Re: Melodies move by step in any form of music?

"LJS" <ljschenck@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:3dd41347-4a8f-487d-9c11-7edc759710cd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> It was a loose connection that related to the misconceptions of an
> apparent novice to musical styles. LB said that he was influenced by
> Jazz while writing this piece.

Lots of composers claim to have been "influenced by" jazz,  and then go on
to remove all the vitality of jazz from the music in their own
compositions.
Milhaud is a classic example.  At least Berstein has a produced very vital
musical in West Side Story.

>Cool, has become somewhat of a Jazz
> standard for one song.

Some songs are indeed very adaptable to a jazz treatment:  for example a
lot
of Gershwin's output has proved very adaptable to a jazz treatment.
Bernstein has enjoyed nothing like the same degree of jazz treatemnt.  
West
Side Story is a first and foremost musical - notes to be played as written
-
not a jazz performance.   A vey good one too, with a vibrant Latin
influence.

> Personally, I hear it as an attempt to use some
> jazz harmony and voicing in a revolutionary new approach to a very old
> art form based on a very old story.

Certainly a new style of musical, but I'm wary of terms which can't be
adequately defined like "jazz harmony".   Jazz has no harmonies whch are
not
also present in non-jazz music.   And jazz can be played with very simple
harmonies indeed.

> Don't hurt yourself by trying to
> "work out what there is about it that makes me think  it is, I only
> stated that way to relate the examples that were stated by the OP.

I am unlikely to.

> I will admit, it is not very much like your concept of the early
> stages of Jazz evolution that you attribute to the Creoles.

"attribute partly"   As I have said I do not draw the same degree of
racial
distinction which you insist on, and the evidence all suggests that the
people involved didn't either (except between whites and non-whites which
was enshrined both in law and custom).

But jazz has evolved and shattered into a vast number of different styles,

but all identifiable as jazz by an improvisational element, and most 
identifiable by  a certain rhythmic freedom, neither of which are present
in 
West Side Story.

> I would
> say that it is in a jazz style as related to the more 20th century
> movements to compose jazz tunes and other forms. Is there
> improvisation? No. But I can see the influences.

>Maybe if you don't
> try to read more into my post than there were,

I only read what was there.

> you may see what I am
> talking about more easily.
>
>>
>> > Not to mention the augmented 4th/diminished 5th that is sometimes
>> characteristic of the Jazz Style or Genre
>>
>> ???
>
> You don't think that the tritone is one of the characteristics of
> Jazz?

Not particularly.

> Look at the first scale that most jazz players learn. The Blues
> scale. It is simply a La Penton with the addition of the tritone.

The pentatonic on la with the tritone from doh.    But then jazz isn't a
blues scale and a blues scale isn't jazz.   Again it is more to do with
"modernity" than with jazz particularly.

> Is
> it the only form of music that uses this interval? I don't think so
> and I did not state that it was. What would make you take that leap?

The association you made with jazz.

>> It is an interval which is used in all sorts of ways, by all sorts of
>> music,
>> including in a dominant 7th chord which predates jazz by centuries.
>
> Thanks for sharing that with us. What does if have to do with
> anything?

It has to do with everything - not just jazz.

Dave
-- 
David Webber
Author of 'Mozart the Music Processor'
http://www.mozart.co.uk
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