Download File - cHRIS alberi

Charles Parker
&
Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring
Chris Alberi
Music History Research Paper
Dr. Perkins
Alberi 1
Chris Alberi
5/6/14
Dr. Perkins
Charlie Parker and The Rite of Spring
Igor Stravinsky, like many composers of his age had a fascination with the
new sounds of Jazz music that were coming out of America in the 1940s and 1950s.
“Has jazz influenced me? Jazz patterns and, especially jazz instrumental
combinations did influence me forty years ago, of course, but not the idea of jazz… I
don’t follow it, but I respect it” (Craft, 116). Stravinsky also commented on the
musical objectives of jazz music: “The point of interest is instrumental virtuosity,
instrumental personality, not melody, not harmony, and certainly not rhythm” (Craft
116). Not one single figure in the history of jazz embodies instrumental virtuosity
more than Charles “Bird” Parker. Parker revolutionized and indelibly left his mark
on the melodic phrasing of jazz, and forever changed the way jazz musicians would
approach harmony and rhythm for decades to come. Charles Mingus once said: “If
Charlie Parker was a gunslinger, there’d be a whole lot of dead copycats” (Koch, 10).
Bird certainly left his mark on jazz music, but what left its mark on Bird?
While Parker was deeply influenced by the blues and the early jazz of Kansas City,
he is reported to have had a great admiration for Igor Stravinsky. In an apocryphal
tale, Parker was once performing at Birdland in 1951, and found Igor Stravinsky
sitting in the audience. Parker immediately cued up the bop tune “Koko” and at the
Alberi 2
top of his solo played an opening excerpt of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird Suite”.
Stravinsky allegedly roared with laughter and slammed his glass on the table so
hard he covered patrons around him with his beverage (Woideck 56). If we dig
deeper into the music of Charles Parker, will we find echoes of Stravinsky? How
deeply did the great Russian composer’s most famous ballet, The Rite of Spring,
affect Bird’s music?
Throughout “The Rite of Spring”, Stravinsky takes a variety of approaches to
rhythm. In his first approach to rhythm, Stravinsky employs a constantly changing
metric landscape. In this approach, he changes meter rapidly with no repeating
pattern or system to determine the metric changes. To add to the disorientation of a
constantly changing meter Stravinsky juxtaposes different meters, creating a sense
of absolute anarchy. In this excerpt from “Ritual of Abduction” Stravinsky juxtaposes
the piccolo clarinet playing septuplets over the rest of the ensemble, which is
playing in six-eight.
Stravinsky also employs great rhythmic flexibility and repeatedly employs
the same melodic idea in a variety of different metric settings. In this excerpt, also
from the Ritual of Abduction, Stravinsky uses a repeating eighth note
Alberi 3
pattern across four different time signatures, while remarkably maintaining the
melodic integrity of the phrase.
In “Glorification of the Chosen One”, Stravinsky utilizes an astounding twelve
different time signatures. This is a constant theme of Stravinsky, as he employs a
variety of time signatures while keeping a consistent pulse throughout the entire
composition. The end result is a constantly surprising stream of syncopated
rhythms. This excerpt shows how Stravinsky is able to transition seamlessly from
5/8 into 9/8 by maintaining a steady pulse in the string section.
Pulse is ultimately what drives The Rite of Spring. In the Augurs of Spring,
Stravinsky uses the extremely conservative time signature of 2/4 throughout the
entire movement. Again, the eighth note pulse is nearly omnipresent throughout the
Alberi 4
entire piece. Because of the modest metric layout of the movement, Stravinsky uses
every trick in the book to obscure the repetitive beat pattern. In the beginning of the
movement, Stravinsky uses distantly placed accents both on the beat and off the
beat, which creates a surprising sense of syncopation and obscures the meter of the
movement. Later in the movement, Stravinsky endows the responsibility of
maintaining the pulse to the strings, while the winds assault the meter with an
onslaught of sextuplets and triplets that serve to further disorient the listener. The
eighth note pulse is constant throughout the entire movement.
What is also worth noting is how Stravinsky organizes his complex rhythmic
sections. In Glorification of the Chosen One, Stravinsky creates his most startling
juxtaposition of rhythms yet by employing only five different groupings of
instruments. First he has the piccolo and second flutes playing this repeating triplet
phrase in 3/8.
