There is no beauty in Music itself, the beauty is within the listener.
- Igor Stravinsky
“The idea of The Rite of Spring came to me while I was still composing Firebird,” Igor Stravinsky recalled, 45 years after the ballet’s first performance in 1913, in his book Conversations. “I had dreamed of a scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin danced herself to death.” If Stravinsky is to be believed, this dream marked the beginning of a process that culminated in the premiere of one of the 20th century’s most important musical works.
Stravinsky’s music was meant to capture the spirit of the scenario, which he had outlined with the help of painter and ethnographer Nikolai Roerich and dancer and choreographer Mikhail Fokine during the spring and summer of 1910. Roerich had filled Stravinsky’s head with tales about all sorts of rituals from ancient Russia – divinations, sacrifices, dances, and so on – involving a variety of characters. The ballet that resulted revolves around the return of spring and the renewal of the earth through the sacrifice of a virgin. In his handwritten version of the story, Stravinsky described The Rite as “a musical choreographic work. It represents pagan Russia and is unified by a single idea: the mystery and the great surge of the creative power of spring….”
Stravinsky completed the score on 29 March 1913, and exactly two months later, the ballet premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where it caused the famous scandal that ushered in modern music. Nijinsky’s choreography and the wild, unchecked power of Stravinsky’s score were something wholly new. Stravinsky wrote for one of his largest orchestras ever in The Rite of Spring, and he used it with an assurance and confidence one would hardly expect from a composer just out of his twenties and with only two big successes - The Firebird and Petrushka - behind him.
But those two scores, for all of their individuality and accomplishment, did not seem like they were leading to The Rite of Spring. What Stravinsky did was totally unexpected.
The stage action during the ballet’s second half, leading up to the sacrifice, was enough to capture the attention of even that raucous audience at the first performance. Finally quiet, they could hear Stravinsky’s score and watch as Maria Piltz, the dancer who played the sacrificial victim, stood motionless as the ritual unfolded around her, gradually coming to life to perform her dance, with its angular contortions and tortured motions.
What actually happened on that scandalous night will always be a mystery to some degree, because the reports contradict each other. Was it the choreography that annoyed people, or the music? Were the police really called? Was it true that missiles were thrown, and challenges to a duel offered? Were the creators booed at the end, or cheered?
The dancer Dame Marie Rambert remembered that right at the beginning ‘a shout went up in the gallery: “Un docteur!" (Call a doctor!). Somebody else shouted louder, “Un dentiste!" (a dentist!)’. The aristocrat Harry Kessler said that people started to whisper and joke almost immediately. Stravinsky himself was so angry that he stormed out and went backstage to help the dancers keep time.
What is certain is that the audience was shocked - and with good reason. Stravinsky’s score for The Rite of Spring contradicted every rule about what music should be. The sounds are often deliberately harsh, right from opening Lithuanian folk melody, which is played by the bassoon in its highest, most uncomfortable range. The music was cacophonously loud, assaulting the ears with thunderous percussion and shrieking brass. Rhythmically it was complex in a completely unprecedented way. In the ‘Ritual of the Rival Tribes’ the music unfolds in two speeds at once, in a ratio of 3:2. And it makes lavish use of dissonance, i.e. combinations of notes which don’t make normal harmonic sense. ‘The music always goes to the note next to the one you expect,’ wrote one exasperated critic.
Then there was the dance, choreographed by Nijinsky. According to some observers this was what really caused the scandal at the first night. When the curtain rose the audience saw a row of ‘knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down’ as Stravinsky called them, who seemed to jerk rather than dance. Classical dance aspired upwards, in defiance of gravity, whereas Nijinsky’s dancers seemed pulled down to the earth. Their strange, stamping movements and awkward poses defied every canon of gracefulness.
Both the music and the dance of The Rite of Spring seemed to deny the possibility of human feelings, which for most people is what gives art its meaning. As Stravinsky put it, ‘there are simply no regions for soul-searching in The Rite of Spring’. This is what separates it so decisively from Stravinsky’s hit of 1911, Petrushka. There we’re immersed in a human world, which exudes the very specific cultural ambience of Russia. It’s true that the main characters are puppets, rather than rounded human beings. But they have characters, even if they’re somewhat rudimentary, and at the end there’s even a suggestion that Petrushka might have a soul.
