12-note jazz

[Dax]

Further to my interest in 12-note jazz (in the widest sense) - David Mack, Elvis Schoenberg, Tom Dissevelt, Matyas Seiber et al - has anybody encountered John O'Gallagher and the Anton Webern Project?
Clips at http://www.whirlwindrecordings.com/the-anton-webern-project/


Elvis Schoenberg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pimJo2qsCm8

Tom Dissevelt – Twilight Ozone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwT_kt7V-ok&list=TLpMZ9F0xXk7WNFBL8GRT6XLYU4sQQNt8F

David Mack
http://nightofthelivingvinyl.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/david-mack-new-directions-essays-for.html

[EigenUser]

Further to my interest in 12-note jazz (in the widest sense) - David Mack, Elvis Schoenberg, Tom Dissevelt, Matyas Seiber et al - has anybody encountered John O'Gallagher and the Anton Webern Project?
Clips at http://www.whirlwindrecordings.com/the-anton-webern-project/


Elvis Schoenberg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pimJo2qsCm8

Tom Dissevelt – Twilight Ozone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwT_kt7V-ok&list=TLpMZ9F0xXk7WNFBL8GRT6XLYU4sQQNt8F

David Mack
http://nightofthelivingvinyl.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/david-mack-new-directions-essays-for.html

Interesting. I listened to the promo video for the Anton Webern project and kinda liked it! Perhaps not what you had in mind, but have you heard Babbitt's All Set for jazz ensemble? I love that piece!

[Dax]

I've actually played in it. The conductor wasn't into what he called "notes inégales" . . .

[Jo498]

I cannot judge this but from the "classical side moving in jazz direction" supposedly "Cool" from West Side Story and Rolf Liebermann's Concerto for Jazzband and Orchestra are 12 tone.

[Luke]

I've got a recording of the Lieberman somewhere though I can't recall it OTTOMH.

'Cool' - looking at the score now, forgive my very rudimentary analysis. The vocal parts of the song have no connection with 12 tone writing, of course, though they are thoroughly suffused with the tritone motive which is so prominent in this score, and which here lends the thing its cool bebop edge. The instrumental fugato in the middle (and, briefly, at the end) is presumably what is meant - there is a kind of serial-ish cantus firmus here, around which are built angular solos.

The 'cantus firmus' is a kind of 8 note row, always heard as semibreves, four notes [gap] four notes [in different instrument]:

0 1 11 10        9 8 4 3
which has a prominent rising minor seventh in the first four and another prominent rising minor sixth in the second.

The row ends a minor third higher than it started, and we hear it four times, each time beginning on the note the last occurrence finished with, so that the four entries describe a series of ascending minor thirds (= a diminished seventh); the second tetrachord of the 'row' describes the same chord, too. Therefore after four playings we are back where we started, as follows; I'm notating these enharmonically, not the way Bernstein writes them, for ease of reading; note that the first playing starts, as if symbolically, given that here Bernstein was indulging in a bit of 'scientific' intellectualism, on (middle) C (because there's nothing purer-looking or more analysis-friendly, on paper, than a semibreve middle C):

C C# B A#     A G# E D#
D# E D C#    C B G F#
F# G F E      D# D Bb A
A Bb Ab G    F# F Db C

This isn't exactly serial, of course, but there's a relationship there. To my mind there's also a deep relationship with the famously proto-serial use of a similarly-shaped semibreve motive in Beethoven's op 132, though, whether concious or not (surely conscious, though - I can't see how Bernstein wouldn't have been thinking about the Beethoven when writing this, the resemblance would have been too clear especially for someone as steeped in the repertoire as he was).

Just some observations...

[EigenUser]

It is fairly well-known by fans of each composer that Gershwin and Schoenberg were good friends (and tennis partners!). This is something that has really fascinated me. An inspiring story, really, that makes you realize that common ground can be found between even the most different kinds of music. Schoenberg was in a long line of German musical tradition -- a musical descendant of Wagner (god, I know someone will argue, probably, rightfully so, but bear with me) who developed his own intellectual technique that shaped the rest of the 20th-century. On the other hand, you have Gershwin -- a huge talent with a very different background (starting out as a song-plugger in NYC). Gershwin said that he wanted his next opera to be a 12-tone opera. Sadly, there was no next opera and he died at age 38.

I'm so sorry, this has gone way off topic. Even more than I initially thought.

I've actually played in it. The conductor wasn't into what he called "notes inégales" . . .

