Sir Nerdlington



Below are a few pieces I wrote while attending college.
  



Jazz and Popular Music in Film

(Written for a graduate research class @ Northern Arizona University between 1999 and 2001; for a professor who’s name I don’t recall…)


Contents:

I.             Introduction
A.   Beginnings/Silent Films
B.   Connection Between Sound and Image
C.   Specificity Leading to Pop Music
II.          Jazz in Film
A.   Introductory Quote
B.   A Streetcar Named Desire/Alex North
C.   Man with the Golden Arm/Elmer Bernstein
D.  Other Examples
III.       Pop as Representative of a Generation/Nostalgia
A.   The Graduate
B.   Easy Rider
C.   The Big Chill
IV.       Pop as Representative of Location
A.   Introductory Statement
B.   Manhattan
V.          Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing
A.   Music as Confrontation/Politics
B.   Music as Narrative
C.   Music as Character/Leitmotif
VI.       Commercialism of Film Scores
VII.    Conclusion




Abstract

The roots of the connection between music and film stretch all the way back to the Ancient Greeks. Their use of music to accompany theater was completely natural to them. This connection was slightly less natural to filmmakers. The members of the Lumiere family from Paris were some of the first silent filmmakers. The first known musical accompaniment to a film was produced by the Lumieres on December 26th, 1895. The positive effect wa so obvious that soon everyone hasd some type of musical ccompaniment t their films. But it wasn’t until he mid 1930s that directors started having original usic written for their particular films. The music was becoming specifically tailored to the artistic needs of each film. This need for the music to be increasingly more specialized is what led to the use of “pop” music in the movies. The goal of the film composer/director today is this: to create, or choose, music that so totall matches the action and emotionasl character of the scene, that there is no separation between the two. Therefore, if we have a very modern, urban scene, why not score it with modern, urban music? Sadly, the high market value of “pop” music ha sled to the occasional ommercialization of movie soundtracks. When used appropriately, “pop” music can be the perfect artistic choice for many film-scoring situations.


I: Introduction

The natural connection between music and drama has been evident since the ancient Greeks accompanied their theater with flute and song. They believed so strongly in this relationship that there was no need to make a “connection” between the two because there was no separation. Music and the word were as one. This the goal of the film composer/director today: to create, or choose, music that so totally matches the action and emotional character of the scene that there is no separation of the two. A classic example of this goal being realized is the infamous “shower scene” from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Hitchcock originally told Bernard Herrmann, the composer for the film, that he didn’t want music for that particular scene. Herrmann wrote music for it anyway and finally convinced Hitchcock to at least view the scene with the music. There was no denying how perfect it was, and the rest is history. No one that has seen the film can recall that scene without also recalling those horrifying, screeching violins. Conversely, one cannot recall the music without seeing that shadow through the shower curtain and the knife cutting through it. The film and the music have become one entity. It is as if one cannot exist separate from the other. Although this perfect relationship is not always achieved, with regard to music in film, it is always the goal of any serious composer or director.

There are basiacally two modes of thoughts concerning why music was so essential to the movies in the “Silent Era.” Both of these concepts, ironically, have nothing to do with the music’s aesthetic relationship to film, but rather focus on the spectator’s ability to engage in the “film experience.” That is to say, to allow the spectator his/her “willing suspension of disbelief.” Hanns Eisler described the necessity of music in film as follows:

The pure cinema must have had a ghostly effect like that of the shadow play… The magic function of music… consisted in appeasing the evil spirits unconsciously dreaded. Music was introduced as a kind of antidote against the picture. The need was felt to spare the spectator the unpleasantness… in seeing effigies of living, acting, and even speaking persons, who were at the same time silent. The fact that they are living and non-living at the same time is what constitutes their ghostly character… [C]onfronted with gesticulating masks, people experience themselves as creatures of the very same kind, as being threatened by muteness.[i]

The other, not quite so “Freudian,” idea of why music was so essential to the “Silents” is that it helped block out the external distractions as opposed to the internal ones implied by Eisler. In the early days, the film projector itself was loud enough to be audible to the audience. Besides the projector, there were other small distractions like candy wrappers, food munching, people fidgeting in their seats, etc… In relation to these distracting noises, Kurt London, author of Film Music, summed up the idea by writing, “Instinctively, cinema proprietors had recourse to usic, and it was the right way, using an agreeable sound to neutralize one less agreeable.”[ii]

Members of the Lumiere family of Paris were some of the earliest filmmakers. It didn’t take them long to discover the power that music brought to the screen. The first known musical accompaniment (solo piano) was to one of their films on December 26th, 1895, at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. Soon thereafter, most films were accompanied by musicians. Depending on the size of the theater, there would either be just a pianist, or a larger group with strings.

At this point in history, music was not yet being written for the screen. There were essentially three types of music being used; the first being improvised piano, or a larger group of musicians as mentioned previously. Imagine a woman tied to the railroad tracks with a train off in the distance coming toward her and she can’t get away, while the pianist in the pit frantically plays fully diminished chords ascending in minor thirds. The second type was music chosen by the film director and his/her musical assistant. This music would be previously written material, not composed specifically for the film, and usually by well-known classical composers. For example, D.W. Griffith used Wagner’s “Ride of the Vackyries” for a highly dramatic scene in his classic The Birth of a Nation. A contemporary example of this technique can be found in Oliver Stone’s Platoon. Willem DaFoe’s character gets shot at the end of the picture in slow motion, with dramatic underscoring of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” For me, the music and visual image here are nearly as inseparable as they are in the shower scene from Psycho. The third kind of music used to score films in the silent era was contemporary, original music written to be used in films, but still not any film in particular. There were three books of film music written that were widely used: Kinothek by Giusseppe Becce (the most widely used), published in 1919; The Sam Fox Moving Picture Music Volumes by J.S. Zamecnik, published in 1913; and Descriptive Numbers for Motion Pictures and Dramatic Purposes by M.L. Lake, published in 1916. The music contained in these books was written to fit certain “moods.” For example, one piece from the book Kinothek could be labeled “Love Scene,” or another could be labeled “Battle Scene,” or yet another would be “Threatening.” Thus, directors were then realizing the aesthetic, or dramatic effect the music was making on the film and not just the fact that it drowned out the noise of the projector. On October 6th, 1927, The Jazz Singer premiered and signaled the end of the Silent Era. Yet, movies were still not having original music written for their scenes in particular.

