Orchestral jazz or symphonic jazz is a form of jazz that developed in New York City in the 1920s. Early innovators of the genre, such as Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, include some of the most highly regarded musicians, composers, and arrangers in all of jazz history.[1] The fusion of jazz's rhythmic and instrumental characteristics with the scale and structure of an orchestra, made orchestral jazz distinct from the musical genres that preceded its emergence. Its development contributed both to the popularization of jazz, as well as the critical legitimization of jazz as an art form.
Orchestral jazz developed from early New Orleans jazz. The African-American musicians who pioneered the genre prior to 1920, and who migrated from New Orleans to Chicago and New York in the early 1920s, brought jazz north; in time, the African-American neighborhood of Harlem became the genre's cultural center.[2]
In New York, the entertainment and arts industries thrived and jazz found a fitting home, becoming an important part of the cultural landscape. But before the widespread popularity of big bands, which developed in tandem with the growing dance craze, jazz was generally regarded as a rather crude variety of music. It was not widely listened to for its artistic value, as music critic Richard Hadlock writes:
"In the twenties, most of those who listened at all regarded jazz as merely an energetic background for dancers; the few who sought more profound values in the music tended to accept Paul Whiteman's concert productions... as the only jazz worth taking seriously.[3]
A movement emerged during the 1920s, however, indebted in part to Paul Whiteman's musical influence. This movement led to the more stylized, and more formal variety of jazz that would become orchestral jazz, imagined first by Whiteman as symphonic jazz.
This stylization of jazz had elements of classical European composing, coupled with the rhythmic and instrumental sound of New Orleans jazz. Orchestral jazz was musically distinct from its southern predecessor for a variety of reasons: not only were the bands bigger, creating a certain richness of sound, but also the music was structurally more sophisticated. While New Orleans jazz was characterized by collective improvisation and the spontaneous reinterpretation of standard tunes, jazz orchestras played head arrangements that were composed and arranged prior to the performance in which they were executed. The busy, raucous style of early jazz did not hold the same kind of popular appeal that the comparative restraint of orchestral jazz did. In particular, the implementation of measured rhythm accounted for much of its popular appeal. The two-beat groove reminiscent of New Orleans jazz was replaced during the transition into the swing era by the bass innovations of Jimmy Blanton and Walter Page, both of whom are credited for developing the walking bass line. This would make four beats to the bar a jazz standard; furthermore, this rhythm was conducive to the kind of dancing audiences desired.[2]
The rise of big band instrumentation had as much to do with artistic trends as it did with commercial viability. Significant technological developments transformed the music industry during the 1920s, allowing for an increase in the mass consumption of music. Phonographs and records became standard household items; indicative of the widespread popularization of recorded music is the fact that nearly 100 million records were sold in 1927 alone.[4] Prearranged music had a particular commercial appeal, since audiences were familiar with the songs they saw performed live from the recordings they purchased. Furthermore, exposure to musical innovation—and jazz, in all its varieties, was certainly innovative—had never before reached the same breadth of American audience. Given the commercial availability of music—which, in addition to records, was aided by the proliferation of broadcast radio—a platform was thus created that accounted for the popularization of jazz. But the mass consumption of jazz simultaneously allowed the audience an inverted influence on its development, and consumer demands dictated that orchestral jazz adopted a structure similar to traditionally accessible popular music.
Paul Whiteman, Fletcher Henderson, and Don Redman
Whiteman in 1939
The "King of Jazz" in the early twenties was Paul Whiteman, a classically trained musician from Denver. Prior to his time as a ballroom bandleader at the Palais Royal, in New York Whiteman played violin in both the Denver Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. His classical training substantially influenced the way in which he approached "Modern Music"; most famously, Whiteman's performance at Aeolian Hall in 1924 showcased the transformation he helped pioneer. Concluding this noteworthy show with George Gershwin's famous composition (and perhaps the best example of symphonic jazz) Rhapsody in Blue, Whiteman's performance is often cited as the event that signifies the arrival of jazz from a folk music to an art form.[5] The showmanship and innovation Whiteman exhibited earned him the moniker "King of Jazz," though with this title there is a good deal of controversy associated. As a white man, Whiteman's capitalization on a musical genre that is incontrovertibly African-American in origins has led many critics to question the authenticity of his artistic pursuits, and even deem them exploitative. Despite this, many of Whiteman's contemporaries, black and white, praised him and, indicative of his influence, wanted to emulate his successes.
Henderson in 1943
Two of Whiteman's contemporaries that made, arguably, the most significant contributions to the development of orchestral jazz, were the collaborative duo of Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman. Though Henderson, a piano player, never gained the celebrity of many other bandleaders of the time, his collaborations with Redman nonetheless had enormous influence on the development of orchestral jazz, and particularly its transition from Whiteman's symphonic arrangements to the eventual supremacy of big band.
