Postwar Crosscurrents
Composer Biographies
Charlie Parker
Born: August 29, 1920. Kansas City, Kansas
Died: March 12, 1955. New York
Return to Just Listen: Era : Composer
American jazz saxophonist. Known for a virtuoso style of improvisation that was fundamental to the bebop style of jazz.
Kansas City, Missouri, where Charlie Parker grew up, was an important center for jazz in the 1920s and 1930s. Parker began his musical life playing baritone horn in his school band, but soon bought a used alto saxophone and taught himself to play, listening to the many fine jazz musicians in the city. By age fifteen he had quit school in order to pursue his musical calling. In 1939 he moved to New York and established himself by playing with bands led by Jay McShann, Earl Hines, and Billy Eckstine. Playing in these large groups did not allow the kind of freedom that Parker and others were looking for, and they often met after hours to play together in jam sessions. It was here that the bebop style was born—where players could focus on improvisation and experiment with new harmonic and melodic ideas. Parker, along with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (who played with Parker in the Hines and Eckstine bands), formed a small group and took it to the West Coast in 1945, helping to launch the bop revolution. The group broke up when Parker was committed to Camarillo State Hospital because of heroin addiction. He returned to New York in 1947 and formed a new band, featuring trumpeter Miles Davis. He continued his groundbreaking work in performances and recordings, but by 1951 his problems with drugs and alcohol were beginning to take a severe toll on him. In 1954 he had himself committed once more, and within a year he was dead.
In his brief life, Parker made one of the strongest contributions to the art of jazz of any musician. The style he helped create was one of complex, sophisticated improvisation and virtuosity. More conservative players of the time saw Parker's solos as a jumble of notes with no coherence—Louis Armstrong, for example, was a strong critic in bop's early days. But in retrospect it is clear that the melodies he created had an exquisite musical logic, and since his time new generations of jazz musicians have used his solos as a starting point in creating their own style. A popular rallying cry of jazz musicians in the 1960s and 1970s was "Bird lives!" and it is true even today.
Musical Examples
Back to top
Links
Dizzy Gillespie
Born: October 21, 1917. Cheraw, South Carolina
Died: January 6, 1993. Englewood, New Jersey
Return to Just Listen: Era : Composer
American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader. With Charlie Parker, a pioneer in the bebop style.
The first things that people noticed about Dizzy Gillespie were the way his cheeks popped out when he played and the strange trumpet he had, with its bell pointing up at an angle. The first was just a quirk of his playing, and the second happened by accident when somebody sat on his horn. But what you noticed after that was that he could play—fast and hard, high and loud, soft and lyrical, always on the edge of something new. He was simply one of the finest jazz players ever, and his music, like Charlie Parker's, continues to serve as a model for succeeding generations of jazz musicians.
Gillespie's father was a bricklayer who led a band on the weekends. Because of this, the young Gillespie had the chance to try a number of instruments and taught himself to play trombone and trumpet. His abilities allowed him to attend the Laurinburg Institute, an African American boarding school in North Carolina, but in 1935 he left school to move with his family to Philadelphia. Here he started playing with local bands, and his antics on stage earned him his nickname, "Dizzy." Through his friendship with trumpeter Charlie Shavers he learned many of the solos of Roy Eldridge, which stood him in good stead when he went to New York in 1937 to play in Teddy Hill's band, in which Eldridge had previously played. In New York he played with a succession of bands and became interested in Afro-Cuban styles through his friendship with Cuban-born Mario Bauzá. In the 1940s he also began to develop his own style in jam sessions with musicians such as Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. These sessions were the birthplace of the bebop style. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s he had a succession of small groups (mostly quintets) and his own big band. While the band was never a financial success, it allowed him to continue his exploration of the Afro-Cuban style and served as a home for players such as Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, James Moody, Sonny Stitt, and John Coltrane. In 1956 he organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East and earned the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz" (he even ran for president in 1964 on an antiwar and civil rights platform).
Over the rest of his life, Gillespie continued to play with the leading musicians of the day and to serve as a mentor to younger generations. His contributions to jazz cannot be overestimated. The development of the bop style was a major event in the history of jazz—Gillespie was central to bop's development—and his incredible technique and genius as a soloist helped set new standards for following generations. Many of his compositions, such as "Night in Tunisia," "Salt Peanuts," "Manteca," and "Groovin' High," not only have become jazz standards but also almost single-handedly changed the harmonic and melodic language of jazz.
