Ed Zubrow:

>I've been studying Deryk Cook's The Language of Music

Great book!

>in the context of this discussion though, I'd like to ask Steve: isn't
>this also what is going on in jazz when the performer/composer extends the
>argument and the conversation through his/her solos?

In the better soloists, sure.  I didn't mean to imply that jazz was
illogical.  But I do think the type of argument in solos differs, since
so much of jazz is based on either blues or 32-bar standards - song forms.
Consequently, the resulting structure we usually get is a kind of aria
variee, rather than something like the motific plasticity and
interpenetration of sonata allegro.

>incoherent, but some is as logical as the best composed classical music.
>Jazz composers start with a kernal of a melodic or harmonic statement and
>then play with it and toss it back and forth. Perhaps this is different
>from the "extended argument" that defines classical music, but I see as
>many similarities as distinctions. Especially if one allows the kind of
>development that we see in a set of  variations, it seems to qualify.

Even here, however, there are all kinds of variations.  You have the
18th-century type - essentially, Mozart's on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little
Star" (I've forgotten the real French title).  But you also have the Brahms
and Elgar type, in which a double game is played:  not only the invention
of new variations, but the fitting of these variations into a larger
structure.  Also, the variations aren't all the same formally.  The final
variation in Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Haydn, for example, is a
passacaglia - itself a variation form.  I don't see this kind of thinking
in improvisatory jazz, although I certainly see it in works by George
Russell.

>Further in this vein, I'd be interested in Steve's thoughts (or
>those of others) about how "miniatures" fit into Steve's definition
>of classical.  As I understand it, Beethoven's mastery of the "extended
>argument" intimidated a generation of composers (including Chopin, Schubert
>and Schumann) into seeking to cram expressive content into the smallest
>possible form.  Surely this is some fine music, by any standard
>"classical," despite no extended argument.

I love miniatures.  But miniatures are essentially closed forms, like blues
and song.  Classical contains not only closed forms, but open ones.  Also,
I disagree that Chopin etc. were miniaturists (although they wrote some
fine miniatures).  I'd apply that term to composers whose best work
consistently were miniatures.

Steve Schwartz