In conversation, people often make the connection between improvisation and jazz. This makes perfect sense as the genre is oriented around the improvisational skills of the exponents of this type of music.
And such are the skills of many of these performers that they had a significant impact on composers who heard them play. This influence spread into the classical world as far back as French composers Ravel and Debussy .
Before we dive deeper into the ineffable connection between classical music and jazz, let’s take a moment to remember that improvisation is not an uncommon feature of classical music. What’s happened, notably in the 20th Century, is that composers have in many cases, become increasingly prescriptive and precise.
Before this, it would have been commonplace for performers to improvise a considerable amount of the music. Composers provided outlines, chords, and melody lines but not the full and comprehensive scores we see today.
Tracing the Legacy of Improvisation
In the Baroque period for example, keyboard players who were the backbone of ensembles were supplied with a figured bass from which they needed to improvise accompanimental patterns, melodies and countermelodies.
It’s no surprise at all to learn of the great improvisatory skills of JS Bach as well as his contemporaries. It was an expected facility for all musicians and composers alike.
As the concerto became a vehicle for virtuosity and display during the Classical and the Romantic periods, cadenzas in concertos became evermore elaborate affairs. Some composers notated full cadenzas, others a sketch or nothing at all.
Composers/performers such as Franz Liszt composed their own cadenzas for existing works that became almost as popular as the concertos themselves. The cadenza as a central point of improvisatory excellence and innovation shows the importance of improvisation in classical music.
Notation and expectations of 20th and 21st-century composers are such that the idea of allowing an element of chance into a performance seems almost abhorrent.
On the other hand, Avant-Garde composers of the 1960s, John Cage, Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Cornelius Cardew to mention a few, actively chose to include improvisation and the random into their music.
Jazz and Classical Crossover
Returning to our title the influence of jazz can be heard in several of Debussy’s works. In particular, you can discern the ragtime syncopation that features in works like General Lavine and Golliwogg’s Cakewalk.
Ravel, having toured the US for over four months and kept the company of George Gershwin became fascinated by jazz. Ravel’s piano concerto in G major offers some fine examples of just how much of an influence jazz had on the composer. This is evident not only in the rhythmic elements but the orchestration too.
As the USA is considered to be the home of Jazz it follows that many native composers drew significant inspiration from the genre. George Gershwin was one such composer whose music seamlessly blended the spirit of jazz and the world of classical music. Gershwin formally studied the piano and composition.
He was a formidable pianist with consummate powers of improvisation. Many of his piano works have a spontaneous feel that probably stems from his ability to improvise.
Gershwin’s music, almost like no other composer, embraces the popular culture of his time. This is beautifully illustrated in his collection of songs that he often composed to his brother Ira’s lyrics.
Gershwin didn’t content himself with songs alone. He composed extensively during a very short lifetime, for the piano. This includes the famous Rhapsody In Blue and his Piano Concerto. Both of these exhibit strong jazz characteristics in the harmonies, rhythms and melodies. Gershwin’s opera Porgy & Bess (1935), was a groundbreaking work.
It is cast in the form of an opera but based its plot on DuBose Hayward’s play (and novel) called Porgy. What makes this opera stand out is that its story places African-Americans at the heart of the whole opera.
Porgy & Bess contains some of Gershwin’s most enduring compositions including Summertime and It Ain’t Necessarily So. The influence of negro spirituals, jazz rhythms and harmonies are clearly audible and quite deliberate. In blending these worlds so cleverly, Gershwin created a groundbreaking opera that has become a firm favourite across the world.
Other American composers are hot on the heels of Gershwin. Aaron Copland’s compositions contain significant jazz inflexions. One of my all-time favourite pieces by Copland is his Clarinet Concerto (1948), which he wrote for jazz clarinettist and band leader, Benny Goodman.
The work is Copland from the very first note, conjuring perhaps an empty, vast space somewhere in America where a dream wanders.
Copland ingeniously integrates a dynamic cadenza into the concerto that acts as a link between the opening movement and the movements that follow. It also introduces the jazzier elements that have a key role in the music that follows.
The cadenza itself gives the impression of a Goodman-style improvisation with compelling rhythms and extended harmonic progressions.
Leonard Berstein
Leonard Berstein could not have composed as much music as he did without Jazz. The sounds of the jazz world run through his compositions like a raison d’etre. Jazz drives the rhythms, shapes the phrasing, informs the orchestrations and sculpts the harmonies.
One outstanding example is in his musical West Side Story. Here Bernstein relies heavily on Latin-American rhythms and Jazz to form this most compelling of tales based loosely on Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet.
Bernstein was of course a very accomplished jazz pianist. His prowess at the piano was renowned as were his improvisational abilities. He formed his first jazz band as early as the 1930s and devoted considerable time as a young man transcribing the solos of many jazz heroes.
Another key work of Berstein’s was his Prelude, Fugue and Riffs from 1949 which was composed in response to a commission from band leader and clarinettist Woody Herman. It is similar to the Copland concerto but far more obvious in its association and exploitation of jazz characteristics.
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky was not immune to the influence of jazz. In his Piano Rag Music (1919), Stravinsky openly describes his composition as a transcribed improvisation. The influence of Scott Joplin is unquestionable.
The Ebony Concerto (1945), again for Woody Herman, is a brilliant piece of composition where we hear Stravinsky’s distinctive voice blended with the big band jazz sound. There is a distinctly improvisatory feel to the whole piece.
Steve Reich
There are many more composers whose music has been enriched, inspired and driven by improvisation and jazz. One final work to mention is Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint (1996).
This work is unusual as it is scored for nine clarinets and three bass clarinets. It is unashamedly minimalist in feel and material content, but where the interest exists for me is in how innovatively Reich employs jazz rhythms and harmonies. Each of the movements is colourfully hypnotic and great fun to play.