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By songbook I mean non-bebop tunes.
My musical illiteracy is kinda stopping me from pinpointing why they sound so different.
Is it a lot more notes? More complex? Longer lines? Escape tones? Appoggiaturas?
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05-03-2025 02:28 AM
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The songs we think of as Standards of jazz, or the accepted vehicles of improvisation for a well versed improvising musician draw from a wide pool of songs handed down to us from musical theatre. They're singable for that reason. There's a memorable lyricism because they were written to convey an emotional and literal flow of a storyline.
The first musical was Oscar Hammerstein's Oklahoma in 1943. It ushered in an entirely new artform and gave birth to a new and musical theatre scene. This rise in popularity made the composer the author of a sound, sophistication and language. Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Jimmy Van Heusen, Lerner and Lowe, Ellington, Gershwin all added to the body of musicals with a sophistication that had never been heard in the cabaret and burlesque that had marked the variety show previously.
It's the composer's language that marks the shift if not only the subtlety of sound, but the theoretical knowledge needed to do justice to the growing and expanding layers of compositional sophistication; to the point that the composition of Ellington pieces, Gershwin and Irving Berlin's pieces had the challenge and language of classical and operatic music (check out Top Hat where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers do a number on a tune that is through composed, yet singably memorable).
These composers regularly incorporated modulations, changes in tonality, melodic range and shifts that, while always remained singable and memorable, had to reflect more complex rhythms and not necessarily diatonic sounds to capture the non linear nature of shifting emotions and phrases. If you have spoken phrases that have a dramatic rhythm conveying emphatic pauses or speech patterns in the lyric, they must be carried by smaller harmonic phrases, and that requires preparing contrast, establishing tonality and conveying resolution before moving on. This means a line must have a sense of meaning sometimes in a short space of time (the bridge to Miss Jones, or the modulation blocks within the A section of ATTYA), so the incorporation of ornamentation to the melodic line helps provide the sense of definition and MOVEMENT that marks these CHANGES in the shifting soundscape.
Those devices you mention, escape tones, tonal phrases, chromatic approaches... are ornaments, or smaller melodic segments (like adjectives or adverbs to a noun or verb in grammar) and serve to focus, shade or emphasize an essential aspect of the melody or create movement to another tonal block. They're most effectively used to add impact of focus on an essential phrase. They're tools to add density and contrast, rhythmic texture and impact to an otherwise linear or less dramatic statement. How tastefully they're employed is the improvisor's art and craft.
There are many great songs that have come to us since the days of Tin Pan Alley, but it was that era that seems to have enamoured itself to jazz musicians-partly because musicians themselves took a more significant part in composition and they were the ones that were pushing the boundries of harmony.
That's the way I see it anyway.Last edited by Jimmy blue note; 05-03-2025 at 06:24 AM.
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Good question! Short answer, I don't really know.
Longer answer ... I would guess the shift into talky movies and the increasing popularity of recorded film music in the GASB might have something to do with it.
But these weren't always different people -
it kind of blows my mind that Victor Young wrote both this
and this
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Of course there's stylistic changes too. But some of those stylistic changes are driven by the way jazz musicians play those tunes, and in the post war era that meant substituting a lot of the old diminished chords out, for example.
Stella is perhaps the most dramatic example because it starts on a dim chord, which people don't often play these days (though it's coming back!)
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As an example of evolutionary musical/dramatic/movement artform that music became, check out this little ditty from Top Hat. Watch the way the music not only addresses topics like existential depression, but forms the basis for revolutionary approaches in dance AND music. Through composed for a large part, the longer form also has motific construction, and a singable line.
This is the result of the larger audience that the movie industry's marriage with the musical allowed, an important development Christian astutely makes reference to.
I should comment that I consider Fred Astaire to be a very important jazz musician with a deeply informed knowledge of the artform. He's got the jazz language transformed into movement. Look at his choreographic use of anticipation, crossing the bar line, syncopation, rest and shifting note density.
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Things move on. Things happen, like two world wars. Popular music reflects the times.
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What does it say about what is popular now? When I hear the music coming from within passing cars, what are they reflecting? It scares me to even consider.
Originally Posted by ragman1
But yeah, I can't argue. That's what scares me.
Oh well. If I don't like what I hear, I'll do it myself.
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I recall reading: in the 20s and 30s, there was a huge sheet music business and tunes were written to help support that business with the expectation a lot of people would play the tunes on home pianos.
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Yeah, the composers became so much more skilful. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
I also wonder who they were writing for: the same audience of the 20s and 30s who are now all grown up in the 40s, or for a new youth in the 40s.
Perhaps advancements in recording technology, too. Being able to record longer passages of music might have encouraged composers to take their time in 'unfurling' a melody, maybe? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Ok, this is brilliant. I can see the sound and hear the visuals. Perfect marriage. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
But the music seemed to be already maturing and sounding different in the late 30s and early 40s before the war. Originally Posted by ragman1
I've read something similar, too! Perhaps they were sold as 'easy' and 'fun' tunes that anyone could play, hence the relative simplicity of the music to the 40s. Radio probably contributed to some of Tin Pan Alley's decline, too. Originally Posted by DanielleOM
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A great deal of what is popular now sounds as though machines composed it, reflecting our slavishness to technology. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Maybe music evolves to fit the current prevalent mood of the listening public?
In times of boom and positive change, people feel competent, optimistic, confident. They want to have a good time and party, and the music they want to hear reflects that.
In times of bust and poverty, people might want to dream about being rich and sophisticated. Or maybe they just want to feel reassured that even though they have plenty of nothing, they still have the sun in the morning and the moon at night, and each other.
In times of war when so many people are separated from one another, they want to dream about being home for Christmas, or enjoying the company or romance of someone they love.
In times of uncertainty and fear people might want to feel powerful, in-control. They might turn to aggression, or to the safety of their ideologies, so the music of the times adapts to that.
I guess successful composers (or anyone else) know which way the wind is blowing. They feel what the people are going through at the time, and write the kind of music that will reach them and help them through it.
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some of it is quite good and not at all like machines composed it Originally Posted by ragman1
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Astaire was also a very accomplished pianist (as was Jack Lemmon, btw), and Irving Berlin's favorite singer. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Irving Berlin's first hit, of course, was Alexander's Ragtime Band in 1910 (Louis Armstrong recorded it in 1937, and had a hit). He wrote numerous hits after that; George Gershwin said that Berlin showed everyone else the way.
A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody was written in 1919, and shows considerable harmonic sophistication (Berlin never had any formal musical education).
Although Oklahoma! may be considered the first modern musical, Showboat (1927) by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein was really the first musical – it was completely different from the operettas, light musical comedies, and revues that were formerly the norm, and was based on a novel by Edna Ferber. Many of the tunes we know from the '20's and '30's were from Broadway shows, and from Hollywood musical films.
To answer the OP's question, I think the difference is really a change in musical performance styles, rather than a change in composition. Berlin wrote What'll I Do in 1924; Nat King Cole's version was a hit in 1948. In 1946 Count Basie made a hit out of Blue Skies, written in 1926.
Puttin on the Ritz has always sounded to me like a song written by Cole Porter rather than Irving Berlin; here it is in 1930:
Last edited by Ukena; 05-03-2025 at 05:51 PM.
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