The period from the mid 1930s into the 1940s is known as the “Golden Age” of Hollywood. Movies were becoming very popular and were also generating a good deal of money. This meant that more money was being spent on the music budget as well. According to Earle Hagen, an Emmy winning film composer, there was one film in particular that made film producers realize the dramatic, and financial, importance of having a good, original score written specifically for your movie:

In the middle thirties, a score by… Erich W. Korngold burst upon the screen. Written for a film starring Errol Flynn, Captain Blood brought to the movie theater music in the full Richard Straussian glory. The dramatic fanfares and blood and thunder of this score broke down the reservations that producers had about the effect of scoring and film music was on its way.[iii]

This gradual trend of film music becoming more and more specific until it is created to fit each individual scene is what led to the use of jazz and popular music in the movies. Movie subject matter keeps becoming more specialized and often very contemporary. It was a natural outgrowth for contemporary to be used for contemporary subject matter; it’s just that much more specific. Unfortunately, this has also led to the commercialization of some films, which are produced essentially to market a soundtrack. The film supports the soundtrack, rather than the music complimenting the film. It seems inevitable, however, that sooner or later someone will come along to exploit every artistic process for money. This is merely an observation and not an excuse for a lack of artistic integrity.


II: Jazz in Film

Before going into detail about the use of jazz music in film, the following rather lengthy quote from one of the great film composers gets to the heart of why pop  (jazz, folk, rock, etc…) music is not only available to use to score films, but at times is necessary. Alfred Newman was the music director at 2oth Century Fox Studios for nearly two decades beginning in the mid 30s. He has made many important contributions to the art of film scoring including the scores for such movies as Wuthering Heights, Love is a many Splendored Thing, Twelve O’Clock High, Grapes of Wrath, and The Greatest Story Ever Told. When he was asked the question, “To what extent does the picture (film/movie) dictate the necessities and style of the music?,” he answered as follows:

This question seems a bit ambiguous since we are addressing ourselves to music for films – not music per se! Therefore, I would say, without equivocation that the picture dictates the necessity and style of the musical score, totally. We are highly involved with the world-wide and diverse locales… periods I our history, love, sacred and profane, violence, melodrama, the Space Age, comedies and tragedies, to list but a few. Each situation demands a different approach to a score. Often, exhaustive research is necessary. Jazz and Rock are becoming more and more a part of our musical scene. In any case, the film must always dictate the spirit style and psychology of any score, however crystallized the composer’s personal style may be. It is in this direction that the composer’s versatility is determined. The film composer must be a [person] who wears many hats.[iv]

This statement by Newman was made in 1971. Only a few years before this statement was made, The Graduate and Easy Rider had been released. These were two of the first films to be scored with pre-existing contemporary folk/rock music. Both of these films did well financially and critically. Newman saw the direction film scores would take in the “post-Beatles” era. Pop/Rock music was firmly entrenched as part of the culture. There was no denying its presence. But I want to start the discussion of Pop music in film with the music that was the popular music before rock ‘n roll.

“North’s score for A Streetcar Named Desire is a landmark in the history of Hollywood music because it was the first major jazz-oriented score, and its impact was instantaneous.”[v] Alex North received an Oscar nomination for his score of “Streetcar,” which was the first of is many original and memorable film scores. His choice of jazz stylings for this particular film works on many different levels. The setting of the film is New Orleans. Known internationally for its association with the roots of jazz, North employed New Orleans rhythms and blues harmonies to create the “Bourbon Street” atmosphere. He also used music to show us some of Blanche’s (Vivian Leigh) psychological conflict. Outwardly she tries to project an image of civility and control, but most of her scenes with Kowalski (Marlon Brando) are underscored with sultry, blues-tinged clarinet or saxophone solos. This allows us to see the distinction between Blanche’s actual lack of inner self-control and her outer façade of propriety. Also, as jazz is often is often associated with sex, the solo saxophone passages alert us to, and heighten, the sexual tension between Blanche and her sister’s husband. North feels that jazz has not been paid enough attention by “serious” American composers. North says about jazz:

I tried to simulate jazz, to get its essence rhythmically and harmonically and apply it to drama… Jazz is by far a more authentic ingredient of American music than the folk music which is expressed in mountain ballads and cowboy songs, which are, for the most part, of English and Scottish derivation… An attempt should… be made to extract the essence and spirit of jazz and to protect it with all the resources of craftsmanship at one’s command to produce an end product which will have artistic integrity as well as emotional impact.[vi]

Another early landmark film score was Elmer Bernstein’s The Man with the Golden Arm starring Frank Sinatra. Sinatra plays a jazz drummer with a heroin habit. Bernstein’s choice to infuse jazz connotations into the score was obviously due, in part, to the fact that the lead character was a jazz musician in an urban setting. But it was also due to this character’s junk habit. However cliché, true, or unfair this attitude is, people tend to associate jazz with drugs and otherwise unseemly behavior. Bernstein was asked about this association of drugs and jazz music in films and he replied as follows:

It doesn’t speak well for jazz at all. One of our great problems is divesting ourselves of prejudices. We’re born into a society that has inherited all sorts of prejudices… even musical – and this one concerning jazz… has its roots in truth or reality at some point… But that was a long time ago… The times I’ve used jazz to color my music have been in films with sleazy atmospheres: The Man with the Golden Arm… Sweet Smell of Success dealt with some unsavory characters in New York, and Walk on the Wild Side was largely set in a New Orleans house of ill repute. So I’m guilty.[vii]

The last jazz oriented score I’d like to mention in some detail came about much later than the two previously mentioned scores. This is the music for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, which came out in 1976. Once again, it was written by one of the icons of movie music, Bernard Herrmann. His strikingly melancholy, haunting, and most important of all, lonely main theme parallels the lead character of the film, Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro). The sparse instrumentation of this theme (solo alto saxophone plays the melody) adds to our sense of Bickle’s isolation. This theme is used as a leifmotif and comes around whenevr Bickle is driving alone in his cab, or even with a passenger, which heightens his sense of alienation through his lack of connection to a stranger. “I am God’s lonely man,” he writes in his diary during the film.[viii] In a tribute to Herrmann, film music commentator Page Cook wrote:

The problems of setting music to film often lie in its coalescence of artistic as well as practical demands, a problem deepened by a complicated structure of… cinematic forms… The miracle of Herrmann’s solution is that while maintaining a highly individual style he attained a consistent subtlety and fluency in knowing when and where to apply lyricism and/or harrowing intensity.[ix]

Herrmann’s lyricism and intensity are both used to great effect in Taxi Driver. The solo alto saxophone melody of the main theme is jazzy lyricism incarnate. For the murderous climax of the film, he employs violently crushing Stravinsky-like dissonant harmonies that, coupled with the visual images of the particular scene, were actually too intense for some viewers. Sadly, this was to be Herrmann’s last score. Against the advice of his doctor’s, he worked into the night of December 23rd, 1975, finishing the recording of Taxi Driver later that evening instead of taking it easy and finishing the next day. That night, just after finishing the work, he went back to his hotel room and died in his sleep.

Jazz techniques are now part of what should be in any serious film composer’s bag. There are countless other successful films which are entirely (or at least heavily) scored with jazz: Duke Ellington’s Anatomy of a Murder, Leonard Bernstein’s On the Waterfront, and to some extent his West Side Story. Examples of more contemporary films using jazz are Mike Figgis’s Leaving Las Vegas, and Bob Fosse’s Lenny and All That Jazz, all of which happen to focus heavily on substance abuse of one kind or another. Lastly, Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973) was cored entirely with traditional New Orleans Dixieland style jazz performed by Allen himself on clarinet and his regularly performing band. They still perform almost every Tuesday night at “Michael’s” in Manhattan when there’s no film in production. The music for Sleeper was used to heighten the slapstick, broad style humor used in the film. It came very close to “Mickey-Mousing”[x] in its technique and was used to great comic effect.