Musical Examples
Back to top
Links
George Crumb
Born: October 24, 1929, Charleston, West Virginia
Died:
Return to Just Listen: Era : Composer
In his own words....
"In Ancient Voices of Children, as in earlier Lorca settings, I have
sought musical images that enhance and reinforce the powerful yet
strangely haunting imagery of Lorca's poetry. I feel that the
essential meaning of this poetry is concerned with the most
primary things; Life death, love, the smell of the earth, the
sounds of the wind and the sea. These ur-concepts are embodied
in a language which is primitive and stark, but which is capable of
infinitely subtle nuance."
American composer and teacher. Crumb has developed a style that uses new techniques in a dramatic, narrative manner.
George Crumb's career is rather typical for American composers in the second half of the twentieth century. His training was largely in American universities (he received his Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan). In turn, he has spent the majority of his career teaching composition at various universities. He is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began teaching in 1965. He has received a number of awards (including a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for his Echoes of Time and the River), as well as numerous honorary degrees.
Crumb's music is a rich blend of new and innovative techniques, often involving aspects of theater. His scores often call for unusual instrumental combinations. His Lux aeterna, for example, adds a sitar to a chamber ensemble, and his Black Angels is written for an amplified string quartet, which he calls on to play various percussion instruments as well as bowing water goblets. In addition, he asks his players and singers to use new ways of producing sounds. This is especially true of his vocal music. Here Crumb allows the singer to turn her voice into a different kind of instrument, using clicks, sighs, laughs, and yells to create dramatic effects (he also asks instrumentalists to speak, sing, or shout, often as a part of playing). Other techniques, such as singing into the piano (to produce extra resonance) or singing though a cardboard tube (to create a sense of physical and even spiritual distance) add new tonal colors to the human voice. Many of his works were written for the virtuoso singer Jan DeGaetani, and their collaborations have been a rich source of new vocal technique.
Crumb's music also stands out for his use of theater. In Vox balanae he calls for the musicians to wear masks and to perform under a blue light. In his pieces, musicians often leave and reenter the stage, or play from offstage. The written scores also share this sense of theater and symbolism—repetitive sections, for instance, might be written on a circular staff—and his music is as visually intriguing as it is musically satisfying. The majority of his vocal pieces are settings of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, and it is in these pieces that he seems to have found his most successful and immediate style. Not surprisingly, these are among his most often performed works.
Works
- Orchestral music, including Echoes of Time and the River (1967) and A Haunted Landscape (1984)
- Vocal music based on Lorca poetry, including Night Music I (1963); four books of madrigals (1965–69); Songs, Drones,
and Refrains of Death (1968); Night of the Four Moons (1969); and Ancient Voices of Children (1970)
- Chamber music, including Black Angels (1970), for electrified string quartet; Lux aeterna (Eternal Light, 1971), for voice and chamber ensemble (including sitar); Vox balanae (The Voice
of the Whales, 1971), for amplified instruments; and Quest (1994), for guitar and chamber ensemble
- Music for amplified piano, including 2 volumes of Makrokosmos (1972,1973), Music for a Summer Evening (1974), and Zeitgeist (1988); piano music (Processional, 1984)
Back to top
Musical Examples
Back to top
Links
- The Official George Crumb Home Page
Contains biographical information, a list of works, along with a bibliography and discography. Of special interest is a selection of quotes by and about Crumb.
- Music: Does it Have a Future?
An electronic version of an essay written by Crumb for the Kenyon Review. Crumb discusses various influences from the past and from other cultures that have shaped the art music of our time, and suggests something of the shape of the music of the future.
- Federico García Lorca
Much of Crumb's vocal music is based on the poetry of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (who was executed in the Spanish Civil War). This site is a good gateway to various sites dedicated to the life and works of this great poet.
John Cage
Born: September 5, 1912, Los Angeles, California
Died: August 12, 1992, New York
Return to Just Listen: Era : Composer
American composer, performer, graphic artist, poet, and writer. Expert on edible mushrooms and cofounder of the New York Mycological Society.
In an autobiographical statement John Cage wrote "My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard." This desire to find new sounds and to abandon the traditional role of the composer as a controlling authority were hallmarks of John Cage's career and made him at once a revered and reviled figure in modern music.