* Pina Bausch's interpretation of Stravinksy's Rite. A masterpiece of modern dance.
Theory Time: Polytonality explained with Love Live!
On February 15th, we got “The Blue Swell”, an album of Aqours songs remixed in various styles of rock music. Needless to say the entire album was amazing, especially with “Aozora Jumping Heart” sounding like it was made by DragonForce, but given I just put out a post about music arrangement, let’s talk about the other cool thing the album gave us: polytonality.
To give you a little bit of…
Dennis Sandole Polytonal Guitar Scales Lesson and Examples
Please watch video above for detailed info:
Hi Guys,
Today, a look at the unique scale formations/superimpositions of Dennis Sandole.
Dennis Sandole
We will take three examples from a handwritten page of polytonal scales by Dennis Sandole and apply them to the guitar:
SCALE 1:
Dennis Sandole’s Handwritten Polytonal Scale:
Same…
Winifred Phillips on Polytonality in Jurassic World Primal Ops
Winifred Phillips Discusses the Power of Polytonality in Her Music for Jurassic World Primal Ops
This is a very interesting topic by Winifred Phillips, who discusses the power of polytonality in her music for the game Jurassic World Primal Ops in her article "Polytonality (The Game Music of Jurassic World Primal Ops: GDC 2023)."
Phillips describes polytonality as a harmonic device that allows composers to simultaneously assert multiple tonal centers in their music. This can be used to create a sense of tension, anxiety, and dissonance, which is particularly effective in video game music.
You’ll find all these ideas discussed in detail in these three articles:
Part One: Tonic Pivot (The Music of Jurassic World Primal Ops: GDC 2023)
Part Two: Quartal Chords and Chromatics (The Music of Jurassic World Primal Ops: GDC 2023)
Part Three: Whole Tone and Octatonic Scales (The Music of Jurassic World Primal Ops: GDC 2023)
Some extract from the original article:
"We’d just finished discussing the fantastic utility of both the Octatonic and whole-tone scales, which are particularly useful when we’re pushing our music away from a classic harmonic structure and towards atonality. But now let’s take a moment to step away from atonality altogether, and consider its close cousin – polytonality.
We’re all very familiar with traditional key signatures. In classic music theory, key signatures control what chords we hear, what harmonic progressions may occur, and how melodies might take shape. When we go fully atonal, we distance ourselves from these rules – but with polytonality, we keep using them – albeit in a devious way.
Instead of hiding the tonal center, we construct our music to assert more than one at a time.
When listening to a track expertly structured in this way, we can sense multiple separate and distinct key signatures happening simultaneously, and this is great at creating some really interesting harmonic complexity. Best of all, the music can include classically-diatonic melodies on top – and still feel conspicuously weird, due to all the unrelated chord structures going on underneath.
I want to share some musical examples of polytonality now – with the caveat that this stuff can get pretty complicated. I’ll be going through a bunch of details here, but mostly to give you a general feel for how polytonality works. Let’s start by checking out a relatively simple example.
This is another piece of music that accompanies ‘tracking’ sequences when players are searching for wild dinosaurs. I built the music around the whole tone scale – we already discussed how this scale works in the music of Jurassic World Primal Ops. For this particular composition, I put the initial chord structure into the C wholetone scale.
Winifred Phillips · The C Wholetone Scale
But the bassline is assertively hitting D flat as the root tone:
Winifred Phillips · The D Flat Root Tone
And D flat is not at all in the C wholetone scale. Plus, half of the foreground melody is written with a D flat major feel:
Winifred Phillips · The D Flat Major Scale
Then, the other half of the foreground melody follows the C wholetone scale:
Winifred Phillips · The C Wholetone Scale
The chords support the melody by swinging back and forth between D flat major and C wholetone – making the entire thing feel bizarrely unstable. Let’s check that out now – you’ll see that I’ve included some of the notation on-screen, with the D flat major and C wholetone content divided into different staves so we can track what’s happening:
youtube
Now I want to share with you a more complex example of polytonality in the music I composed for Primal Ops. We’re going to be listening to this music, but I’ll break it down for you first.
