The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Call me crazy, but I am beginning to think that Bach wrote "Autumn Leaves'" Here are but two examples:

    1) Tocatta and Fuge in D minor, starting at about 3:01



    2) Bradenburg Concerto No. 2, starting at about 1:28



    Bach as a source of a jazz standard. Who knew? Probably everyone but me.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Bach was definitely a cool dude. You will hear him use the flat fifth to root resolution as well as a 7 9 to 7b9 in many of the organ fugues resolutions.

  4. #3

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    Only a finite amount of ways to turn a cadence. They were doing it before Bach, and it's still the fundamental grammar of harmony. Autumn leaves is cadence in major, then in minor.
    But in jazz, it's what you do with it. Make your own mark by knowing your own melodic language. Bach and Johnny Mercer would expect nothing less.

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by doc w
    Bach as a source of a jazz standard. Who knew? Probably everyone but me.
    Probably

    The best version of the ballad Les feuilles mortes/Autumn Leaves, btw, is Eva Cassidy's, completely non-swing. JMO

  6. #5

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    Same cadence shows up in Vivaldi, Scarlatti, others.
    Not sure if it originated in the Baroque, still around.

  7. #6

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    Yeah you see a lot of backcycling progressions in Bach. I’m looking at BWV 1000 (fugue in Am on guitar) ATM and it has quite a few ‘ii V I licks’ lol.

    In his era harmony was conceptualised from the bass.

    But that was only one of a whole bunch of common basslines many of which turn up in jazz. (Jazz edu is kind of obsessed with backcycling progressions but there’s a lot more out there.)

    For instance here’s a standard based on the common baroque Lamento bassline, a chromatic descent to the V



    Speaking of Brad I hear a lot of Bachian harmony in his music.

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    Same cadence shows up in Vivaldi, Scarlatti, others.
    Not sure if it originated in the Baroque, still around.
    Thats a good question. I think there are some examples from Monteverdi?

    But in general Renaissance music didn’t think of the bass as being different from the other voices: but the Baroque era it tends to leap around more than the upper voices. So you’d get more movement in fourths and fifths etc.

    Also harmony of that era tends to be a lot more static from a functional perspective

  9. #8

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    Nerds for this sort of stuff might enjoy this channel, which is based on Robert Gjerdingen’s book Music in the Gallant Style, kind of like ‘Hearing the Changes’ by Jerry Coker but for 18th century music .

    Some of these moves are familiar to us as jazz players.

    For instance, Gjerdingen notes that the middle 8 of some jazz standards are a move he calls ‘the Fonte’, which you would also find in the B section of a minuet, among other places...

    A good example is the B of Alone Together, later used by Dizzy for a Night in Tunisia.

    The Fonte - YouTube


    As many of the standards composers were classical trained and jazz musicians borrowed the chord progressions from them this shouldn’t really be a big surprise.

    (BTW the way the melody works is important here as well as the harmony; in this sense many stock bop phrases on 6-2-5-1’s are actually exceptionally funky classical Fonte’s; 9ths descending stepwise to thirds for example as we’d understand it today. There’s a ton of them in that Bach piece I mentioned.

    Gjerdingen even describes a variant with what we would call a V7b9, very Bebop. But also, very Mozart!)
    Last edited by christianm77; 01-31-2021 at 07:32 AM.

  10. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by doc w
    Call me crazy, but I am beginning to think that Bach wrote "Autumn Leaves'" Here are but two examples:

    1) Tocatta and Fuge in D minor, starting at about 3:01



    2) Bradenburg Concerto No. 2, starting at about 1:28



    Bach as a source of a jazz standard. Who knew? Probably everyone but me.
    It is often called 'golden sequence'. Used a lot in baroque music.
    Later in classical and romantic period it is more often used very shortly as the most critical and climax of the piece: Mozart in development of the 1st movement of the 40th symphony, Schuman in piano cocerto cadenza, Tchaikowsky 6th symphony, 1st movement and many others

    Note that Bach never resolves this sequence completely (what easily do Italian masters).

    Autumn Leaves is a French tune, these minor turnarounds were absorbed by French variete and chanson culture

  11. #10

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    Examples of this sequence in Classical and Romatic era that I mentioned above

    Here it shows up at 3:56 but to understand its meaning it should be listned from the beginning of course



    It happens around 13:18 but it makes sense to listne at least from 12:00 (or better from teh very beginning)



    Here the cadenza starts at 11:50 the suqence shows up at 12:40



    Also one of the famous examples is 24th Capriccio by Paganini which is in my opinion a romanticized version of tradition Folgia ground bass variation