Next, he composes for the first and third flutes to perform this sextuplet figure.
The piccolo clarinet, and clarinets one, two and three and the fifth, sixth, seventh
and eight French horns all play this septuplet figure.
Alberi 5
The strings perform this complex triplet figure.
Finally, the first, second, third, and fourth French horns and trumpets maintain the
pulse by playing this quarter note rhythm.
The juxtaposition of these five different rhythms creates a hectic and frantic
rhythmic landscape that is as animalistic as it is unpredictable (Van Den Toorn, 126132).
Through a system of rhythmic juxtaposition, rapidly changing meter, feverish
syncopation and a fierce pulse, Stravinsky created a sense of primal urgency out of
intensely complex rhythms.
So are there any echoes of Stravinsky’s use of rhythm inside of Charles
Parker’s improvisation? If one comparison can be immediately drawn, it is the
ubiquitous presence of pulse. Parker was at the forefront of the bebop tradition,
which featured remarkably fast tempos. Most bebop tunes are standardly played at
around two hundred beats per minute, but some tunes can reach speeds of three-
Alberi 6
hundred-plus beats per minute. As a result, a constant eighth note pulse is required
to keep the musicians tightly in-sync. As a matter of fact, the eighth note is
frequently the slowest unit of beat found in most of Parker’s transcribed solos. Here
is an example of a how Parker uses the eighth note as his basis for improvisation,
from one of his solos on the tune “Confirmation” (Koch, 135).
Much like Stravinsky, Parker’s music was intensely syncopated. Parker rarely
started a phrase on the downbeat. In addition to rapidly pouring out complex
syncopated rhythms, Parker also had a diverse arsenal of rhythmic units at his
disposal that he frequently deployed. While Stravinsky used quintuplets, sextuplets,
and septuplets to obscure the beat, Parker used these rhythmic devises to highlight
the metric layout of the tune (Koch, 135).
Parkers use of different rhythmic units isn’t used to obscure the rhythmic pattern of
the piece, instead Parker uses these rhythms as a way to jump start a new phrase
with energy and rhythmic drive.
Does any connection exist between Parker and Stravinsky’s use of rhythm?
Not really. Though both men use many of the same rhythmic devices in a similar
Alberi 7
fashion, they both achieve drastically different results. Stravinsky utilized a fierce
pulse in combination with sporadic syncopation and a myriad of rhythmic units to
create a primal sense of urgency in his music. Parker also employed a frantic tempo
and pulse in addition to nearly constant syncopation and a variety of rhythmic units,
but his final product was that of an elegant rhythmic freedom, not like the primal
vigor of Stravinsky.
When analyzing the music of Stravinsky, it is important to bear one thing in
mind: Stravinsky abandoned most traditional ideas of tonality when composing the
Rite. In his own words: “I was guided by no system whatever in Le Sacre du
printemps. When I think of the other composers of that time who interest me- Berg,
who is synthetic (in the best sense), Webern, who is analytic, and Schoenberg, who
is both- how much more theoretical their music seems than Le Sacre; and these
composers were supported by a great tradition, whereas very little immediate
tradition lies behind Le Sacre du printemps” (Stravinsky, 76). Given that, it is best to
abandon any hope of traditional music analysis. Instead, it is best to examine the
scales that Stravinsky used while composing The Rite of Spring.
Much like his juxtaposition of meters, Stravinsky frequently superimposes
different scalar devices to create his unique sense of harmonic mayhem. In the very
beginning of the ballet, Stravinsky writes a meandering bassoon solo in C major,
which he superimposes over a descending chromatic accompaniment. The bassoon
solo avoids establishing itself firmly in C major, only hinting at the sonority, and the
chromatic accompaniment only serves to further obscure any sense of tonality. Still
Alberi 8
in the introduction of the piece, just before the return of the opening theme,
Stravinsky builds the music up to its first frantic climax. In addition to juxtaposing
various rhythmic units, Stravinsky heightens the excitement by superimposing not
only numerous chromatic sections, but also Ab pentatonic elements, and G#
harmonic minor elements. The tonality is moving in so many directions at one time,
the effect is truly overwhelming (Forte, 45).
A more simple use of superimposition by Stravinsky occurs in The Augurs of
Spring. After the intensely rhythmic introduction, Stravinsky superimposes a C
major chord arpeggiation in the bassoon over an E major arpegiation in the viola. On
top of this superimposition, Stravinsky includes elements of a Bb minor scale (Forte,
57).
