Classical repertoire as a resource in improvisational solo design

[Jimmy blue note]

One of the things that marks the more advanced improvisor is a sense of overall design, the development of a solo, a motif, a phrase or a passage into a larger idea, and eventually into a complete solo. It's one of the things that benefits the student who has assimilated the lexicon yet still wrestles with "What's missing that prevents me from making an actual coherent solo?"
Well the answer to that one is the "crux of the biscuit" as a great composer once put it. Some cite transposing as an important tool in becoming aware of this constructive design process.
I'm wondering if anyone has looked to and uses classical repertoire as a part of their design process? For example, when I studied sonata form, I started being aware of the role of a strong motif (subject) and the tools of development (variation, recapitulation, inversion, repeating, etc) and studying these devices in learning classical pieces gave me a sense/appreciation of a larger picture and an awareness of how to approach choruses like movements of a larger piece.
Of late, I'm listening to Bach violin sonatas and partitas and transcribing them as a means to train my ear and order concepts into a larger whole.
I've also been studying the Mahler Adagietto and the Barber's Adagio and learning them without a score...and what they are showing me in terms of voice leading, voicings and the fingerboard is mind blowing.

When I was working at a guitar factory where there were metal heads who played with an unreal level of articulation and facility. I heard some of these guys playing Bach and I asked one of them "Where'd you pick that up from?" and he showed me a book of Bach for electric guitar. Wow!

Does anyone here use the world of classical music as a building block or practice tool in playing jazz? What do you get from this? How has it changed the way you play in the short (technique) and the long (solo construction)?

Thanks ahead of time.

[RJVB]

There's a pitfall: when you start studying those old masters seriously you end up accepting that, basically, you don't need no jazz (or other new music). Except when you're a purists who realises that music usually sounds best when played on the instrument the composer wrote it for
(see what I did there? )

[emanresu]

Yeah. When "practicing" impro a lot, it'll turn into a "bla-bla-bla" very quickly, no matter how good the intentions were.
Playing a little classical or even a few pop tunes will remind the mind what music actually is.
All individual of course. Very personal.

[RJVB]

it'll turn into a "bla-bla-bla" very quickly

Reminds me of the intro I once saw to a course on building blocks. Building blocks instead of licks, because if you think of them like that, take one here, take this one, take that one (etc), "you're not playing, all you do is lickin'". A wisecrack truth, so it stuck

(not the rest of the course which I never finished yet because of what I said in my previous reply...)

[Christian Miller]

Obviously me

But then I’m deliberately using it in a classical way. At the moment I’ll go through a piece and scoop out some diminution patterns around the cycle for instance. Licks basically.

I haven’t transcribed classical pieces so much by ear, but keep meaning to do it. There’s this one improvising harpsichordist - Richardus Cochlerius - I follow who just plays stuff in the videos without giving out any score so I’m forced to learn what he’s teaching by ear. Which is good for me. I do think it goes in deeper.

I’m certain that’s how they learned back in the day, because there’s not that much in the way of extant teaching materials.

These people - at least prior to the 1800s - were improvisers before they were composers so it makes sense. I think a lot of it was an oral tradition from early childhood.

That said, Durante did publish a book of these sorts of things. It’s like the mid c18 lick book. You are literally meant to plug and play them into the provided basses. https://partimenti.org/partimenti/co..._diminuiti.pdf

These sorts of things are easy to plug into some jazz standards. Music by numbers!

Not true improvisation, but this kind of practice will be instantly familiar to any jazz student. The idea is similar in that doing enough of this will slowly mean the student will be able to improvise more fluently though the power of non linear music magic (love it when that happens.)

This is all by way of pastiche but it has the effect of making me better at polyphonic improvisation in jazz. The nice thing is historical baroque and classical improv is super exacting as in what is in and out of bounds so it makes it cool to practice and then jazz is so much looser. So you can splash the paint around a lot more. It’s similar with Romantic stuff and needless to say 20th century and non idiomatic styles.

That said, I think what might interest me more in the long term creatively is form. Jazz improvisation tends to cyclic ones of various kinds but classical has forms that are well suited to improvisation not all of which are so obviously cyclic. I’ve mentioned prelude but I’m kind of mystified Rondo isn’t more common in jazz circles. It seems perfect!