Redman's arrangements of new Orleans and Chicago jazz pieces re-imagined the musical potential of jazz, marking the shift from collective improvisation and polyphonic jazz tunes, to the much more widely consumable homophonic compositions characteristic of orchestral jazz. Other structural techniques, such as call-and-response, were apparent in Whiteman's arrangements that pre-date Redman's; however, Redman's use of call-and-response as his jazz compositions' underlying structure is thought of as one of his most important accomplishments.[6] His use of arpeggiated chords, sectional point and counterpoint, changes in key signature and rhythm, and his layering of complex harmonies demonstrate Redman's nuanced grasp of musical composition.[7]
Redman also had a unique sense of band structure, the legacy of which still persists. Redman would divide the band into four interactive sections: woodwinds (saxophones and clarinets), trumpets, trombones, and rhythm sections. This would become the foundational structure for big bands which typically consist of four trumpets, four trombones, five saxophones, and rhythm section (piano, bass, guitar, and drums).[2]
Variations in instrumentation also allowed for flexibility in performance. One important trend that coincided with the increase in availability of music was the dance craze of the twenties and thirties; the most successful bands of the era were those that accommodated their audience's desire to dance.[8] Henderson's band, for example, began playing at the Roseland Ballroom in the early twenties; his repertoire included not only "hot jazz" pieces, but also waltzes in deference to the desires of the Roseland's patrons.[4] Henderson's consideration of his audience points to the importance of entertainment in the performance of the variety of jazz that was overtaking New York City (incidentally, however, Henderson was not considered to possess the same caliber of showmanship as other performers, such as Duke Ellington, and some attribute his lack of showmanship as the primary reason for the commercial struggles he suffered).[7] Variety in a band's repertoire meant the incorporation of both pop and jazz standards into most performances, which also allowed for the organic fusion of the two genres by those who performed both.
But whereas Whiteman continued to write and perform an extensive amount of popular music—and did so almost exclusively after he suffered from the economic pressures of the Stock Market Crash of 1929—other big bands, like Henderson's, transitioned into the swing era.
Through this transition, Henderson and Redman had an approach to musical innovation quite distinct from Whiteman's--an approach firmly rooted in the jazz tradition. Specifically, the duo utilized the spontaneity and virtuosity of improvisation so integral to jazz as a unique musical genre. While Whiteman's own publicist declared the day of the jazz soloist to be over, Redman's arrangements maintained a balance between arranged passages and improvisation, and showcased the best musical talents of the era. Henderson's band featured an array of virtuosic talent, including, at various times, some of the best jazz soloists of all time. These included Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, Lester Young, and Chu Berry, to name just a few of the impressive bandmates Henderson recruited. After Henderson and Redman ended their formidable collaboration in 1927, Henderson eventually began, in 1931, to compose. He familiarized himself with the elements of composition by transcribing old jazz records and scoring them to a full orchestra.[7]
Duke Ellington
Ellington in the 1940s
As jazz and popular music evolved in tandem, the genres moved from separate spheres and became more closely linked with popularization of swing music. Big bands ushered in the swing era that began in the early thirties, signifying the culmination of commercial jazz that was heavily orchestrated. This variety of jazz was much more commercially digestible than ever before, since it was intended to make its listeners dance.
However, this popularization of jazz was not a phenomenon to its dilution or disadvantage. Indeed, the big band of the twenties and thirties provided the necessary outlets for the realization of the legacies of both Whiteman and Henderson. This was probably best epitomized in the career of the most prolific composer of jazz, Duke Ellington. Widely known for his prodigious musical sense, Ellington's composing career began at the age of 14. He would go on to compose a tremendous variety of music, be captured on thousands of recordings, and perform for nearly five decades.
The subtleties of Ellington's composition make for a musical art that was at once thoughtful and complicated, as well as listenable and enjoyable. Ellington's contributions to jazz are innumerable, and yet, as indicated by the fame he gained in the mid-twenties, the genre is most indebted to him for elevating orchestral jazz to its pinnacle. No other artist was quite as able as Ellington to utilize jazz elements, though Henderson and Redman had attempted, quite so seamlessly with a large orchestra. Many of Ellington's compositions were written for specific members of his band, highlighting their individual talents and relying on their input to cultivate his sound. His orchestra would feature players such as Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, Jimmy Blanton, Juan Tizol, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney,[2] and would also see witness to a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn.[9] Ellington's career, ultimately, is commonly cited as the culmination of jazz's golden era, so called the jazz age and the swing era.
