French Music and Jazz in Conversation
From Debussy to Brubeck

This book explores the historical-cultural interactions between French concert music and American jazz across 1900–65, from both perspectives.

Deborah Mawer (Author)

9781107037533, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 December 2014

322 pages, 3 b/w illus. 6 tables 54 music examples
25.4 x 18 x 2 cm, 0.71 kg

'At once an important survey of French music and jazz history, Mawer's book also brilliantly draws attention to the compelling cross-references and interactions between these worlds. The theoretical sophistication of the academy seamlessly merges with the dynamism of a jazz club, and the resulting mix has the intellectual and musical power of both.' Michael Beckerman, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music, New York University

French concert music and jazz often enjoyed a special creative exchange across the period 1900–65. French modernist composers were particularly receptive to early African-American jazz during the interwar years, and American jazz musicians, especially those concerned with modal jazz in the 1950s and early 1960s, exhibited a distinct affinity with French musical impressionism. However, despite a general, if contested, interest in the cultural interplay of classical music and jazz, few writers have probed the specific French music-jazz relationship in depth. In this book, Deborah Mawer sets such musical interplay within its historical-cultural and critical-analytical contexts, offering a detailed yet accessible account of both French and American perspectives. Blending intertextuality with more precise borrowing techniques, Mawer presents case studies on the musical interactions of a wide range of composers and performers, including Debussy, Satie, Milhaud, Ravel, Jack Hylton, George Russell, Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck.

Introduction. French music and jazz: cultural exchange
Part I. Locations and Relations: 1. A historical-cultural overview
2. Critical-analytical perspectives: intertextuality and borrowing
Part II. The Impact of Early Jazz upon French Music (1900–35): 3. Debussy and Satie: early French explorations of cakewalk and ragtime
4. Milhaud's understanding of jazz and blues: La Création du monde
5. Crossing borders: Ravel's theory and practice of jazz
Part III. The Impact of French Music upon Jazz (1925–65): 6. Hylton's interwar 'jazzed' arrangements of French classics
7. (Re)moving boundaries? Russell's Lydian jazz theory and its rethinking of Debussy and Ravel
8. Bill Evans's modal jazz and French music reconfigured
9. Milhaud and Brubeck: French classical teacher and American jazz student.

Subject Areas: Techniques of music / music tutorials [AVS], Musical instruments & instrumental ensembles [AVR], Musical scores, lyrics & libretti [AVQ], Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH], Jazz [AVGJ], Light orchestral & big band music [AVGF], Western "classical" music [AVGC], Theory of music & musicology [AVA]