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