The orchestra was also well known for their rhythm section with including Basie on piano, Jo Jones on drums, Walter Page on bass, and Freddie Green on guitar. The rhythm section would go on to define the sound for modern big bands, with Jones being one of the first drummers to shift the role of timekeeping from the bass drum to the hi-hat cymbal,[10] Page a leading innovator of the walking bassline, and Green developing the ''Freddie Green" style of guitar playing in which chords are played four to the bar, often while being muted slightly.[2][11]
The most marked shifts from New Orleans and Chicago styles of jazz to orchestral jazz included the shift from polyphony to homophony, the general expansion of instrumentation, and a greater emphasis on pre-arranged compositions rather than collective improvisation. Prior to 1930, big bands were composed of trumpets, trombones, saxophones or clarinets, and a rhythm section made up of tuba, banjo, piano, and drums. Early big bands typically played 32-bar popular songs or 12-bar blues, which were organized around the traditional jazz two-beat groove; as the big band genre evolved, however, the four-beat swung rhythm became its most substantial change. This was in part a function of the change in the instrumentation of the rhythm section, and the incorporation of the string bass, as well as the substitution of guitar for the banjo. Finally, the musical arrangements that organized an ensemble's playing were based on a "riff approach" which made use of head arrangements. Head arrangements employ the call-and-response typical of African-American music; each orchestral section harmonizes a certain riff, responding to the phrases of the other sections.[6] Orchestral jazz pieces, therefore, progressed logically through this tension, built and released by the harmonic communication of layered playing.[2]
Related Research Articles
In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new thematic material for introductions, transitions, or modulations, and endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety". In jazz, a memorized (unwritten) arrangement of a new or pre-existing composition is known as a head arrangement.
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues, ragtime, European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands.
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader, composer, orchestral director, and violinist.
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era, when people were dancing the Lindy Hop. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Bunny Berigan, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, and Django Reinhardt.
James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. He was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and, along with Duke Ellington, is considered one of the most influential arrangers and bandleaders in jazz history. Henderson's influence was vast. He helped bridge the gap between the Dixieland and the swing eras. He was often known as "Smack" Henderson.
Donald Matthew Redman was an American jazz musician, arranger, bandleader, and composer.
The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles gained worldwide popularity. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt in the United States, the birthplace of jazz. Originating in New Orleans as mainly sourced from the culture of African Americans, jazz played a significant part in wider cultural changes in this period, and its influence on popular culture continued long afterwards.
Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be standards changes over time. Songs included in major fake book publications and jazz reference works offer a rough guide to which songs are considered standards.
The swing era was the period (1933–1947) when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States. Though this was its most popular period, the music had actually been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, and Fletcher Henderson, and white bands from the 1920s led by the likes of Jean Goldkette, Russ Morgan and Isham Jones. An early milestone in the era was from "the King of Swing" Benny Goodman's performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, bringing the music to the rest of the country. The 1930s also became the era of other great soloists: the tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young; the alto saxophonists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges; the drummers Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Jo Jones and Sid Catlett; the pianists Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; the trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Bunny Berigan, and Rex Stewart.
The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16- to 18-piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie in 1935 and recording regularly from 1936. Despite a brief disbandment at the beginning of the 1950s, the band survived long past the big band era itself and the death of Basie in 1984. It continues under the direction of trumpeter Scotty Barnhart.
Walter Sylvester Page was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist and bandleader, best known for his groundbreaking work as a double bass player with Walter Page's Blue Devils and the Count Basie Orchestra.
Edward Emanuel Barefield was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist and arranger most noteworthy for his work with Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Duke Ellington. Barefield's musical career included work as an arranger of the ABC Orchestra and for the "Endorsed by Dorsey: program on WOR. He also appeared in several films. He married performer Connie Harris.
Swing jazz emerged as a dominant form in American music, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw. Duke Ellington and his band members composed numerous swing era hits that have become standards: "It Don't Mean a Thing " (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933) and "Caravan" (1936), among others. Other influential bandleaders of this period were Benny Goodman and Count Basie.
The period from the end of the First World War until the start of the Depression in 1929 is known as the "Jazz Age". Jazz had become popular music in America, although older generations considered the music immoral and threatening to cultural values. Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom were very popular during the period, and jazz bands typically consisted of seven to twelve musicians. Important orchestras in New York were led by Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Many New Orleans jazzmen had moved to Chicago during the late 1910s in search of employment; among others, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton recorded in the city. However, Chicago's importance as a center of jazz music started to diminish toward the end of the 1920s in favor of New York.
A Study in Frustration: The Fletcher Henderson Story is a box set compilation surveying studio recordings of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra from 1923 to 1938, released in 1961 on Columbia Records, CXK 85470. It initially appeared as a four-album set produced by Frank Driggs and assembled by John Hammond, both of whom also wrote the liner notes. The set was part of a Thesaurus of Classic Jazz series on Columbia which included King of the Delta Blues Singers also worked on by Hammond and Driggs and released in 1961, the first album reissue of songs by blues legend Robert Johnson.
Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development, by Gunther Schuller, is a seminal study of jazz from its origins through the early 1930s, first published in 1968. It has since been translated into five languages. When it was published, it was the first volume of a projected two volume history of jazz through the Swing era. The book takes an enthusiastic tone to its subject. A notable feature of the series is transcriptions of jazz performances, which increase its value for the musically literate.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
