Pitch-Class Transformation in Free Jazz
1990; Oxford University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/746167
ISSN1533-8339
Autores Tópico(s)Music and Audio Processing
ResumoSet-theoretic methodology is applied to the music of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, and Anthony Braxton in order to reveal the wide variety of pitch-class transformation present in free jazz. Each composer's music has been classified somewhat differently by other analysts-Coltrane's as modal, Coleman's as diatonic, and Taylor's as nontonal-yet all the improvisations examined here are shown to be based on tightly constructed conceptions which make use of such twentieth-century constructs as the multiplicative operation, transformation of embedded chords, and the use of a small number of transformational operations which control the course of the composition. i s and progressions and think more in terms of relationefined by interval class; this i true in both onal and onl contexts. For this reason, free jazz has n ffinity o early tieth-century concert literature, in whic composers were i g along similar intervallic and structural lines.16 While t entieth-century composers constructed their pcio s, jaz musicians heard them in improvisation-whic sts that pitch-class and nontonal relations can develop ally out of musical practice in the same way tha tonal mue out of modal music and ni et enth-century tonality out of that of the eighteenth century. ert Mor is, Set Groups, Complementation, and Mappings Among lass Sets, Journal of Music Theory 26 (1982), 101-144. le segmentations, suggested largely by the p rfo mers' pauses, em riate to analysis of free jazz because these compositions are often crea d/or elaborated spontaneously. Since the r lationships that f ll out f seg entations seem clear, rich, and structurally important, perhaps it l be worth considering the utility of simple s gmentations i the analysis l twentieth-century concert music. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.148 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 04:11:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Referência(s)