III: Pop Music as Representative of a Generation/Nostalgia  

The goal of a film director is to evoke a certain response from the viewer, or at least to get a certain idea or mood across through sound and visual images. One technique that the director can use to achieve this is to try to create or invoke an experience or memory that he/she knows is common to most of, if not the entire, audience. Music has an uncanny ability to transport us back in time to another section of our lives, or another time in history. Everyone born in the 1930s or later has a set of pop/rock tunes that will take them back to their high school and college days; even if they don’t like the music! The point is that this is an inescapable part of our culture now, no matter what view is taken on the artistic merit of the music. The phrase “The Soundtrack of Our Lives” is quite literal. This is a powerful tool for a director to use to create a certain atmosphere. David Shumway, professor of literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University, elaborates on this idea:

…The use of popular music in films has changed the relationship between music and image… unlike the classically inflected scores of yore, rock soundtracks are meant to be heard. Whereas the goal of the traditional film score was to cue an emotional response in the viewer without calling attention to itself, recent soundtracks, consisting mainly of previously recorded material, are put together on the assumption that the viewer will recognize the artist, the song, or at a minimum, a familiar style… The music in these films is meant to be not merely recognized but often to take the foreground as the principal locus of attention… also arousing a feeling of generational belonging in the audience.[xi]
   

Mike Nichols’s film The Graduate, released in 1967, is acknowledged as being the first film to use pre-recorded popular music instead of a traditional orchestral score. Paul Simon did write one original piece for the movie, the seminal “Mrs. Robinson,” but it was decided that the rest of the music for the film would be tunes already recorded by Simon and Garfunkel. The film begins with a shot of Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, arriving at the Los Angeles airport scored with the Simon and Garfunkel hit “Sounds of Silence.” The shots for the opening minutes are very inactive and Benjamin is rather expressionless, so “the song claims a greater share of the viewer’s attention, and its complex lyrics… establish the theme of alienation that the narrative will explore. In this instance, the song comments on the narrative. Such commentary is one of the major ways popular songs have been used ever since.”[xii] This is a major innovation in the use of popular music in film scores. The fact that these tunes have lyrics alone is a huge tool in the ability to tell the “inner story” of a character. “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again,” sings Garfunkel as Benjamin arrives at the airport. Nothing much is really happening on the screen, but from the melancholy words and the drifting quality of the harmony and music, we are getting to know Mr. Braddock.

There are two other songs that are featured prominently in this film: “April Come She Will,” and “Scarborough Fair/Canticle.” Both of these tunes are about failed chances at love and accompany scenes where Benjamin is reflecting on (and the screen is showing us) his relationships with Elaine (Katherine Ross) and Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). The music allows us to step into Benjamin’s own nostalgia, which most of the audience will be able to relate to on a personal level. What makes this even more powerful is the fact that many people viewing the film that were between the ages of 18-25 when it came out may have had similar feelings of loss and nostalgia at the same period in their lives that Benjamin is having them. Even more specifically, these feelings were very likely accompanied by the same songs accompanying Benjamin! This is the sense of solidarity and commonality that certain popular tunes can create if used with sensitivity within a film.

Popular music can not only create a sense of nostalgia for a particular experience or event, but for an entire generation. Even better examples of this than The Graduate are Easy Rider and The Big Chill. Both of these films try, and at least to most critics, succeed in painting a portrait of the “sixties generation.” Again, both of these movies are scored almost entirely with pre-recorded popular music associated with the 1960s. It is almost as if the music itself is a character, which is a technique we will discuss in a later section. Though these films both deal with the 1960s generation, they have different themes and points of view. While Easy Rider is actually set in the 1960s, The Big Chill has its characters being from that same generation, but the setting is the early 1980s (the “me” decade), so they’re twenty-some years older.

As in The Graduate, the music is often the main focus in Easy Rider. There are multiple scenes that are panoramic shots of the main characters (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson) riding down the highway on their motorcycles with tunes such as “Born to be Wild” underscoring. The cinematography in these scenes is wonderful, but there’s essentially no action for minutes at a time. The music once again takes on a narrative role. The lyrics to “Born to be Wild” seem tailor-made for this film: Get your motor runnin’/head out on the highway/lookin’ for adventure/or whatever comes my way.” This sentiment that things seemed very open then (“highway”) and that it was cool to just let things happen (“whatever comes my way”), is a common attitude associated with the sixties. This song is aiding in the characterization of these three men on motorcycles. It is also building the identification of a generation. Once again, David Shumway sums up this concept: “‘Easy Rider’ and, indeed, rock in general may trade on this characteristic of music to build a sense of a specific, generational collectivity.”[xiii] But don’t let this idealistic music fool you. After a movie constantly filled with “hippie-trippie” dialogue, free-flowing action, and “flower power” music, there’s a scene toward the end where the two main characters are sitting around a fire off the side of the road at night. It is conspicuously quiet. “We blew it,” Fonda’s character says. “We blew it, man,” he says again. In an instant, everything prior to this moment in the film, not the least of all the music, becomes sadly ironic.

It is again the idealism of the sixties that is the main focus of The Big Chill. Much more than Easy Rider, “The Big Chill relies on the music to represent the 1960s directly to the audience.”[xiv] Along with the music, Easy Rider had the benefit of costume, dialogue, and action to represent the sixties. The Big Chill has only the music, and the nostalgia for the sixties it creates within its characters, to transmit the feeling of the sixties to its audience. The main theme of the movie is the struggle between letting go of the idealism, while still wanting to believe in it. This dichotomy is represented by the Rolling Stones song “You can’t always get what you want,” which is used to underscore Alex’s funeral scene.[xv] Alex had requested that it be played at his funeral. While the song opens with a church organ prelude, Alex’s friends are still inside with the casket, and the song is being used as diegetic[xvi] music. David Shumway explains what happens next:

As the music shifts to the R&B-styled song itself, the music becomes non-diegetis… and the images are of the various members of the group leaving the funeral. The song’s volume is lowered to allow for dialogue in various automobiles but raised to the foreground during shots that present the movement of the funeral procession as a whole. The song thus serves sonically to bind the members of the group together, to encourage our identification with them through the repetition of a record with which we [the baby-boomer audience for which this film was made] are likely to have already identified, and to locate both these connections in the era in which the Stones’ song was released.[xvii]
              

This technique of turning diegetic music into non-diegetic music is curiously acceptable with pop music. It is used a few more times throughout the picture. If the Stones’ tune represents the characters’ struggle to release their desire to hold onto their idealism, there is plenty of other music in the picture that represents their nostalgia for it: for example, Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World.” As a final note on The Big Chill, Shumway had this to say, “Jeff Goldblum’s ironic line that ends the film – ‘We’ve taken a vote; we’ve decided we are never going to leave’ – is meant to suggest the impossibility of communal life being sustained for more than a few days, even as it also expresses the desire for such a life.”[xviii] This same conflict of one wanting what one knows one can’t have, is exemplified in much of the music of the sixties that plays throughout this film and helps the audience identify this conflict within the film’s characters. Other films worthy of note on this topic of popular music as representing generation or nostalgia are: American Graffiti, Saturday Night Fever, Little Voice, Dirty Dancing, and Days and Confused. All of these films have very specialized soundtracks designed to invoke their own particular generation or sense of nostalgia.