The orchestra begins with a repeating diminished 7th chord in D minor. The string section gives us some nervous figures in A flat minor. So – two simultaneous unrelated keys:
D minor:
Winifred Phillips · The Key of D Minor
A flat minor:
Winifred Phillips · The Key of A Flat Minor
After that, we modulate into a hard tonic pivot, which takes the background chords and the agitated string section into 7th chords in G major:
Winifred Phillips · The Key of G Major
While that’s happening, the melody and bass line move to B flat minor:
Winifred Phillips · The Key of B Flat Minor
So, there’s lots of polytonality! We’ll get a better sense of it when we’re listening to the music. As before, I’ve divided the different key signature content so we can follow along, and you’ll see that I’ve indicated where the modulation and the tonic pivot happen:
youtube
Polytonality is an uncommon harmonic device, just like the tonic pivots, quartal harmonies, Chromaticism, and exotic scales that we’ve discussed so far during this talk. All these techniques help us to break away from harmonic conventionalism. But harmony is just a piece of the puzzle, and it certainly isn’t the only way we can introduce chaos into our game scores.
In the next article of this series, we’ll be shifting our discussion away from harmonies, and talking about kinetics. In the meantime, you can read more about game music composition in my book, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music. Thanks for reading!
Phillips provides two examples of polytonality in her music for Jurassic World Primal Ops. In the first example, the bassline and melody are in different keys, while the chords alternate between the two keys. In the second example, the orchestra begins with a repeating diminished 7th chord in D minor, while the string section plays in A flat minor. The music then modulates to G major, while the melody and bass line move to B flat minor.
Phillips argues that polytonality, along with other techniques such as tonic pivots, quartal harmonies, and chromaticism, can help composers to break away from harmonic conventionalism and introduce chaos into their game scores.
In addition to her work on Jurassic World Primal Ops, Phillips has also composed music for other popular video game franchises such as Assassin's Creed, God of War, Total War, The Sims, and Sackboy / LittleBigPlanet. She has received numerous awards for her work, including an Interactive Achievement Award / D.I.C.E. Award, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards, and four Hollywood Music in Media Awards.
From the original article here.
"The one moment that came nearest to a musical experience in the traditional sense was an organ solo by John Paul Jones. With all of the echo and electronic feedback employed in this style, there were some interesting polytonal effects and Jones displayed a rather highly developed rhythmic independence among voice parts."
- From the Sept. 3, 1970 San Diego concert review by D. Dierks (SD Union)
polytones/garbled sporadically between bits of incomprehensible speech of indecipherable language
japanese radio opera/story/music
Morse code, two different tones, seemingly same pattern, one slightly delayed behind the other, or sometimes in pieces or not at all. a faint, third code beeps in a higher pitch in he bg, unable to hear it clearly enough. main code very clear.
long, dragging, fucking deep fried polytones that the just suddenly STOP
Hi Everyone needs to listen to my final composition project for sophomore music theory or I am LITERALLY going to explode. Ok. Thankyou
For this project I had to compose eight measures of music and include five of the techniques we've covered in the last few weeks of music theory. I really really love Locrian mode (minor with a bonus b2 and b5, or B to B on the white keys of a piano), so I knew I wanted to do something with that for sure. Here's a list of some of the topics I wound up including:
Polymodality
Pandiatonicism
Quartal harmony
Quintal harmony
Polychords
Polymodality (or polytonality) means that I wrote this in two different keys/modes, in this case B Locrian and F Lydian. (To hear a Lydian scale, play F to F on the white keys of a piano.) These two modes have all of the same pitches in common (white piano keys), so it was easier to get them to fit together without sounding super icky. However, B and F are also a tritone apart, so there's definitely still some crunchiness going on! Tritones are nicknamed "the devil's interval" due to their spooky sound, but they can still be heard in pop culture tunes such as the Simpson's theme song and "Maria" from West Side Story.
