Maurice Ravel at piano with Manoah Leide-Tedesco (center) and George Gershwin (far right), 1928
Beginning in the earliest part of the 20th century, European “art” or “classical” music enjoyed a brief but intense romance with American jazz. If its perceptions of this unique American artform were sometimes distinctly misguided, its enthusiasm made up for it. For some it was a charming caprice, for others a raucous symbol of democracy.
In a 4-session course, popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin uses her unique live piano demonstrations and historic and contemporary film clips to explore early jazz origins and how American ragtime and jazz conquered Parisian nightclubs in the feverish pre- and post-World War I era, powerfully influencing composers from Ravel to Milhaud and Stravinsky. She traces the role of jazz in the ‘20s and ‘30s as a symbol of political freedom and cultural modernity for artists such as Shostakovich, Krenek, and Walton in capitals including Moscow, Berlin, and London. She concludes in the U.S., where many composers including Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and John Alden Carpenter used jazz as a deep source of inspiration while struggling to come to terms with its identity as a highly complex, home-grown African American artform.
British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.
October 1 Jazz Invades Paris, Paris Rolls Over
“Jazz ‘er up! Broadway’s conquest of Europe!” So announced the New York Times jubilantly in 1921. It was nothing new for Parisians to amuse themselves with foreign cultural traditions, but the intoxicating syncopations and sounds of American ragtime and popular dance music had already been taking root there for several decades. Claude Debussy had been enchanted by John Philip Sousa’s marching bands, while James Reese Europe’s Black military band, the Hellfighters, mesmerized huge French crowds, adding to the disruptive energy driving works like Erik Satie’s anarchic ballet Parade.
October 8 The Twenties Roar In
After the devastation of the Great War, the world reached madly for entertainment and French artists continued their adoration of all things modern and American. Popular Parisian drinking spots regularly featured American popular performers, and composers such as Maurice Ravel and Darius Milhaud created large-scale works directly inspired by the ragtime and early jazz they heard there. Franklin’s selections include Ravel’s two piano concertos and opera L'enfant et les sortile`ges, Milhaud’s La Création du Monde and L’Histoire du Soldat by Stravinsky.
October 15 Weimar, London, and Moscow Get Syncopated
Other nationalities were also fascinated by jazz, which fed a fierce desire to build a new cultural language for their ravaged countries. However, as both fascism and communism menaced new intellectual movements, jazz and American popular music became highly political in countries undergoing upheaval and repression. Franklin includes the work of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in their Mahagonny Songspiel, Ernst Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf, and Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff’s jazz piano pieces. Shostakovich’s Jazz Suites and the very English Façade by William Walton are also featured.
October 22 Concert Halls and Controversy in the US
While jazz was exploding in popularity throughout the United States and the great jazz masters were beginning to emerge, the classical music community harbored a profound ambivalence about this home-grown phenomenon and its roots in the cultures of African and enslaved people. Composers with an eye to the future had to decide whether to embrace it as a valid music of the time or condemn it as a cheap passing phase. Franklin examines the ballet Skyscrapers by Carpenter, Copland’s Piano Concerto, and the ever-changing perspective of George Gershwin’s greatest works. Inevitably, the greatest jazz composers such as Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis pronounce the not-so-final word on how jazz has found its way permanently into modern concert halls.
4 sessions
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