IV: Pop/Jazz Music as Representative of Location     

All different types of music have been used in films to represent locations around the world. Not even speaking of its use in film, music is one of the main ways, along with language, food, and clothes, that we identify different cultures. It is only natural that music would be used to express location in film. What is especially interesting is when music is used to express a more specific location than, say, Italy or India. Scott MacDonald wrote of a certain type of film: “My focus here is not city films or city imagery in general, but what has come to be called the ‘city symphony’: those films that provide a general sense of life in a specific metropolis, often by revealing characteristic dimensions of city life from the morning into the evening of a composite day.”[xix] MacDonald is using the term “symphony” symbolically here, for the films he talks about in his article aren’t necessarily using music to symbolize the city. However, the term “city symphony” is so perfect for films that do paint the picture of a city using music as a main ingredient, that I am going to expand the definition of this term to include a film that doesn’t take place all in one day, but is an homage to a particular city and does take place entirely within its confines:

“‘Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion.’ No, make that: ‘He romanticized it all out of proportion. Now… to him no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black-and-white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.’ Ahhh, now let me start over. ‘Chapter One. He was tough and romantic as the city he loved… New York was his town. And always would be.’”[xx]

The above is a small excerpt from a long monologue that introduces Woody’s Allen’s Manhattan. He refers to the city as a character in the film. Allen has lived in Manhattan nearly his entire life and has shot almost all of his twenty some-odd films on location in the city. His reference to Gershwin in this introduction is not incidental. The film is scored entirely with Gershwin’s music. For the sake of judiciousness, I’d like to offer a different opinion than mine (and mosr critics) on Allen’s use of Gershwin in Manhattan:

Randy Newman, who wrote the scores for Ragtime and The Natural, is critical of Woody Allen’s Manhattan score, which he feels is too ‘big’ for the film… Newman claims that the music often overwhelms the characters and the action with “great genius music by Gershwin… and little Woody Allen and other little guys talking on the phone at the same time. It dwarfed them.”[xxi]


As a general consensus, however, most critics agree that Manhattan is a masterwork and that Allen was successful in his fusing of Gershwin and New York City. Allen talks about the use of music in his films just two years prior to the making of Manhattan, during the production of Annie Hall:

In those days I was sort of still groping for a musical approach. I had used classical music in Love and Death. In Sleeper I had played the music myself, me and my jazz band. I wasn’t sure yet what I really wanted to do musically, so I was trying this film without music… If I did that same film today, it would probably be full of music… I remember Bergman never used music, and I was so taken with his film-making in those days, I may have thought to myself, “Perhaps he’s right about the use of music.” But over the years I came to a different feeling about music.[xxii]

The monologue introduction to Manhattan lasts about five minutes. The narration is off-screen and all we see is a montage of black and white shots of the city. The choice of shooting in black and white adds a sense of nostalgia to the film. Construction workers, buildings, taxi-cabs, street vendors, baseball stadiums and famous landmarks are all underscored to “Rhapsody in Blue.” It begins with no narration, just the solo clarinet with it’s blues-tinged ascending line floating over New York City. The narration cuts out again at the end of the introduction and leaves the climax of “Rhapsody” to underscore a minute or so of fireworks exploding over Yankee Stadium; the orchestral hits being timed occasionally to coincide with the rhythms of the fireworks. This image, another one where, for many, the screen image is inseparable from the music, parallels the characters’ (and in this instance, the film-maker’s) romanticization of New York City.


V: Do The Right Thing

…the greatest American city symphony: Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989)… Do the Right Thing begins with a prelude: a credit sequence accompanied and informed by Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” Lee’s opening simultaneously evokes the conventional introductory movement and invests it with a new – if (for many viewers) confrontational and abrasive – energy that suggests both the achievements and the anger of African-America, as represented by Public Enemy.[xxiii]

Confrontation is the key word in the above quotation. Lee uses the confrontational nature of this rap music to force the audience to acknowledge the fact of racism in our society, and to get in touch with their own feelings about it. Though not all rap music is confrontational, a decent proportion of it is. These are some of the lyrics to “Fight the Power”:

While the black man’s sweatin’
In the rhythm I’m rollin’
Got to give us what we want
Got to give us what we need
Our freedom of speech is the freedom of death
We got to fight the powers that be
To revolutionize make a change
What we need is awareness
Power to the people, no delay.[xxiv]

This tune is unusually important because it becomes the leitmotif for the character Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn). Raheem is always carrying a huge boom box that is always playing this song. It is heard in ten scenes and precedes Raheem’s entrances. It actually serves as off-camera dialogue because Raheem’s character speaks very little. Public Enemy speaks for him. Lee is using the music here as narrative to get Raheem’s point of view across. It’s as though the music is the character. “Raheem is usually shot with the camera in a canted position and from a low angle, almost mimicking the position of the boom box itself.”[xxv] This is as though we are seeing Raheem’s character from the point of view of the music. “The song is used as a sonic assault – it enters unpredictably, at an unmodulated, uncharacteristically loud volume. It is intended to be obtrusive.”[xxvi] Obtrusive it is. The character that it agitates the most is the white, Italian-American pizzeria owner Sal (Danny Aiello). Throughout the film, Sal repeatedly asks Raheem not to play his radio when he comes into the pizzeria, but Raheem pays no heed. Sal says to him, “You come into Sal’s, there’s no music. No rap, no music, no music, no music. Capisc’? Understand?”[xxvii] The aggravation that Sal feels because of this “sonic assault” is felt by the audience as well. We are not merely told by someone through dialogue that the music is loud. Lee actually mixes the music very high in the recording so that the audience has the same experience as Sal. It is unavoidable. The tension created by the music is not only due to the volume. It is also due to its subject matter. “Rap… songs… are incantations, chants which can correctly be seen as thematic variations on the question of power, racism, and class.”[xxviii] Possibly, this music creates tension in Sal and the viewer by forcing them to confront their own attitudes on these issues.

The climax of the film comes when racial tensions are at a peak inside Sal’s pizzeria. There are multiple arguments going on at the same time, Raheem has his radio blasting “Fight the Power,” and the general feeling is very chaotic. Sal can’t take it anymore and breaks down, yelling racist epithets. He grabs his baseball bat and smashes Raheem’s radio to pieces. Since we have already made the connection of the radio and the music representing Raheem, we can see that this act is like killing Raheem himself. A race riot ensues and Raheem is literally beaten to death, just like his radio, bringing the “music as character” representation to its ultimate close, and Sal’s pizzeria is burned down.