Pandiatonicism just means that while I'm still staying within a certain key (or keys, in this case), I'm not sticking to traditional chord resolutions. Certain chords or notes naturally want to resolve to other chords... for example, sing or play a regular major scale (C to C on the white piano keys) and stop at "ti." Do re mi fa so la ti.... You'll notice the tension as you hold out the ti, as it wants to resolve back up to the first note of the scale, "do." But I'm not following the rules >:)
Quartal and quintal harmony refers to chords built in fourths (quartal) and fifths (quintal) rather than the traditional thirds or triads. A triad is just a regular degular chord, consisting of 3 notes in intervals of 3... For example, a C major triad would be C, E, G. The third note up from C is E (C, D, E), and the third note up from E is G (E, F, G). Triads!
Polychords are just two different chords being played at the same time. This happens naturally with polymodality since we're working in two different keys.
Thanks for reading! I'd like to experiment more with Locrilydian in the future, perhaps with a Lydian melody in the treble clef and more ominous Locrian undertones in the bass clef. I hope you like it as much as I do :]
Prev post skill issue fr the first (edit I just remembered it was the second) time I was at redacteds place we watched videos about math, polytonal music, and the slavic slave trade, and I never wanted someone more
A Musical Joke (in German: Ein musikalischer Spaß) K. 522, (Divertimento for two horns and string quartet) is a composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the composer entered it in his Verzeichnis aller meiner Werke (Catalogue of All My Works) on June 14, 1787. Commentators have opined that the piece's purpose is satirical – that "[its] harmonic and rhythmic gaffes serve to parody the work of incompetent composers" – though Mozart himself is not known to have revealed his actual intentions. The piece comprises four movements, using forms shared with many classical divertimenti: 1. Allegro (sonata form) 2. Menuetto and trio 3. Adagio cantabile 4. Presto (sonata rondo form) Compositorial comedic devices include: asymmetrical phrasing, not phrasing by groups of four measures, at the beginning of the first movement; secondary dominants where subdominant chords are required; discords in the horns; whole tone scales in the violin's high register; clumsy orchestration, backing a thin melodic line with a heavy, monotonous accompaniment in the last movement; and a pathetic attempt at a fugato, also in the last movement. The piece is notable for one of the earliest known uses of polytonality (though not the earliest, as Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Battalia used Polytonality), creating the gesture of complete collapse at the finale. This may be intended to produce the impression of grossly out-of-tune string playing, since the horns alone conclude in the tonic key. The lower strings behave as if the tonic has become B-flat, while the violins and violas switch to G major, A major and E-flat major, respectively. Asymmetrical phrasing, whole-tone scales, and polytonality are foreign to music of the classical era. However, these became common for early 20th-century composers like Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, who were searching for a new musical language. In this later context, these were legitimate new techniques in serious music. In Mozart's time, however, these non-classical elements gave the piece its comedy, expressing the composer's humor. (Wikipedia) Please take note that the audio AND the sheet music ARE NOT mine. Change the quality to a minimum of 480p if the video is blurry. Original audio: classical-music-online.net Original sheet music: imslp.org
NOTE: Shops & distros worldwide can contact Revolver USA for stock.
As Bill Orcutt’s most mature and exhilarating LP to date, Music for Four Guitars was a slab of undeniable Apollonian beauty. Its approachability and obvious novelty landed it not only on the year- end lists of every key-pushing codger in the underground in 2022, but also on NPR in the form of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, an ensemble assembled to perform this music and featuring Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish in addition to Orcutt. But while their Tiny Desk Concert gave a whiff of the quartet’s easy intimacy, the sterile confines of the virtual recital medium still left a puzzle unsolved: how might these brutally mannered bricks of minimalist counterpoint sound on a stage in front of actual breathing bodies?
This was the question foremost in my mind when I first saw the quartet in San Francisco a few months before this double live LP was recorded. I was already familiar with the prowess of Eisenberg and Mendoza, two of the most technically intimidating shredders to blast out of the noise/improv underground, and knew Parish as the mastermind behind the epic translation of Orcutt's quartet recordings into a fully notated score. I was ready to be “blown away" — and I most assuredly was. The quartet navigated Orcutt's jaggedly spiraling right angles into the shining core of the compositions with joyous ease, faithful to the originals in nearly every way (though their tempos were slightly ramped up, Blakey style, to communicate their breathless rush). The renditions were flawless, stellar and inspiring. I had expected nothing less.
