Books, Arts & Manners: Serious Music

IN 1947 the Esquire Jazz Book published what was considered a momentous debate between Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman’s powerhouse drummer, and Leonard Bernstein, a then to-be conductor of “serious music”: “Has Jazz Influenced the Symphony?” Krupa said no; Bernstein said yes—and in their arguments both of them were wrong. The answer, of course, is yes and no. Symphonic composers have attempted to reach out from the sterility of contemporary music. And conservatory-trained musicians have invaded the jazz field, with good results and, alas, Wynton Marsalis. Bebop came into being when Dizzy Gillespie and a group of jazz musicians, crowding into a booth at the old 52nd Street Commodore Music Shop, came across Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, and went wild. Fats Waller played Bach on the organ, and Alex Wilder brought the harpsichord and the oboe into small-band jazz.

The debate persists, and it has led to an interesting experiment. Chick Corea, a solid jazz pianist, and Bobby McFerrin, a jazz vocalist turned symphonic conductor, decided to put a new spin on Wolfgang Amadeus. They recorded two Mozart piano concertos with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra-No. 20 in D Minor and No. 23 in A major (Sony SK 6201). Their “innovation” consisted in adding a soi-disant Prelude to the concertos in which McFerrin scatted and Corea noodled-and, in the cadenzas, improvising as Beethoven did when playing a Mozart piano concerto. The orchestra stays with the score-though Corea’s improvisations seem to bury a few diminished thirds and sevenths. Orchestrally, they are good Mozart, with perhaps a little more drive than you will usually hear in the concert hall.

RT

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Ralph de Toledano

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IN 1947 the Esquire Jazz Book published what was considered a momentous debate between Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman’s powerhouse drummer, and Leonard Bernstein, a then to-be conductor of “serious music”: “Has Jazz Influenced the Symphony?” Krupa said no; Bernstein said yes—and in their arguments both of them were wrong. The answer, of course, is yes and no. Symphonic composers have attempted to reach out from the sterility of contemporary music. And conservatory-trained musicians have invaded the jazz field, with good results and, alas, Wynton Marsalis. Bebop came into being when Dizzy Gillespie and a group of jazz musicians, crowding into a booth at the old 52nd Street Commodore Music Shop, came across Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, and went wild. Fats Waller played Bach on the organ, and Alex Wilder brought the harpsichord and the oboe into small-band jazz.

The debate persists, and it has led to an interesting experiment. Chick Corea, a solid jazz pianist, and Bobby McFerrin, a jazz vocalist turned symphonic conductor, decided to put a new spin on Wolfgang Amadeus. They recorded two Mozart piano concertos with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra-No. 20 in D Minor and No. 23 in A major (Sony SK 6201). Their “innovation” consisted in adding a soi-disant Prelude to the concertos in which McFerrin scatted and Corea noodled-and, in the cadenzas, improvising as Beethoven did when playing a Mozart piano concerto. The orchestra stays with the score-though Corea’s improvisations seem to bury a few diminished thirds and sevenths. Orchestrally, they are good Mozart, with perhaps a little more drive than you will usually hear in the concert hall.