Woah, cool. What instrument did you play in it? That's odd that the conductor would conduct such a complex piece if he didn't like it much to begin with.

[Chaszz]

 "There is still plenty of good music to be written in C major." – Arnold Schoenberg

[North Star]

"There is still plenty of good music to be written in C major." – Arnold Schoenberg

I don't know how that is relevant in this thread. Arnie was hardly against dodecaphony, although he wasn't for following a set of rules strictly either.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

Which if any of the compositions of the avant-garde free jazz artists would qualify as twelve tone? Sun Ra? Coltrane? Cecil Taylor? Archie Shepp? Dolphy? Anthony Braxton? Horace Tapscott?

[escher]

Which if any of the compositions of the avant-garde free jazz artists would qualify as twelve tone? Sun Ra? Coltrane? Cecil Taylor? Archie Shepp? Dolphy? Anthony Braxton? Horace Tapscott?

there are some some classical works influenced by the rhyhthm of jazz that are twelve tone music.
Jo498 has mentioned Rolf Liebermann. I can add Giorgio Gaslini's Tempo e relazione. Milton Babbit and his All set. Karl Birger Blomdhal wrote a space opera called Aniara with rhythmic elements of jazz and twelve tone music (not necessarily together).
But about real jazz, I don't think it's possible to make consistent improvisations using a tone row.
If one wants to consider free atonality or very dissonant jazz is another matter, and it's probably much more easier to find examples, and then you could include many of those musicians you're mentioning. I'd like to mention Bernard Peiffer and his Black moon, a piece that is not very famous but it's very interesting.

Anyway actually there's a musician called Lyle Spud Murphy who is one of those legendary jazz teachers who are not very famous but are considered as gurus (like Dennis Sandole, to mention another name) and influenced a lot of famous musicians. He developed a twelve tone system, but it doesn't sound at all like atonality but it's certainly... something different.
A good starting point is his album Gone with the woodwinds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3hxS0qcabI&list=PL3D3C84265F5D6832

[Dax]

Here are some links which may be of interest.

David Shire - Theme music for The talking of Pelham 123. The note row used is close to that of Webern's Concerto which Shire had presumably studied when a student.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOXD_g0cSpw


Rolf Liebermann - Concerto for jazz band and symphony orchestra (1954)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMYrStyNsjs


Matyas Seiber/Johnny Dankworth _ Improvisations for jazz band and symphony orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwUXqkWbm0w

Seiber had started a jazz academy in Frankfurt - closed by the Nazis. His 2nd Jazzolette must be one of the earliest works which combines jazz with 12-note serialism.

and an article on the Seiber/Dankworth - http://www.n-ism.org/Papers/graham_Seiber3.pdf

[Luke]

Thanks for that - I have had the full score of the Seiber/Dankworth for years, and managed to track down a recording of it a few years ago, too. But it's nice to have some extra information.

[Luke]

I don't mean 'nice' - I mean fascinating: that article, on first scan, looks very interesting indeed. Thanks again.

[Dax]

The title of this thread is misleading because well versed jazzers use all 12 notes.

[torut]

Further to my interest in 12-note jazz (in the widest sense) - David Mack, Elvis Schoenberg, Tom Dissevelt, Matyas Seiber et al - has anybody encountered John O'Gallagher and the Anton Webern Project?
Clips at http://www.whirlwindrecordings.com/the-anton-webern-project/

The promo sounds very good, particularly the ones with vocal.

I didn't know that project, but I have been interested in Spooky Actions Music of Anton Webern Arranged for Jazz Quartet. I only heard few sample clips. It sounds more like free jazz than the Webern Project.
[asin]B000172LMC[/asin]

I have Tribute-Twelve Tone Blues Concerto #1 by Archie Shepp & Jimmy Sizzle.

"Produced by Archie Shepp and Jimmy Sizzle - Composed and Arranged by Jimmy Sizzle
Featuring Archie Shepp on tenor sax, Avery Sharpe on bass, Jeff Holmes on trumpet, Kevin Sharpe on drums, Brian Bender on trombone, and Jimmy Connors, a.k.a. Jimmy Sizzle on guitar and piano.

This is the first concerto written by Jimmy Connors. The First Movement is a "Twelve Tone Blues" with a 33 bar form. The Harmonic Structure is Twelve Tone. The second movement is an Afro Cuban Andante. The third movement is a return to the 33 bar form. "

Also, Bill Evans composed Twelve Tone Tune (T.T.T.) and Twelve Tone Tune Two (T.T.T.T.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q12SzQCe4uA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9taaazvr0