Which leads us to this album, Four Guitars Live, recorded in November of 2023 at Le Guess Who? festival during the quartet’s first European tour. The true essence of this set is not simply in its faithfulness to the source compositions, but in the group's easy familiarity (no doubt the result of weeks on the road) and the generosity of their improvisations, both collective and solo. Orcutt, clearly cognizant of both the caliber of his collaborators and the
singularity of their voices, has given everyone room to stretch out, and all have delivered some of their most moving passages to date.
One of this record's great thrills for me is imagining a listener, perhaps unfamiliar with the outer limits of contemporary guitar improvisation (or the Tzadik catalog), slammed into catatonia by Mendoza's liquefying lines on Out of the corner of the eye, then revived and healed by the languid, breathy lines of Parish's unaccompanied, spaced-out breakdown of the track's main theme, finally only to be crushed by Eisenberg’s staggering extended solo on Only at dusk (somehow channeling both Eugene Chadbourne and Buck Dharma).
There's another peak, which begins at the end of side B, in Orcutt's own languid solo, encapsulating the flowing focus of his recent solo LPs, and serving as an introduction to the next side's ensemble tour de force, the psychic heart of the album, On the horizon: its melodic core passing first to Orcutt, launching into a sublime solo turn by Eisenberg, a duo of Parish and Mendoza, before parachuting back into the ensemble for a smashup rendition of Barely visible and Glimpsed while driving (renamed Barely driving) knitted together with an softly bubbling ensemble improvisation. The transfer is orchestrated yet seamless, its tonal form undeniable even in the presence of obvious dissonance.
The breadth of Four Guitars Live gives lie to the false notion that agile, polytonal improv is necessarily without soul, is necessarily inaccessible. Rather, Four Guitars posits a human avant-garde music that the most conservative will recognize as virtuosic and revel in its classic intervals, boiling counterpoint, and precisely- layered facets. Even the rockers in your life might dig it, so why not pass it on? — TOM CARTER
Hmmm. My first answer would be classical music... but that's a very broad term, lol.
My big love, big enough that I majored in it in my university, is choral music. Mostly from classical genres, or classically-inspired music. I don't think I can easily pick a composer here. Anywhere from Palestrina (Renaissance era) to Mozart (18th century) to Poulenc (20th century) to Ola Gjeilo (contemporary composer) I could pick various choral pieces I love and could geek about. Depending on the musicality and the harmonies included, I also like choral/polytonic music of other genres - folk, symphonic rock, songs I don't even remember where I heard them the first time, again, depending on lots of factors.
I also like big orchestral music and also piano music. I like Tchaikovsky and Debussy, then Chopin is a classic for piano music...
I love sea shanties. I could listen to sailors belt out harmonies for hours. GIMME. My dream is to create a male choir and have them sing sea shanties like the Robert Shaw chorale did. If I manage this here, in a country with very little choral tradition and non-musicians who are VERY hesitant to broaden their musical horizons, it would be my magnum opus.
Anyway, I digress, lol. I also love soundtracks. The classics, of course, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, I am not immune. But also Rachel Portman, Bear McCreary, and other soundtracks from films and games you probably haven't heard of XD
I like listening to jazz, but I don't know that many names there. The most well-known, at least - Armstrong, Fitzgerald, Reinhardt, some Gillespie, why not - but in general I just put in "[decade] jazz" on youtube and put on whatever playlist feels more inspiring.
Throw in some folk stuff depending on my mood, from Irish music to Scandinavian singing and then there's a lot of Greek music I like, I prefer soft and ethereal or some of our rock too and lots of other stuff... I don't know. I listen to a lot XD Here's a random French song I heard once in a bar and fell in love with
In general, I like most "mainstream" kinds of music. Some stuff may sound obnoxious to me, but if it's in the background and I can ignore it with conversation I'm good. But most of the time I'm like "Music. Bruh. What an invention."
OTD in Music History: Important 20th Century pianist-composer Karol Szymanowski (1882 - 1937) – hailed in some circles as the greatest Polish composer after Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849) – dies of tuberculosis at a sanitarium in Lausanne, Switzerland.