VI: Commercialism of Film Scores      

“What I object to is the forcing of pop music in scores for blatantly commercial reasons. It ignores the real function of scoring, which is to support the film’s impact on the mind and the emotions of the audience.”[xxix] This is a quote from the great Jerry Goldsmith, who has scored such films as Lonely are the Brave, Lilies of the Field, Patton, Chinatown, and Alien. This sentiment is widespread among the serious film composers today. It is not that they don’t see any place for pop/rock music in film. It is about the fact that a movie producer may be more concerned these days about whether a soundtrack will sell at the record store than whether it supports the picture thematically. It started as early as the 1950s with the Elvis Presley movies. Record producers saw that having a movie out with your artist singing a song in it was a great way to market an album. 

Then it started working backwards. Movie producers saw that having a record out was a great way to market a movie. Hal Wallis, a Paramount Pictures producer, says, “rock music offered Hollywood a way to compete with television for the youth audience it needed without spending the exorbitant sums of money required for Biblical epics or other movies.”[xxx] The record industry and the film industry were becoming linked, and are still linked. Recent television marketing of Hollywood films is geared toward having a hit single to play along with the ad, whether or not there’s any real connection between the song and the film’s narrative. Mark Evans says, “The entrance of record company executives into the film music field changed it forever. For the first time, a key element in evaluating the worth of a score was totally divorced from the motion picture itself: Could the score sell records?”[xxxi] This trend started taking off soon after The Graduate and Easy Rider. The producers didn’t care that there were actual artistic and thematic reasons for the scores of those movies being the way they were. They just saw that the soundtracks were selling and making millions of dollars. As stated at the beginning of this article, it seems one can always count on somebody coming along to exploit the artistic process for money. Real movie makers just have to keep looking for real film composers.


VII: Conclusion 

From the Lumiere’s first film accompanied by a solo improvised piano in 1895, to Spike Lee’s sonic rap assault in 1989’s Do the Right Thing, movies and music have been inseparable. The techniques may have changed, but the intent has always remained the same: to bring the audience more deeply into the story of the film. Whether it is D.W. Griffith using Wagner or Mike Nichols using Simon and Garfunkel, the goal is the same: to convey the ideas and feelings of the pictures and characters on screen more fully; more specifically. The need to be more specific is what led the modern directors to start using more modern music. The subject matter of the films being made was becoming more specific to contemporary issues and modern lives. Real directors use every resource at their disposal to create an atmosphere that reflects this, and contemporary music is one of their most valuable resources.



Endnotes                


[i] As quoted by Roy M. Prendergast, A Neglected Art: A Critical Study of Music in Films (New York: New York University Press, 1977), pp. 3-4.
[ii] As quoted by Prendergast, pp. 4.
[iii] Earle Hagen, Scoring for Films (Hackensack: Wehman Bros. Publishers & Distributors, 1971), pp. iii.
[iv] As quoted by Hagen, pp. 162.
[v] As quoted by Tony Thomas, Music for the Movies: 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1997), pp. 242.
[vi] Thomas, pp. 242.
[vii] As quoted by Thomas, pp. 255-56.
[viii] Lawrence S. Friedman, The Cinema of Martin Scorsese (New York: Continuum Publishing Co, 1997), pp. 61.
[ix] As quoted by Thomas, ed. Film Score: The View from the Podium (Cranbury: A.S. Barnesand Co, 1979), pp. 147.
[x] This is a scoring technique often used in cartoons where the physical movements where the physical movements of the characters are mimicked and exaggerated through music.
[xi] David R. Shumway “Rock ‘n Roll Soundtracks and the Production of Nostalgia,” Cinema Journal, Vol. 38,2 (1999): pp. 36-37.
[xii] Shumway, pp. 37.
[xiii] Shumway, pp. 39.
[xiv] Shumway, pp. 43.
[xv] Alex is the friend all the characters have in common; the reason they’ve all gathered together.
[xvi] Diegetic music, or “source” music, is music that the characters are actually hearing within the scene; For example, a scene that takes place at a concert.
[xvii] Shumway, pp. 44.
[xviii] Shumway, pp. 43.
[xix] Scott MacDonald, “The City as the Country: The New York City Symphony from Rudy Burckhardt to Spike Lee,” Film Quarterly, Vol. 51,2 (Winter 1997-98): pp. 3-12.
[xx] Woody Allen on Woody Allen, In Conversation with Stig Bjorkman (New York: Grove Press, 1995). Originally published in Sweden by Alfabeta Bokforlag, 1993, pp. 107.
[xxi] Randy Newmna as quoted in The Art of Watching Films, 4th ed. (Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996), pp. 252.
[xxii] As quoted by Bjorkman, pp. 76.
[xxiii] MacDonald, pp. 4.
[xxiv] As quoted by Victoria E. Johnson “Polyphony and Cultural Expression: Interpreting Musical Traditions in Do the Right Thing,” Film Quarterly, Vol. 47,2 (Winter 1993-94): pp. 26.
[xxv] MacDonald, pp. 12.
[xxvi] Johnson, pp. 24.
[xxvii] Johnson, pp. 26.
[xxviii] Johnson, pp. 24.
[xxix] As quoted in Thomas, Film Score: The View from the Podium, pp. 225.
[xxx] William D. Romanowski and R. Serge Denisoff, “Money for Nothin’ and the Charts for Free: Rock and the Movies,” Journal of popular Culture, Vol. 21,3 (Winter 1987): pp. 67.
[xxxi] Gary R. Edgerton, ed. Film and the Arts in Symbiosis (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988) pp. 228.


Bibliography

Bazelon, Irwin. Knowing the Score: Notes on Film Music.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1975.

Boggs, Joseph M. The Art of Watching Films. 4th ed. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996.

Bruce, Graham. Bernard Herrmann: Film Music and Narrative. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.

Carney, Ray. The Films of John Cassavettes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Carson, Diane. ed. John Sayles Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999.

Chion, Michel. Audio Vision Sound on Screen. Ed. And Tr. By Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Edgerton, Gary R. ed. Film and the Arts in Symbiosis. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Eisler, Hanns. Composing for the Films. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947.

Ellington, Edward K. Music is my Mistress. New York: Da Capo Press, 1973. (Originally published in New York: Doubleday and Co, 1973).

Evans, Mark. Soundtrack: The Music of the Movies. New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1975.

Friedman, Lawrence S. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese. New York: Continuum Publishing Co, 1997.

Hagen, Earle. Scoring for Films. Hackensack: Wehman Bros. Publishers & Distributors, 1971.

Hofmann, Charles. Sounds for Silents. New York: DBS Publications/Drama Books Specialists, 1970.