OTOH I’m finding that improvising binary forms with repeats (sarabande, allemandes and so on) is very good for my learning to retain and vary thematic material.

The ultimate is fugue which marries a number of these challenges together.

In the longer term, there’s sonata form.

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[Christian Miller]

Something that struck me

So much of my classical type practice is based on getting good at diatonic sequences. The music we know from that era is full of this stuff.

There’s a quite a bit of both diatonic and chromatic sequences in jazz compositions but not very much in improvisations on the same progressions.

Actually I often find myself avoiding sequences when soloing because intuitively it feels ‘cheesy’ to do it too much.

Which makes me wonder - as what we know about baroque improv etc is mostly compositions, how do we know they weren’t similar? We’ve seen that the continuo players of the time used more dissonance often in contradiction to the music theory of the time. For example, adding notes to chords like ninths to add intensity. The rules on parallels and preparation of dissonance so on were probably somewhat relaxed.

I think most specialists in that music would agree that their improvisation was a bit wilder and more free than you’d think from the scores. I wonder if formally isn’t wasn’t a bit freer too - less sequences etc which seems to suit improvisation as opposed to composition or semi-composition.

Which is a tricky one because when playing in a historical style I am conditioned by hearing the musical literature of that era and shape the result to sound more like that. I suspect for specialists in that music they also have to consider the tastes of their audience might be more conservative.

I’m also, like you, studying composed music for inspiration in my own improvised music.

Just a thought anyway. As a jazzer one as at liberty to be much freer.


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[Jimmy blue note]

One of the reasons the traditional jazz language has been so linear (and not so much contapuntal or polytonal) is the roots the music had in horn based activities (marching band, swing bands, small clubs) but with the acceptance of guitar amplification, the soundscape changed.
There are still people who say guitar is not a "real" jazz sound and still people who say the lexicon and syntax of western classical don't go with their idea of jazz. And too, there are an increasing number of (young) players with eclectic tastes and jazz is proving to be a broad enough genre to integrate different sensibilities.
So yeah, I listen to post Wagnerian composers (Bill Evans was considered radical and ground breaking to re-imagine French Impressionists into the music, lucky to have Miles as the leader who legitimized this) and it's modern pianists (like Jarrett, Taylor, Nichols and Fred Hersch) who push the boundries.

I ask this question because although there are lots of guitarists who don't look outside the genre boundries of post-bop, there are those (seen as progressives) who do use modern classical sensibilities to create legitimate swinging improvisational music. I want to know about guitarists who do see this very informative base.

Something as simple as a bass pedal ostinato may not be something that is at first glance "jazzy" but I hear it in rock, in different musics and I wonder just to what degree keeping one's influences inside jazz can be limiting.
Even something like breaking habits like separating phrase lengths into different intervallic and directional DNA rather than the traditional horn based melodic sensibilities can be liberating.

I definitely hear the fresh sounds of Ralph Towner and Wolfgang Muthspiel as being informed by a broader definition of what's possible. Ben Monder too of course.

[RLetson]

Art, some say, is what you can get away with. Since our notion of what, say, 18th century chamber music sounded like in the wild is conditioned by what's preserved (whether in published or manuscript form), it's hard to know what performers of that period could get away with. (Though a quick Google led me to a Cambridge UP book, British Listeners c. 1780–1830, that might shed some light there, as might a read-through of Charles Burney's work. Christian is probably up on this.) Who knows what players might have got up to in some avante-garde salon bash. ("Did you hear what he did to Mr. Handel's nice Fantasia? Shocking!")

I suspect that decorum rules and oughts and musts in general signal the strains and temptations that composers and performers always face--convention or expectation demands X, but Y and Z might be kinda cool. (On the principle that if a crime is on the books, there's somebody committing it.) Then, of course, there's Gesualdo.

[Christian Miller]

Oh that reminds me - irregularity of form. Despite what is often said c17/c18 music doesn’t always fall into neat 4 bar forms. Repetitions of sequences can occur in the middle of a bar. Phrases can be an irregular number of bars long and so on.