A member of the “Young Poland” modernist movement that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th century, Szymanowski's early works owe a clear debt to the late-Romantic German school (i.e., Richard Wagner [1813 - 1883], Richard Strauss [1864 - 1949], and Max Reger [1873 - 1916]) as well as eccentric Russian "mystic" pianist-composer Alexander Scriabin (1871 - 1915).
Later on, however, Szymanowski developed an increasingly personal style which blended elements of free atonality / polytonality, French “Impressionism” (drawing from the work of Claude Debussy [1862 - 1918] and Maurice Ravel [1875 - 1937]), and Polish folk music.
Indeed, to that last point, the establishment of an independent Polish state in 1918 inspired Szymanowski to consciously seek to forge a distinctly “Polish” style of “classical” composition – a daunting task that hadn’t been seriously attempted by any major composer since Chopin.
Polish musicologist Aleksander Laskowski has opined that Szymanowski "ultimately succeeded in his goal of inventing a musical language all his own [...] His works were true and ingenious creations, and his oeuvre shows an incredible development from the Straussian and Wagnerian aesthetic, through an interesting and very romantic 'Oriental' period, and finishing with a nationalist period.”
PICTURED: A publicity headshot of the middle-aged Szymanowski (photographed by the famous “Fayer of Vienna” atelier), which he signed and inscribed to a fan in 1931. Szymanowski has also written out a few measures from the opening of his folk-music-infused ballet “Harnasie," which was not publicly premiered until 1935.
Autograph material from Szymanowski is exceedingly rare.
Aaaaand here’s a second preview of my music for the You’re Not Alone FFIX zine!! I was super inspired by how fucking weird Gargan Roo is and decided to make a cover that captures that unhinged energy. I love me a polytonal disaster piece.
「XpanderにはIBM社製PCの倍の演算能力を持たせてあります。ですが、それでもこの速さでしか数をかぞえられないのです」
(We've put twice the computing power of an IBM PC inside the Xpander, but even so it can only count SO fast!)
メモリーもないモノシンセが常識だった当時、5音ポリで 40音色メモリーを搭載した Prophet-5 は革命的。そ れは当時誰もやっていなかったCPUでシンセ全体を制御させるデジタルの勝利。それを具現化したデイヴ・スミス の先見性はすばらしく、NAMMショウ3日間だけで注文殺到、まさしくProphet-5はflying off the shelf=飛ぶように売れ、デビューから半年もたつとその独壇場ぶりが列強メーカーたちを慌てさせることになる。トム・オーバ ーハイムもその一人であった。なんせご自慢の4Voiceの売上が本人いわく「でっかい岩が転がり落ちるみたいに」赤丸急降下、真っ逆さまに奈落へと崩壊したのだからたまらない。
The use of Grammar can often be compared to a musical composition, with various rules and structures coming together to form a cohesive whole. However, when it comes to the language of dragons, the rules of grammar take on a whole new level of complexity, playing out in a polytonal symphony that can leave even the most seasoned linguist scratching their head.
One of the reasons for this grammatical polytonality in dragon tongues is their inherent dual nature. Dragons are creatures of both magic and physicality, existing simultaneously in the physical world and the realm of myth and legend. As a result, their language reflects this duality, with both spoken and written words possessing multiple layers of meaning and power.
Another aspect of dragon grammar that adds to its polytonal nature is the fact that their language is highly contextual. Each word or phrase can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used, making it a challenge for outsiders to fully decipher. This is further complicated by the fact that dragons have a telepathic connection with one another, meaning their thoughts and intentions are often intertwined with their words.
In addition to these complexities, dragons also have a rich cultural history and a long lifespan, leading to a wide range of regional and generational variations in their language. Different clans and generations may have their unique dialects and slang, making it difficult for non-dragon speakers to fully grasp the intricacies of their language.
Furthermore, dragons have a deep understanding of magic and how to harness its power, and their language reflects this. Spells and incantations are often woven into sentences, requiring precise pronunciation and timing to achieve the desired effect. The use of different tones, inflections, and accents can also change the meaning of a word, adding yet another layer of complexity to their already polytonal language.
While the grammatical polytonality of dragon tongues may seem daunting, it is a natural reflection of their complex and magical nature. Just like with music, it takes time and practice to fully appreciate and understand the different layers and nuances of their language. And for those brave enough to delve into the world of dragons and their tongues, the rewards are priceless – a deeper connection with these majestic creatures and a newfound appreciation for the intricacies of language.