Chromaticism is also a device employed by Stravinsky, and when it rains it
pours, as Stravinsky is as fond of superimposing chromaticism over itself as
anything. For instance, in the opening of the Rite of Spring, Stravinsky employs four
separate voices performing a descending 32nd note septuplet run. The clarinets,
second and third oboes, and the flutes, all perform this run while moving in parallel
motion (Stravinsky, 7).
Similar to his overwhelming approach to rhythm, Stravinsky employs the
superimposition of diatonic scales, octatonic scales, diminished scales and
Alberi 9
chromaticism to create an awe-inspiring effect. Charlie Parker also deployed an
immense amount of scalar structures in his improvisation.
Parker revolutionized jazz improvisation. Before Parker, jazz musicians used
primarily chord tones and the melodic structure as their basis for improvisation.
Parker realized that he could use extensions of the harmony in combination with
chromaticism to create his new form of jazz. Parker said: “I’d been getting bored
with the stereotyped changes (harmonies) that were being used all the time. I found
that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with
appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I’d been hearing. I came alive. I
could fly” (Woideck, 15). For instance, in this excerpt from “Confirmation” Parker
treats the 7th and the 9th of the chord as the most import chord tones, placing them
on a stronger beat than the tonic (Koch, 136).
Chromaticism was as integral a part of Parker’s improvisation as it was
Stravinsky’s. In addition to using the 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th scale degrees to base his
melodic lines off of, Parker also freed himself through chromaticism. Parker uses
chromaticism as much as he uses diatonic harmony. Parker utilizes the diatonic
chord tones as an outline for his improvisation, while snaking from chord tone to
chord tone using an immense amount of chromatic scale degrees. In this excerpt,
also from “Confirmation”, Parker outlines a C# diminished chord while crawling
Alberi 10
through the chord tones chromatically (Koch, 133).
While both Stravinsky and Parker used chromaticism as a primary system of
developing melodies, there is a stark difference between how the two men deploy
the device. Stravinsky used chromaticism to create a disorienting effect, leaving the
listener lost without a tonal center. Stravinsky also did not resolve the dissonences
caused by his use of chromaticism. Parker on the other hand, used chromaticism in a
much more utilitarian way. Parker used the effect to travel between chord tones,
ultimately resolving the dissonences within the chord.
Stravinsky and Parker used many of the same musical devices in their music,
with entirely different results. Stravinsky juxtaposed meters in combination with
using a vast array of rhythmic units to create an astounding wall of rhythms that
constantly surprise the listener with interjections and interruptions. Both men also
use pulse, though in very different capacities. Parker used pulse to propel his music
through its rapid tempos and complex syncopations, while Stravinsky used pulse to
create a sense of primal energy.
In terms of melody, the two composers also used the same musical tools with
entirely different final products. Stravinsky superimposes scalar structures on top
of one another in order to create his signature dissonant sound, while Parker used
Alberi 11
chord extensions and chromaticism to create an edgy, bluesy quality to his
improvisation.
So did Stravinsky deeply influence Charlie Parker in any way? The answer
ultimately is no. While Parker used many of the same devices that Stravinsky used,
he employed them in such fundamentally different ways, it is nearly impossible to
see a logical connection between the two composers. What is more readily apparent
is what would draw Parker to idolize Stravinsky the way that he did. Stravinsky was
a revolutionary who reimagined the role of tonality and harmonic development in
music, much in the same way that Parker reimagined the fundamentals of jazz
improvisation.
Works Cited
C., Van Den Toorn Pieter. Stravinsky and the Rite of Spring: The Beginnings of a
Musical Language. Berkeley: University of California, 1987. Print
Forte, Allen. The Harmonic Organization of The Rite of Spring. New Haven: Yale UP,
1978. Print.
Koch, Lawrence O. Yardbird Suite: A Compendium of the Music and Life of Charlie
Parker. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular, 1988.
Print.
Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. Conversations with Igor Stravinsky. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1959. Print.
Stravinsky, Igor. Igor Stravinsky: An Autobiography. New York: Norton, 1962. Print.
Stravinsky, Igor. The Rite of Spring. London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1969. Print.
Woideck, Carl. Charlie Parker: His Music and Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,
1996. Print.