Huntley, John and Roger Manvell. The Technique of Film Music. Revised and Enlarged by Richard Arnell and Peter day. New York: Hastings House Publishers, 1975.

Johnson, Victoria E. “Polyphony and Cultural Expression: Interpreting Musical Traditions in Do The Right Thing,” Film Quarterly Vol. 47,2 (Winter 1993-94): pp. 18-28.

Lax, Eric. Woody Allen: A Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

MacDonald, Scott. “The City as the Country: The New York City Symphony from Rudy Burckhardt to Spike Lee,” Film Quarterly Vol. 51,2 (Winter 1997-98): pp. 3-12.

Marill, Alvin H. Keeping Score: Film and Television Music, 1988-1997. London: Scarecrow Press, 1998.

Marks, Martin M. Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

McCarty, Clifford. Film Composers in America. New York: Da Capo Press, 1972.

Meeker, David. Jazz in the Movies: A Guide to Jazz Musicians 1917-1977. New Rochelle: Arlington House Publishers, 1977.

Prendergast, Roy M. A Neglected art: A Critical Study of Music in Films. New York: New York University Press, 1977.

Priestley, Brian. Mingus: A Critical Biography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1984. (Originally published in New York: Quartet Books, 1983)

Romanowski, William D. and R. Serge Denisoff. “Money for Nothin’ and the Charts for Free: Rock and the Movies,” Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 21,3 (Winter 1987): pp. 63-75.

Shumway, David R. “Rock ‘n Roll Soundtracks and the Production of Nostalgia,” Cinema Journal Vol. 38,2 (1999): pp. 36-45.

Thomas, Tony. Music for the Movies. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1997.

Thomas, Tony, ed. Film Score: The View from the Podium. Cranbury: A.S. Barnesand Co, 1979.

Thompson, David and Ian Christie, eds. Scorsese on Scorsese. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1989.

Woody Allen on Woody Allen. In Conversation with Stig Bjorkman. New York: Grove Press, 1995. (Originally published in Sweden by Alfabeta Bokforlag, 1993).





Everything That I Know Is True: Charles Mingus(*)

(Written for Prof. Ken Pullig’s class “The Music of Mingus,” Berklee College of Music, Spring, 1995)

“I’ve often felt no flag, no country, no love or nothin’. It’s me livin’ in a world that I’ve made for myself. Maybe I’ve done this to myself,” says Charles Mingus. On the surface, one might read this statement and think it only sad and forlorn. There is that side, for sure. But on the other hand, this “self-created world” has a positive side. It has less (or no) barriers and biases between peoples, cultures, artistic mediums, or styles within a given medium. And importantly in Mingus’s own “world,” many barriers between black and white are broken down: Quite literally in his genealogy and more figuratively in his music. That is to say that if we were to make the sweeping generalization that “classical” music on the whole is a “white” tradition, and “jazz” on the whole is a “black” tradition (generalizations which may not be too terrible a stretch), much of Mingus’s world has certainly done away with many of the barriers separating these two musical genres. In fact, the blending, or blurring, of these two musical styles is one of Mingus’s many great achievements. Perhaps this attempt, rather successful that it was at bringing these two musical worlds together, was also an attempt at calming the racial conflict within Mingus’s own self, as well as in his own country. This conflict was present from day one in Mingus’s own life. On April 22nd, 1922, Mingus was born out of a racially mixed couple. He was raised in California by his father and half-Indian stepmother; his blood mother having died months after his birth.

From the beginning of his childhood, Mingus was exposed to music regularly. His stepbrother played the Spanish guitar, which could well be an early inspiration for his love of Spanish music, which permeates so much of his later work. Both his sisters were musicians as well: one a pianist and the other a classical string player. His earliest experiences with live music were the excursions with his stepmom to the local Holiness Church. Gospel music was an integral part of the faith and service. Mingus remembers his experiences there: “People went into trances and the Congregation’s response was wilder and more uninhibited than in the Methodist Church. The Blues was in the Holiness Churches – moaning and riffs and that sort of thing between the audience and the Preacher.”

These early experiences at church seep into many facets of Mingus’s writing later on. He has many tunes that are straight out of that tradition, and you can hear him yelling with reckless abandon in the background on some recordings, often saying simply, “Jesus!” Also, his concept of collective improvisation is very similar to these “Holy Rollers” sessions in that everyone is doing their own thing (ie: improvising at once over and with one another). Of course, Mingus’s musical situations were generally more composed/controlled, but the styles have many musical similarities.

When first starting out in music, Mingus played the trombone and then the cello, though neither of these were his first choice. “At home I was gonna be a piano player, at least in my heart. But my sister already played piano and [my parents] had already spent the money for her, and they wouldn’t spend it for me. So I had to choose another instrument,” Mingus says of growing up. He later became an accomplished pianist anyway. But finally, later in high school, he picked up the bass. There were many reasons contributing to his switch to the bass, not the least of which was the fact that the school needed a bassist. As a not unimportant side note, Mingus said he heard someone say to his father, “Why don’t you get him a bass? Because a black man can get employment with a bass, because he can play our music.”

One of Mingus’s early influences on the bass was Joe Comfort from Lionel Hampton and Nat Cole’s bands. But an even bigger influence on his bass playing was Red Callender who was playing with the Louis Armstrong Band. Mingus was actually a student of Callender’s and would later also play with Louis Armstrong. Callender speaks of Mingus, “All students should be as apt as Charles was. Our relationship was more on a friendship basis, rather than teacher/pupil.”

But possibly even a greater influence on Mingus while he was still in school was his other teacher Lloyd Reese. Mingus was taking piano and theory lessons from Lloyd, who was himself a very accomplished musician having played and recorded with none other than Art Tatum. Mingus says of his lessons with Reese, “I never really understood the bass until I started working out harmonies and other things on the piano. Then I came to regard the fingerboard of the bass like a piano keyboard.” In this period Mingus was also listening to a lot of important European classical music: Beethoven, Strauss, Debussy, etc… Lloyd had his students analyze movements of classical pieces for voicings, orchestration and so forth. Throughout all of his childhood Mingus got plenty of classical training that would have a great effect on his “jazz” writing later on.

The centuries old tradition of counterpoint ca be found nearly everywhere in Mingus’s music. Even in his blues forms he utilizes contrapuntal devices. In “Moanin’,” from the Blues And Roots recording, the tune begins wit a single line from the baritone sax. Each chorus introduces a new line of counterpoint (some harmonized) until finally he has four independent lines. Also, he uses the major 7th degree in one of the lines against what is essentially a dominant texture! Mingus was not interested in only writing “head-solo-head-out” tunes. Often his counterpoint reveals a deep understanding of intervallic relationships and linear thinking, as opposed to writing lines from a purely harmonic standpoint. The opening of “Diane” from Ah Um is one of Mingus’s strongest examples of this type of writing. Piano, flute, and arco bass begin playing, wandering in and out of one another, at points seemingly leaving tonality. At one moment bass and flute play unison against the piano, another moment all three play equally independent lines, and yet another has the flute and piano playing against the bass. Mingus’s mastery of counterpoint seeps into all of his compositions. He also uses canonical writing occasionally and has a piece titled “Canon.”

