Tchaikovsky and The Nationalists

OVERVIEW

This section will introduce you to the musical elements that are common to much of the music we call jazz. We will look at jazz from a theoretical perspective and examine three essential features of the music to see how they contribute to this remarkable art form. In addition, we will look at how the unique swing feeling of jazz is achieved.

We will also get a first glimpse at the blues. To appreciate jazz and blues more fully, it’s good to know how the unique sounds of blues originated, and how those sounds were absorbed into jazz. This section also covers some of the defining characteristics of blues music, and some of the differences between blues and jazz.

OBJECTIVES

Be ready to:

Identify three essential features of jazz
Define improvisation
Describe the swing feeling of jazz
Identify the musical components that create a swing feeling in jazz
Define swing eighth-note
Define syncopation
Define polyrhythm
Identify how African Americans contributed to the development of jazz
Describe the blue note
Describe pitch bending
Define harmony
Define chord
Define chorus
Describe how tonality is relevant to jazz

Discover Music

Discover Video

Artist Profiles

Keywords

Summary

Duke Ellington in 1943

In this lesson, we have tried to define jazz. We have examined improvisation, looked closely at what gave jazz that swing feeling, and took a lengthy detour into blues to get a sense of the jazz's bluesy flavor. While many, if not most, jazz historians would say that those are the three most important characteristics of jazz, there are styles of jazz that do not "swing" in the historic sense. Furthermore, some jazz musicians describe certain pieces that lack improvisation as "composed jazz."

Duke Ellington, perhaps the greatest jazz composer of all time, did not like to be classified as a "jazz" composer. He felt it was too limiting of a label. Still, we study him mostly for the jazz that he created, and his jazz pieces remain, even today, his most popular works.

Throughout this course, we will consider again and again the question of what constitutes jazz. By the end of the course, we'll know more about it. It's probably the case, though, that we'll never completely answer it. It's a bit like trying to answer the question, "What is the meaning of life?"

"That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz."

-Dave Brubeck

“Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.”

-Wynton Marsalis

"Blues developed in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–65) and was largely played by Southern black men, most of whom came from the milieu of agricultural workers."

Encyclopedia Britannica