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Originally Posted by kris
So, I don’t mention jazz with respect to Chopin. I mentioned improvisation. Chopin obviously didn’t play or write jazz. These are two different things.
So Chopin is undeniably one of the Greats. However he was also an improvisor, and many experts conclude that his improvisation fed directly into his compositions. This was already less common in his era than in those of Bach or Mozart, and he was noted for it.
(Obviously writing things down in notation was the only way to preserve music at that point. True improvisations of that era are lost to us in a way that Louis Armstrong’s are not.)
so - if we say that Chopin was a genius, was he less or more of a genius than Bud Powell, or Bill Evans? We don’t expect jazz musicians to merely be vessels for channeling, note perfect, the genius musicians of the past, OTOH this is a situation that has only arisen in classical music in the past century or two. It’s not the original state of affairs. In Mozarts time for example, no one played old music much, and he was expected to come up with new stuff all the time, as were his contemporaries.
Maybe this will also change for jazz. If ‘classical music’ lost its tradition of improvisation and focussed on the glories of the past, maybe jazz could too. It’s not like jazz is unique for having a tradition of improvising as much as we bang on about it.Last edited by Christian Miller; 03-21-2023 at 05:58 AM.
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03-21-2023 05:35 AM
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
F.Chopin and jazz pianists who may have played Chopin's works in music schools.
You should listen to the experts' comments during the Chopin Competition in Warsaw...:-)
"Every note worth its weight in gold is not an improvisation...."
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Originally Posted by kris
But a young singer will spend a great deal more time shaping a performance of a Schubert lied than he will have spent writing it, for instance. He knocked those things out!
The point is simply that the way we view classical music has changed quite a bit from when these works were created. The establishment of a canon of Great Works that everyone should master to be a concert artist (Chopin being an obvious example) and the perhaps connected near disappearance of the classical improviser (like Chopin) and for that matter to a large extent the composer/performer (like Chopin) are cases in point and trends of the later 19th century and 20th centuries and quite alien to the world inhabited by those venerated masters.
Chopin was a great improvisor, this is a well established historical fact.
Here's a link to an abstract of an academic paper on the subject (sadly the article is paywalled)
Chopin and Improvisation | Chopin and His World | Princeton Scholarship Online | Oxford Academic
Here's an account from a blog, so less academic obviously
Chopin, They Are Profaning You! Fryderyk’s Adventures with Jazz | Article | Culture.pl
BTW they are not conflating jazz with improv here despite the title.
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That's how everyone hooks up to Chopin's genius. It's a fact.
I also developed an e-minor prelude for guitar.
I made a jazz song out of it, which the audience really likes.
But this is only a fraction of Chopin in my playing.
Let's be serious.
Chopin is not just written notes.
It is something that cannot be described in words.
This is not obvious to all people.
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Originally Posted by kris
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By the way the second article does bring up something which is a side issue relevant to jazz too... which is the idea that improvisation is spontaneous composition carte blanche. This is a bit of chimera IMO... as Steve Swallow puts it, improvisers do not fashion music from whole cloth each time.
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Originally Posted by kris
Perhaps you can break it down for me so I can understand.
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Originally Posted by JimmyDunlop
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He was WAY above these guys, obviously
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Originally Posted by JimmyDunlop
it’s ok if prefer Chopin to those guys obviously. But that’s not the claim you are making.
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Originally Posted by JimmyDunlop
in order to learn to improvise in any music you must internalise the repertory and music itself. why spend time immersing oneself in what you feel is substandard music? Go straight to the stuff that speaks to you.
Check out some En Blanc Et Noir videos for example, where improvisation in a Romantic piano style, including that of Chopin, is often discussed. Understand also that he knows the repertoire backwards.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
It doesn't matter to me if he was or wasn't.
How good it was and how it wasn't good.
I can't hear him play and improvise.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
does every music composer have to be a good improviser?
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Originally Posted by kris
remember, we’d be hard pressed to copy out parts as fast as those guys wrote music.
There’s a complex interplay between improv and musical style which is way too in depth to go into here. Simply put; improv tends to rely on ornamentation of set materials - it’s a decorative art. The music of the 1700s is quite formulaic in some respects.
Later composition (post Beethoven) becomes arguably more about redefining musical materials including into more ambitious musical structures. But that’s a bit of a simplification.
You may find a similar dichotomy in your own work, I know i do.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Did you know that the whole world plays Chopin's works - I mean pianists?
As you know, you already have the answer.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by kris
I mean loads of people play bebop heads too!
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Penderecki,Lutoslawski......Gorecki,Killar....:-)
Maybe I'll learn something bout improvisation skills.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I have my thoughts and you have yours.
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One more time!
It's too enigmatic for me.
It doesn't matter to me if he was or wasn't.
How good it was and how it wasn't good.
I can't hear him play and improvise.
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Originally Posted by JimmyDunlop
For me, it is not important to me what Glenn Gould thought for forming my own views, although it's often entertaining. He was an iconoclast, and I can relate. His famous Mozart takedown is amusing, but the main thing it indicates to me he either didn't have a clue how to play Mozart or was faking missing the point brilliantly. His Bach performances are highly idiosyncratic and you either buy into that or go to someone more respectful. A common comment is 'I hear Gould, but not Bach.' IIRC he regarded himself as an improviser on Bach's works. I like that he did his own thing. That's pretty unusual, it remains quite a radical stance.
As for the other guys - they spent a lifetime playing the piano repetoire to the highest possible level. I no more expect them to have an opinion on Bill Evans than Richard Dawkins to have an opinion on Quantum Mechanics. Obviously it's related to what they do, but it's not their specialism. I happen to know (famous Mozart interpreter and - yes - improviser) Robert Levin likes Brad Mehldau. But so what..
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
You have knowledge and I appreciate it very much. But flying through all eras to play 'blues' is probably .... exaggeration.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Kleiber wasnt a pianist... lol
xD
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Originally Posted by kris
I thought I was just pointing out that Chopin was an improviser and this affected the way he composed music according to many experts, and that the nature of classical music has changed over time, and this could also happen to jazz. If I have an argument it's more that we put classical composers on a pedestal and that improvisation, once common has faded out in Western Art Music, both of which points are hard to dispute as far as I can see, and maybe we'll do the same in jazz as those musicians pass out of living memory.
If you want to say Chopin is better than Bud Powell, or something, that's a subjective opinion that I feel is neither easily proven or disproven. Jimmy Dunlop went to 'appeal to authority' immediately, which is what I would expect. Because that's were it comes from. It's not like everyone who has this opinion is a musicological expert on Chopin AND Bud Powell and can substantiate their opinion on that basis (and IMO it would fail if they tried, waste of time. Bud doesn't do extended forms. Chopin doesn't swing. These apples make crap oranges! Boom)
It is not a subjective opinion that Chopin was an improviser, and it is not a subjective opinion that many musicologists have argued that improvisation was important to his compositional process.
So I'll leave that there and give links if you like.
I don't really see an argument there. I would argue perhaps that we put classical composers on pedestals because we are taught to do that, and I could see the same thing happen in jazz.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Peter Sprague & Leonard Patton "Can't Find My Way...
Today, 07:47 PM in The Songs