Cage was the son of an inventor, and he had an unremarkable and generally unmusical childhood. He attended two years of college, then left to travel in Europe. When he returned to the United States, he began serious study, first with Henry Cowell and then with Arnold Schoenberg. He began writing in his own musical system, often using techniques similar to those of Schoenberg. In 1937 he moved to Seattle and took a job accompanying a dance company. From this he began to view music as segments of time to be filled with sounds. During this period his music is marked by strict, mathematically devised proportions of time. He filled these segments with new sounds, including different objects used as percussion (brake drums, for example), electronic sounds, and prepared piano (a piano with objects placed between the strings to modify pitch and timbre).
In the 1940s he moved to New York and joined a group of avant-garde artists, including painters Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham. Cage was long associated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as composer, performer, and music director. At about this same time Cage developed an interest in Eastern religions. During this period, he continued his use of carefully structured segments of time, but began to fill them in with materials derived by chance processes (the rolling of dice, the use of the I Ching, and other methods). In perhaps the ultimate statement of this aesthetic, he wrote 4'33', a piece of total silence on the part of the performer, into which the random sounds of the world enter. This cemented his beliefs that the goal of music was a "purposelessness," and that the role of the composer was to create situations in which sounds could "simply be." To this end, he continued to devise strategies for creating activities in which sounds could happen. The most expansive example of this is HPSCHD, created with Lejaren Hiller. The piece is written for seven harpsichordists, various other performers, and fifty-one tapes, along with multiple films, slides, and light shows. Using various activities, the basic coordination of these elements is set in motion, and the audience walks among the performers over the course of five hours.
In his later years, Cage turned to computers as an aid to his creation of pieces, and became interested in theater (or in his vision, circuses). Along with his musical contributions, he left a large body of writings that explain and exemplify his aesthetic.
Works
- Orchestral works, including Concerto (1951, for prepared piano and chamber orchestra), Concert (1958, for piano and orchestra) 30 Pieces for 5 Orchestras (1981), A Collection of Rocks (1984), 101 (1989)
- Chamber music, including Imaginary Landscape #2 (1942, percussion), 3 Percussion Trios (1943), and String Quartet (1950)
- Piano music, including Music of Changes (1951), Winter Music (1957), Cheap Imitation (1969), and Etudes australes (1975)
- Music for prepared piano, including The Perilous Night (1944) and Sonatas and Interludes (1948)
- Electronic music, including Imaginary Landscape No. 1, 3, 4, and 5 (1939, 1942, 1951, 1952), Fontana Mix (1958), HPSCHD (1969), Roaratorio (1971)
- Vocal Music, including The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (1942), Aria (1958), and Europeras 3 & 4 (1990)
- Music for indeterminate resources, including 4'33' (1952), Variations I–VII (1958–66), and Musicircus (1967)
Back to top
Musical Examples
Back to top
Links
- An Autobiographical Statement
Cage originally wrote this as a part of his acceptance of the Kyoto Prize in 1989. While it is a straight-forward narrative of his life, its presentation provides an insight into Cage's personality—his brilliant mind, and gentle, self-effacing demeanor.
- Indeterminacy
A site true to the ideals of John Cage. Cage wrote hundreds of one-paragraph stories (anecdotes, remembrances, musings) and he would read them as parts of lectures or to accompany dances of Merce Cunningham. This site collects 186 of these stories, and allows you to read them in random order. They are a wonderful way to get into the creative and surprising mind of John Cage.
- Exploring Silence: John Cage's 4'33"
John Cage's most famous piece is also his most misunderstood. This page is a fascinating historical discussion of "the silent piece" and its place in the history of twentieth-century music.
- Silence: The John Cage Discussion List
An ongoing conversation among an incredibly wide variety of people on the music and ideas of John Cage. You might want to sign on for a while.
- The Merce Cunningham Page
Cage worked with Cunningham for most of his career. This site introduces the technique and aesthetic of Cunningham's choreography.
- Cage on the Internet
A page devoted to Cage sites and those on related topics.
Vocal music, including Songs of Separation (1949), From the Hearts of Women (texts by Verna Arvey, 1961), and spiritual arrangements
Choral music, including And They Lynched Him on a Tree (1940) and We Sang Our Songs: The Fisk Jubilee Singers (1971)
Chamber music, including Four Folk Suites (1962)
Piano music, including Three Visions (1936) and Seven Traceries (1939)
Film scores, including Pennies from Heaven (1936) and Lost Horizon (1937); TV theme songs, including Gunsmoke and Perry Mason
Back to top