How to play like Dave Brubeck (Take 5 "steps") - Brubeck's sheet music available from our Library1. Blues2. Stride3. Odd time signatures4. Polyrhythms5. PolytonalitySignature TunesDave Brubeck - Take FiveNew Dave Brubeck Biography, A Timely Reminder Of Jazz Piano Royalty‘Dave Brubeck: A Life In Time’ looks at how the pianist’s life criss-crossed with countless jazz greats, and dives into some lesser-known areas of his life.Sharp as a tackDefiant in the face of racismA move into composingBrowse in the Library:
How to play like Dave Brubeck (Take 5 "steps") - Brubeck's sheet music available from our Library
Dave Brubeck, who passed away on December 5, 2012, just a day shy of his 92nd birthday, was one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time. Rhythms of horses’ hooves on the California cattle ranch he grew up on, along with those from water pumps, motors, and various other sources prompted his lifelong fascination with odd time signatures. Brubeck was also exposed to Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy, and Ravel, as his mother gave classical piano lessons. Stride, blues, swing, bebop, classical, big block chords, and delicate counterpoint are just some of Brubeck’s signature devices. Let’s “take five” of them for a closer look. . . .
1. Blues
Many of Brubeck’s classic compositions were based on blues progressions, like “Sweet Cleo Brown,” a tribute to one of his great inspirations, blues singer Cleo Brown. Similarly, his solos were often infused with riffs drawn from the blues scale. Ex. 1 is a progression Brubeck typically used to end a blues.
2. Stride
Some of Brubeck’s heroes were renowned for stride piano, like Duke Ellington, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum. Brubeck’s large hands let him span big block chords with his right hand while playing
wide walking tenthswith his left. “It’s a Raggy Waltz” combines elements of stride and ragtime in 3/4 time— one of his first forays into non-4/4 time signatures. Playing in 3/4 also let him superimpose another pulse
over the beat—a polyrhythm—as in Ex. 2.
3. Odd time signatures
Brubeck once famously stated, “I don’t think jazz should be in 4/4 time.” His use of metric subdivisions—seen here marked in groups—was the secret ingredient that made odd time signatures sound natural and swinging to the causal listener. These broke up the measure into more digestible rhythmic phrases of (usually) two or three notes. For example, “Take Five” is more accessible when you count its 5/4 time as “one two three, one two.” Exs. 3athrough 3e (left to right) illustrate this approach in various time signatures.
4. Polyrhythms
Ex. 4 demonstrates Brubeck’s renowned use of polyrhythms, or playing in more than one rhythm at a time. The rhythmic grouping of five notes in the place of four is distributed between two hands, a technique that’s been picked up by such pianists as Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea.
5. Polytonality
It was Brubeck’s older brother Howard, chairman of the music department at Palomar Junior College, who first suggested he study with French composer Darius Milhaud. During those studies, Brubeck began experimenting with polytonality—playing in more than one tonality at a time. While Brubeck is well known for his frequent display of fast pyrotechnics and dense textures, Ex. 5 exemplifies his use of space and openness.
Signature Tunes
New to Brubeck? Here’s some required listening for getting to know his use of odd time signatures.
Dave Brubeck - Take Five
Paul Desmond (alto sax), Joe Morello (drums), Eugene Wright (bass) and Dave Brubeck (piano)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw
Live in Belgium 1964
Paul Desmond (alto sax), Joe Morello (drums), Eugene Wright (bass) and Dave Brubeck (piano)
New Dave Brubeck Biography, A Timely Reminder Of Jazz Piano Royalty
‘Dave Brubeck: A Life In Time’ looks at how the pianist’s life criss-crossed with countless jazz greats, and dives into some lesser-known areas of his life.
Pianist David Warren Brubeck was born on 6 December 1920, in Concord, northeast of Oakland, and his centenary year is being recognised with an excellent, impressively detailed biography by Philip Clark (Dave Brubeck: A Life In Time, Da Capo Press), which explores the life and work of the musician, who died in 2012.