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[RJVB]

as might a read-through of Charles Burney's work.[...] Then, of course, there's Gesualdo.

I've heard a good many extracts of Burney's writings read over the radio in the past and yes, they give a pretty good idea of what may have been considered good and what not so good back in the day.
There's also a whole discipline that resolves around scientific reconstruction of period practise performance etc. and ditto research on e.g. the strings they used then.
All that still leaves enough margin for personal (and collective) taste in sound production and what not, so indeed we'll never really know how music sounded so also not if we would like it now (even less if we would have liked it back then).
But that's OK...

What's with Gesualdo?

[Christian Miller]

If you can get away with murder, I suppose you can write whatever notes you like

But truth be told late Renaissance madrigalists tended to ignore the prescriptions of music theory if it made for more expressive music. The theorists - Zarlino and so on - were always conservatives.

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[Christian Miller]

But for another weirdy - Kapsberger

Rock and roll


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[princeplanet]

But for another weirdy - Kapsberger

Rock and roll


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LOL - yeah, I kept waiting for John Bonham to come in along with the electricity guitars and all their distortions

[Christian Miller]

Yeah could be an acoustic intro on a Zep album

Even in pieces like this he’s quite left field to my ears. I think he was self taught as a composer?

Could be a modern post minimalist piece in places… reminds me a little of Philip Glass or Michael Nyman


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[Christian Miller]

It’d be remiss not to post Rob’s playing of Kapsberger

The Canario almost sounds West African - the lute seems almost like a Kora

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[RJVB]

LOL - yeah, I kept waiting for John Bonham to come in along with the electricity guitars and all their distortions

Start by listening to the same music interpreted by Rolf Lislevand and his, erm, band, already

[joe2758]

I'm wondering if anyone has looked to and uses classical repertoire as a part of their design process?

I did a fun exercise where I took Sor etudes and changed the harmony using 6th diminished scales.

edit: nothing "improv" about it though I guess

[Christian Miller]

I did a fun exercise where I took Sor etudes and changed the harmony using 6th diminished scales.

edit: nothing "improv" about it though I guess

It’s a continuum, taking and adapting material in different ways is the same process as improvisation - you’re just giving yourself more time to do it. The more you do it, the more fluid and flexible you’ll become and the more you can do it on the fly.


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[Jonah]

One of the things that marks the more advanced improvisor is a sense of overall design, the development of a solo, a motif, a phrase or a passage into a larger idea, and eventually into a complete solo. It's one of the things that benefits the student who has assimilated the lexicon yet still wrestles with "What's missing that prevents me from making an actual coherent solo?"
Well the answer to that one is the "crux of the biscuit" as a great composer once put it. Some cite transposing as an important tool in becoming aware of this constructive design process.
I'm wondering if anyone has looked to and uses classical repertoire as a part of their design process? For example, when I studied sonata form, I started being aware of the role of a strong motif (subject) and the tools of development (variation, recapitulation, inversion, repeating, etc) and studying these devices in learning classical pieces gave me a sense/appreciation of a larger picture and an awareness of how to approach choruses like movements of a larger piece.
Of late, I'm listening to Bach violin sonatas and partitas and transcribing them as a means to train my ear and order concepts into a larger whole.
I've also been studying the Mahler Adagietto and the Barber's Adagio and learning them without a score...and what they are showing me in terms of voice leading, voicings and the fingerboard is mind blowing.

When I was working at a guitar factory where there were metal heads who played with an unreal level of articulation and facility. I heard some of these guys playing Bach and I asked one of them "Where'd you pick that up from?" and he showed me a book of Bach for electric guitar. Wow!

Does anyone here use the world of classical music as a building block or practice tool in playing jazz? What do you get from this? How has it changed the way you play in the short (technique) and the long (solo construction)?

Thanks ahead of time.

I don't)))
Though I mostly play lots of classical piano music daily just for my own pleasure.

I do not like cross-overs and I do not like implementing it in jazz because it is very different world and mechanism of thinking in my opinion.
Mostly classical composers think and develop ideas in totally different way than jazz players do.