Though his fine contrapuntal technique is very important, the greatest contribution Mingus’s classical background made to his jazz composition is most likely his development of extended forms. This is another one of his giant contributions to the world of jazz. Aside from Ellington, there were really no others before Mingus who wrote jazz pieces with extended forms. There may have been guys blowing twenty minute long extended solos, but these weren’t extended forms. One approach to this idea is writing a “fantasy,” where instead of writing an AABA type of form, the form is more like ABCDE etc…, with some sections possibly being repeated (or alluded to) for continuity. Mingus’s “Cumbia Jazz Fusion” is much like this form. The piece involves oboes playing African folk melodies, swing brass sections, ostinato bass figures, African percussion ensemble sections, and satiric spoken word recitations all contrasted with one another back to back. The piece was originally written for a TV special on drug trafficking. Another one of Mingus’s interests lies in programmatic music for film (he worked with John Cassavettes on one of his earlier movies).

But more often than not, his extended forms had large repeating sections, some of which would be collective improvisations. Mingus’s own spin on collective improvisation is another large contribution to the world of jazz. This concept stems from the Dixieland tradition, which would often have many instruments improvising at once. Most often, these collective improvisations would take place over a very simple harmonic progression (the blues, for example) or even just one chord (modal!). In Mingus’s case, very often the length of these sections would be indeterminate, but the beginning and ending signposts of the section were planned. Usually, a particular band member (often Mingus himself) would have the responsibility of determining when the collective improv section had reached its close, for whatever reason, and would cue the band out with devices as simple as a recognizable drum riff or a ii-V leading to the next section of the piece. These sections would be surrounded with the related written/composed material. The tune “Ysabel’s Table Dance” from the Tijuana Moods recording, is almost entirely a collective improvisation and lasts over ten minutes. This piece exploits the Spanish Phrygian mode, which was widely used by Mingus. It begins with castanets (played by Ysabel) and proceeds for most of the tune over the modal groove I Maj7 – bII Maj7 – bIII Maj7 – bII Maj7. There is a short written line over this groove, but almost the entire first three minutes consist of collective improv between voices and mixed horns (really, the entire band…) over the Spanish groove. The section is cued out, and a short written passage is played which leads directly back to the Spanish groove, and the collective improv begins anew. This section turns out shorter than the previous one and is cued out to a piano cadenza section; yet another holdover from Mingus’s classical background. The following section has a swing feel for contrast against the earlier flamenco feeling. There isn’t even a “head” at the beginning; it simply jumps into a sax solo. This section begins with a relaxing I Maj7 – bVII Maj7 vamp. This is one of Mingus’s favorite vamps and can be found in many of his tunes in various permutations. In “Ysabel’s,” all of the sections come back around, yet with a slightly different character each time. Other notable extended works by Mingus, which all use collective improv, include “Black Saint And Sinner Lady” (perhaps his greatest, this piece uses multiple cadenzas), “Pithecantropus Erectus,” “Meditations,” “Los Mariachos,” etc…

Perhaps what is most intriguing about Mingus’s extended compositions, and band-leading in general is that they were accomplished (largely) without any written music. More often than not, he would simply sing the parts to the players, or play them for the instrumentalists on the piano. Even within the composed sections of many of Mingus’s tunes, the players had liberty to embellish their parts. When asked about this, Mingus explains, “As long as he starts where I start, and end where I end… They would learn how to memorize. I taught ‘em scales that go against every chord, and they begin to find that the hearin’ is simple, much simpler than they thought. For instance, I think it’s hypnosis, man. I do it with Dannie (Richmond) very much. I say, ‘Man, like you got that, like, I know you can do it.’” He goes on further, “I seen Lionel Hampton, which I’m sure is mass hypnosis, by him throwin’ himself completely into the full spirit of the composition, he’s made people ump outta the bleachers and break their legs. Now, you know this is fact.”

As much as the European classical tradition permeated Mingus’s music, so did the blues and gospel music. The melodic riff from “Haitian Fight Song,” for instance, is right out of the basic pentatonic blues scale, emphasizing the b3 and b7 notes. While the ostinato bass figure features the b3 and b5. Now you’ve got all the “blue” notes. Almost the entire melody of the classic “Goodbye Pork-pie Hat” is in the blues scale. “Nostalgia In Times Square,” “Better Git It In Your Souls,” “Boogie Stop Shuffle,” “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting;” all these tunes feature the blues scale. Also, often in his extended pieces Mingus will have sections open up for solos over standard blues progressions, sometimes just a simple I7 – IV7 vamp. When asked if he listened to the blues when he was younger, Mingus says, Oh man! You know Joe Turner!? T-Bone Walker!? I was on T-Bone. T-Bone got me a job with Joe Turner. I didn’t realize the value of the people I played with. Kid Ory!”

There are many other techniques that show up again and again in Mingus’s writing that give it that Mingus flavor. He would often blur ¾ and 4/4 time, having a heavy 12/8 feel under a 4/4 groove, and then move to 6/8 for solos (this is similar to what happens in “Better Git It In Your Soul”). The performance of “Orange was the color of her dress, then blue silk,” from Changes Two with Don Pullen and George Adams, is an example of many Mingus trademarks. In the A section alone we have rubato statements, feel changes (double time latin next to 4/4 swing), and an odd eleven bar phase. Mingus would also occasionally slip one bar of melody into a different meter (add a beat, or take one away) than the rest of the tune, as in the beginning of “Free cell block F, ‘tis Nazi USA.” The first and fourth bars of the sixteen bar phrase are in 5/4, whereas the rest of the tune is in 4/4, yet it flows and sounds completely natural.

Along with being a master of notes, Mingus also held great command over the English language. He used words on many ways in his music. He wrote lyrics to his instrumental “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love,” which Jackie Paris recorded with him on Changes Two. He also sang Mingus’s ballad “Portrait.” “Eclipse” is yet another tune with words by Mingus, though, admittedly, it is rather “outside.” His words to these songs by no means rival his instrumental writing, but it was another one of his talents and serious endeavors. He also put out the record Oh Yeah on which he sings and plays piano exclusively. The lyrics, which Mingus says are all improvised (precursor to today’s Rap music “freestyle?”), are scattered at best. They consist mostly of Mingus doing some wild “Holy Rolling,” as if in church. The album does, however, demonstrate Mingus’s excellent piano chops. On my first listening to “Wham Bam Thank You Mam,” I thought it was Monk! Mingus demonstrates his abilities on the piano even more so on the beautifully realized solo piano improvisation “Myself When I am Real.”

