was and continues to be inspiring.  The same goes for New Orleans Suite and a pile of other late Ellington masterpieces. 

The point here is that stylistically, jazz and popular music had moved on, but Ellington was still composing and performing great new music in an older style.  He was representing the world as he saw it.  As you age, you don’t lose your past.  You add your new experiences on top of your past ones and gradually evolve to a slightly newer perspective that expresses who you were and who you have become.   To deny the past is disingenuous and dangerous to your mental health as well as your art. 

And yet, the critics and many young musicians and fans have never learned this lesson.  Or perhaps they conveniently have forgotten it in order to try to fit into Pop Culture, which throws out the past with yesterday’s newspaper.  Or since I might be the last person to read an actual newspaper printed with ink on paper, yesterday’s news disappears from the Facebook crawl on your iPhone. 

Duke Ellington’s supreme compliment was “beyond category.”  What he meant was that someone or something transcended style and was so rich in content, that it will live forever.  Great music, great art and great thoughts can appear when you least expect it. 

40 years ago I was playing a big band gig, sitting in the trumpet section next to Jimmy Maxwell.  I don’t remember who the leader was or anything else about it except this: at one point one of the other musicians stood up to play a solo.  He was not a musician I held in high regard, but he played something really beautiful in this solo.  It startled me, so I turned to Jimmy.  He had a smile on his face.  I told him that I was really surprised.  I didn’t know that this guy had it in him, to which Jim replied, “Everyone has something great to say.”  I’ve never forgotten that.  My goal (inspired by Maestro Ellington) is to create situations to coax that greatness out of everyone I come in contact with—on the bandstand and off.  I’m not always successful, but I’m going to keep at it because the rewards are beyond category.