For me it is like trying to develop abstract painting skills based on Botticelli - you can do it but it will have almost nothing to do with the essence of the Botticelli's art.

though on the surface many things can seem similar - but essentially they reflect different meanings, take different places and space in sematic system (like for example Parker's solo can be very close to Bach's lines because they generally outline harmonies in very similar way, but the contents of these are very different.

But I agree that jazz player can learn from it - only he learns - so to say - a different thing... like you would try to learn to rhyme from the poetry of the different language but you do not really follow what it says, just how it sounds

[Jonah]

But for another weirdy - Kapsberger

For a certain period of time I played only his music (Libro Primo for lute), and I also looked through a thesis dedicated to him - it is probably the only extensive biographical and musicological research about him, it was available online in german, but I think it is no more there as the book should be published.

Though you can really feel his temper and character through his music I still do not see as dramatically non-usual as it may seem for modern ear.

he is much in the vein of early baroque in his toccatas with all the weirdness and stormy and a bit raw naturalism of the time (before it became developed into extremely subtle and sophisticated forms of High baroque).
We can see it also in the paintings and architecture of the period.

Once I also was in an interesting concert where the concept of the program was built around Vivaldi from the perspective of his predecessors: quite famous Venetian (and not only) early baroque violin school to which Vivaldi was obviously introduced as a kid... and it has almost the same 'crazy' feeling as with Kapsberger: lots of abrupt texture changes: from virtuoso passages to choral sections - dances.... feeling of a free improvizational form - which stayed later in classical music usually under the name of Fantasia (like Mozart Fantasias with all their structures and much more elaborated setup they still follow the same idea)...

As for dance forms - I think a huge folk influence is there.

[RJVB]

I do not like cross-overs and I do not like implementing it in jazz because it is very different world and mechanism of thinking in my opinion.

Hear hear ...

but

Mostly classical composers think and develop ideas in totally different way than jazz players do.

For me it is like trying to develop abstract painting skills based on Botticelli - you can do it but it will have almost nothing to do with the essence of the Botticelli's art.

While the former isn't wrong I don't really agree with the latter either. Esp. if you take a painters from the Renaissance or baroque as an example. Composers then were usually leading performers, sometimes on multiple instruments and trained to compose on the fly. Nowadays we probably see the rules underlying the building of a period-correct fugue as much more strict/confining than those underlying jazz improvisation. But people keep telling me that even the wildest jazz isn't just playing random notes and it's inevitable that contemporaries of Bach or Mozart were also struck by what for them must have been the originality of their playing. To my ears the Kunst der Fuge and das Musicalisches Opfer sound a lot like bebop in places!

Musica al tempo di Guido Reni - YouTube

Bach wasn't exactly adverse to borrowing from the works of predecessors either, pretty certain he did the same during his improvisations that were never written down.

... it has almost the same 'crazy' feeling as with Kapsberger: lots of abrupt texture changes: from virtuoso passages to choral sections - dances.... feeling of a free improvizational form - which stayed later in classical music usually under the name of Fantasia

Are you referring to the Stylus Fantasticus?

A nice late example (from about 1:00 in) in one of Buxtehude's trio sonatas :

(EDIT - man, I loved and miss playing this music ...)

As for dance forms - I think a huge folk influence is there.

Evidently and inevitably! Surely also the basis for the use of "swing time" in French baroque music.

A pet idea of mine: the Italian & easten-European tarentella is our version of the blues

[Christian Miller]

For a certain period of time I played only his music (Libro Primo for lute), and I also looked through a thesis dedicated to him - it is probably the only extensive biographical and musicological research about him, it was available online in german, but I think it is no more there as the book should be published.

Though you can really feel his temper and character through his music I still do not see as dramatically non-usual as it may seem for modern ear.

he is much in the vein of early baroque in his toccatas with all the weirdness and stormy and a bit raw naturalism of the time (before it became developed into extremely subtle and sophisticated forms of High baroque).
We can see it also in the paintings and architecture of the period.

Once I also was in an interesting concert where the concept of the program was built around Vivaldi from the perspective of his predecessors: quite famous Venetian (and not only) early baroque violin school to which Vivaldi was obviously introduced as a kid... and it has almost the same 'crazy' feeling as with Kapsberger: lots of abrupt texture changes: from virtuoso passages to choral sections - dances.... feeling of a free improvizational form - which stayed later in classical music usually under the name of Fantasia (like Mozart Fantasias with all their structures and much more elaborated setup they still follow the same idea)...