Mingus also used the spoken word in his compositions. The extended composition “The Clown” has Jean Shepherd improvising lyrics on a basic outline of a story given to him by Mingus. It is essentially a social satire about the creative artist in our society. The performance on the album is one of the all-time great Mingus moments. Political motivation in terms of racism in the U.S. was also a factor in his written word/lyric output. Toward the end of another extended piece titled “Cumbia Jazz Fusion,” there is a spoken word passage where Mingus recites:

Who said Mama’ little baby likes shortenin’ bread?
Who said Mama’ little baby likes shortenin’ bread?
That’s some line some white man upped and said.
Mama’s little baby don’t like no shortenin’ bread.
Mama’s little baby likes chocolates,
Mama’s little baby likes caviar,
Mama’s little baby likes all the fine things of life.
All the good things that a real good person should have.

Mingus’s other most notable spoken word composition is “Don’t Let it Happen Here.” This also deals with racism and is certainly one of his most powerful pieces. And not to be left out is Mingus’s autobiography Beneath The Underdog, which is, to this observer, the most outlandish and revealing jazz autobiography to date.

As Mingus became increasingly ill in his fifties, he and his wife moved down to Mexico to live, a lace that he had always been fond of. They’d been living there for a few months when Mingus finally passed away. On the same day that Mingus died, at the age of 56, 56 whales beached themselves on the Mexican coast.

Mingus on music and himself:

“So if it’s insincere, then I’m not alive, because you can’t live and be insincere. I mean, I’m trying to hang on to everything that I know is true.”


* All quotes are either from Brian Priestley’s Mingus – A Critical Biography, or the Nesuhi Ertegun interview from the CD recording Oh Yeah.





What Is Musical Analysis And Why Do We Do It?

(For Dr. Timothy Smith’s Stylistic Analysis, Mus 603, Northern Arizona University, Fall 2000)

The question “What is musical analysis?” is a difficult one due to its extremely broad nature, and yet is quite a valid and essential question to be concerned with at the beginning of the 21st century. It is difficult because today we have heated debate over the question “What is music?,” let alone musical analysis. As a general working definition, though, I would say that musical analysis is, "Any working through of the music that helps us understands where it starts, where it goes, and how it gets there." As time goes on, and music becomes more evolved, intricate, and varied, we must also adapt our analytical techniques to deal with this evolution. Yet the goal of the analysis should remain the same whatever the aim, genesis, or technique of the music. Namely, understanding the music.



I’d like to start by discussing a few things that I believe musical analysis is not. Keep in mind this discussion pertains to instrumental music. Musical analysis is not the study of a composer’s intentions, philosophical attitudes, personal history, or religious beliefs. While these aspects very often have an effect (sometimes a profound effect) on how a piece of music is written, they are only facilitators – sparks to help the music ignite – not the music itself. Musical analysis should remain focused on the music itself. Any number of factors besides personal philosophy, religious beliefs and the like can have an effect on how the music is written. The weather on a particular day can affect the mood of a composer and consequently alter a particular note choice, or a decision on form or orchestration. This may seem flip, but it is true. Should the weather report be part of our musical analysis? This is not to say that a composer’s (or musical movement’s) philosophy, religion, personal history, or other concerns are not related to the music, or that these factors are not important in and of themselves. They most certainly are and should be considered valid areas of study. It is my point only that they are not “musical” elements and should not be subjects of musical analysis. Once the music is completed/written, these other factors fall away and the music breaks off and becomes itself, un-affected by human concerns. We have to meet the music on its own terms; separate the art from the artist.

In addition to separating the artist’s personality from the process of Musical Analysis, we also need to keep the act of Criticism separate from Analysis. Once again, this is not to say that Criticism is not valid or important on its own. In fact, it is very important and often valid. We all judge and critique things everyday; whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not. Yet, this is necessarily a different process than analysis and must be separated in mind and in practice. Analysis is about what happens in the music; how we get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ Criticism is about what we think about about how we got from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ It is essentially a value judgment. Centuries and centuries of common practice have conditioned us to react in certain ways to particular patterns and styles of music/sound. Through these accepted common practices have grown schools of criticism: ie – what works, what is right, what is good. These critical attitudes and positions can be valid while at the same time are are essentially subjective. This is where criticism must be separated from analysis. Subjectivity is essential, unavoidable, and of course, valid. But it is a reaction. Analysis must be objective. T o truly analyze is not to criticize. After the analysis is completed, if we are still interested enough in the music, criticism can be very beneficial. It can help us decipher why and what we like about the music and how to use it in our own playing or writing. But to impose subjective critical attitudes within the Musical Analysis itself is self-defeating.

Considerably less complicated an issue than “what” is Musical Analysis, is “why” we do Musical Analysis. The obvious answer to this question is to understand the music more deeply. But why do we want to understand the music more deeply? Do we need an analytical understanding of the music to enjoy it? I believe no is the answer to this last question. But for musicians, it can heighten our enjoyment considerably. The first motivation (which I believe to be vastly more common than the second) is a desire to better one’s playing and/or writing. This motivation, of course, belongs strictly to aspiring/practicing musicians. While developing one’s own ideas and cultivating a personal style is essential to becoming an artist, so is the study of previous performers/composers. It is the combination of personal vision and mastery of past techniques and common practices that most often makes a truly great musician.

The second motivation for deeper understanding of the music through Musical Analysis is a genuine fascination with the process and inner functions of how music works. Like the sciences (ie: mathematics, physics, biology, etc…), music can reveal many complex and beautiful relationships without ever being realized sonically. For many, a true understanding of these relationships can be satisfying in and of itself, without even physically hearing the music. Musicians and non-musicians alike can share this motivation.

The issue of defining Musical Analysis and why it is done, let alone actually doing it once it is defined, can be a very complex and divisive issue. The vehemence of the arguments generated by this issue, in my experience, is second only to the heat generated in circles of jazz musicians by the question, “Can jazz be taught, and if so, how?” The emotional reaction to these issues is a testament to how important and valid these questions/concerns are at the present time. To keep the analysis “honest,” it is essential to concern ourselves only with the music and not with other factors that may have influenced its writing: ie – composer’s personal philosophy, personal history, religious beliefs, etc… While these factors are important, they are not musical elements and should not be considered during a musical analysis. There could be a separate camp of analysis for these types of factors: “Non-Musical Compositional Influence Analysis” perhaps. Also to be kept separate from Musical Analysis is Musical Criticism. For me, this is a “democratic” separation, like our government’s (in theory, anyway) separation of Church and State. Musical analysis would be represented by the “State,” which has certain “inalienable rights,” while Criticism would be represented by the “Church.” While the Church is very beautiful and has many wonderful things to offer, its subjectivity should not be forced upon the State.

As for why we do Musical Analysis, there are essentially two reasons, both motivated by a desire to understand the music on a deeper level. Firstly, and I believe most commonly, are individuals driven to analyze music to better their own performance/composition. Secondly, there are those who are so fascinated and taken with the process and inner workings of music, that the understanding of them has its own satisfaction. Above all, a true love of the nature of music is the highest motivating factor in any serious musical endeavor, whether it’s performing, composing, analyzing, or simply listening.

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