Clark spent time on the road with Brubeck and his wife, Iola, in 2003 and the biography contains fascinating new material about a man who pushed the boundaries of jazz for six decades, influencing scores of popular music stars, including Ray Davies of The Kinks, Ray Manzarak of The Doors and Deep Purple’s Jon Lord.
Sharp as a tack
Brubeck’s life criss-crossed with countless talented contemporaries and A Life In Time contains a wealth of information about his touring partner Miles Davis (who recorded Brubeck’s song ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’ back in 1957), along with Cecil Taylor, Chet Baker, Shelly Manne, Art Blakey, Lee Konitz, Charlie Parker, Cal Tjader, Lennie Tristano, Jimmy Giuffre, Max Roach and Gerry Mulligan, with whom Brubeck recorded an entire album.
The magnificent ‘Time Out’ and ‘Blue Rondo À La Turk’, both recorded in 1959, brought the Dave Brubeck Quartet international stardom – and they remain two jazz tunes that can be instantly recognised by members of the general public rather than diehard fans.
There are interesting offbeat reminiscences in the biography. Brubeck tells the author that the controversial comedian Lenny Bruce used to babysit his son Darius (who also became a jazz musician) after the musician and comic appeared on the same bill at the Crescendo club in Hollywood. “Lenny and I became good friends,” said Brubeck. “I didn’t expect Lenny and Darius to get close, but they kind of gravitated toward each other and we thought, Well, OK, it’s fine with us if someone wants to take the kids off our hands for the afternoon. And Lenny took it very seriously and was completely responsible, I have to say.”
Compared to the drug-taking excesses of some of his fellow jazz men, Brubeck seemed deeply conventional, but he was as sharp as a tack. He is quoted warning about gangsters who “worm their way past your defences”, adding that “Charlie Parker’s a sad example of what could happen” when people exploit the addictions of musicians.
Defiant in the face of racism
There are tales of Brubeck’s groundbreaking tours in the late 50s – he went to Poland and caught dysentery in Baghdad – and a moving account of his defiant attitude towards racism during an era of segregation. In 1960 he cancelled a promotional appearance on NBC’s hugely popular Bell Telephone Hour Show because the producers insisted that black bass player Eugene Wright would have to be out of shot.
In 1964, Brubeck also openly defied the Ku Klux Klan at a gig held at the systematically racist University Of Alabama. Brubeck insisted that the band and audience be integrated – and he defied threats of violence and disruption from the KKK to play the concert to a mixed audience. The stand forced the university to allow integrated concerts from then on.
Two giants of jazz – Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong – come out well in the book. Brubeck admired Armstrong and wrote a musical for him called The Real Ambassadors. Brubeck could not get word direct to the famous trumpeter so waited outside his Chicago hotel room to ask him to take part in a production of the show.
“Eventually a waiter turned up with a tray of food, and when Louis opened and saw me there, he gave me a big smile and told the waiter that Mr Brubeck would be having the same as him – so one more steak, please,” the pianist recalled.
Armstrong happily agreed to the project, a matter of lasting pride to Brubeck, who had grown up admiring the trumpeter as well as pianists such as Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson, who were Satchmo’s contemporaries.
A move into composing
Though Brubeck is associated with Colombia Records, A Life In Time tells the fascinating story of his move to Decca Records – and why he chose to move to that famous label in 1968 to record his extended choral and orchestral albums The Light In The Wilderness and The Gates Of Justice. “Now that Brubeck was interested in pursuing a career as a composer, he felt that Columbia had let him down,” writes Clark.
Some of the music Decca recorded was composed by Brubeck in tribute to his nephew Philip, who had died from a brain tumour at 16. Columbia executive Teo Macero was upset to lose one of their top jazz stars, but he admitted in a company memo in October 1968 that Decca were “doing more” for Brubeck as a label – and talked wistfully about the merits of Blue Note and Verve in the jazz field.
Brubeck went on composing, recording and performing for the next four decades before dying on 5 December 2012, a day before his 92nd birthday, on the way to a cardiology appointment. He left a magnificent jazz legacy that is well served by Clark’s impressive book.
Dave Brubeck: A Life In Time, by Philip Clark, is published on 18 February 2020 by Da Capo Press in the US and Headline in the UK.
Read the full article