As for dance forms - I think a huge folk influence is there.

Do you have some listening recommendations?


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[Jonah]

Do you have some listening recommendations?


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Hi Christian, first name that pops up is Dario Castello (as I participated once in a program of his sonatas)

But I think if you can easily find much more.
I think it is also interesting to trace it int the Venetian tradition (by the way Kapsberger was supposedly born in Venice). Venice school was a big name before Monteverdi and started by the Flemish, Adrian Willaert (it is by the way very interesting connection... I am a big fan of Venice for years, and now due to the circumstances I am in Flanders, and it is very fascinating to see how Flemish art and culture that was at its highest point influenced Italian art and vice versa)...

so the way that style developed and changed towards baroquw is very interesting, those early baroque ensemble sonatas with flashy passages of cornetto interrupted with immitattion sections and choral, and solo music for cembalo like Merulo...

But what happens to violine seems really special to me.

I think it is much more through violine (and partly through cello) that the new conception of soloist was formed.
In Castello sonatas the violinists really steps forward and stands out there alone: this opposition of 'I' (the soloist) and 'we' (the orchestra) will be developed to the extreme later with violine music.

Especially in Trio sonatas (in concerts it will be more balanced yet until classical period - the soloists step out but still they are much more integrated in the orchestra).

I think also that Kapsberger music for lute reflects a lot of a Roman early baroque: look at Caravaggio, or baroque churches in Rome... I remember an example from with balusters when each second one was upside down - this is crazy and to me me it is the same 'twisted' conception that lives in Kapsberger's lute music (by the way he composed also madrigals, I think not so many survived and not many recorded...)

[RJVB]

Yep.

But while Rachel is an old (as in long enough ago that she probably doesn't remember me) friend and by now a very accomplished player, the real expert in this kind of music is Enrico Gatti who has been working to revive the Venetian school of violin playing for decades. I already linked to one of his old recordings (the Guido Reni one) which was the up-beat to 3 more albums on Italian music (followed by many more).
Funny Merula (sic) comes up; if I'm not confusing him with another very important violinist/composer (Marco Uccellini) Enrico always talked very highly about his music and its importance, but sadly blocked the release of the dedicated album he recorded because he wasn't happy with the sound.

[Christian Miller]

Hi Christian, first name that pops up is Dario Castello (as I participated once in a program of his sonatas)

But I think if you can easily find much more.
I think it is also interesting to trace it int the Venetian tradition (by the way Kapsberger was supposedly born in Venice). Venice school was a big name before Monteverdi and started by the Flemish, Adrian Willaert (it is by the way very interesting connection... I am a big fan of Venice for years, and now due to the circumstances I am in Flanders, and it is very fascinating to see how Flemish art and culture that was at its highest point influenced Italian art and vice versa)...

so the way that style developed and changed towards baroquw is very interesting, those early baroque ensemble sonatas with flashy passages of cornetto interrupted with immitattion sections and choral, and solo music for cembalo like Merulo...

But what happens to violine seems really special to me.

I think it is much more through violine (and partly through cello) that the new conception of soloist was formed.
In Castello sonatas the violinists really steps forward and stands out there alone: this opposition of 'I' (the soloist) and 'we' (the orchestra) will be developed to the extreme later with violine music.

Especially in Trio sonatas (in concerts it will be more balanced yet until classical period - the soloists step out but still they are much more integrated in the orchestra).

I think also that Kapsberger music for lute reflects a lot of a Roman early baroque: look at Caravaggio, or baroque churches in Rome... I remember an example from with balusters when each second one was upside down - this is crazy and to me me it is the same 'twisted' conception that lives in Kapsberger's lute music (by the way he composed also madrigals, I think not so many survived and not many recorded...)

I’ve been enjoying what you posted a lot. Obviously I’m familiar with Monteverdi, but look forward to filling up my knowledge of early c17 music in general. It can get pretty gnarly, as you say.


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