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Tim Bruer (2003) A study of pianist Keith Jarretts approach to the structuring of an improvised performance based upon the

e standard song, from the years 1985 to 1989 Keith Jarrett solo piano introductions can reflect his classical influences from baroque to contemporary, or draw on his experience with non-western music. Pg. 87 Pg. 89 discussing facing youalbum.. the music would embrace the huge range of styles that Jarrett had absorbed, from long ruminations on a single chord using eastern scales, to driving gospel inspired sctions, to complex and dissonant harmonic excursions influenced by 20th century classical composers. Pg. 89 in the early 80s he began to perform classical music in 1987 he recorded his first classical album, J.S. Bachs The Well Tempered Clavier book 1, and has since that time recorded many more classical works, including Bachs Goldberg Variations (on harpsichord), Handels Keyboard Suits, Shostakovichs Preludes and Fugues, and a number of Mozarts piano concertos. In 1991 he was voted Best Classical Keyboardist 1991 in a Keyboard magazine editors poll, as well as winning the Classical CD of the year 1992 from CD Review (for the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues Album)

Mehldau Tonal Principles quotes ARTHURS Pg. 5/6 the information provided by each jazz chord symbol alone cannot illustrate the perceived motion, or voice-leading, from chord to chord.

Pg. 6 to be sure, the decision to stress melodic over harmonic approaches has been a recurring point of contention throughout the history of music theory. I do not wish to downplay the importance of jazz harmony (or even classical harmony) so much as I wish to elevate an awareness of contrapuntal situations that are not normally apparent in jazz music. While Mehldaus music at times is strikingly different from traditional jazz, his own practice of accompanying his published themes with chord symbols is a traditional jazz practice: the symbols name vertical arrangement s of a given collection of melodic and harmonic material at specific points within the music, usually one to two chords per measure. Given the contrapuntal approach to many of Mehldaus compositions, though, chord symbols cannot tell us the linear story that animates the rich surface of the music.

Pg. 9 While jazz music often emphasizes parsimonious voice-leading, the motions just described between harmonies are not a given stylistic requisite in jazz music, not even in the tonal jazz repertory.

Pg. 9 - To be sure, this study is not a critique of jazz practice, such as chord-symbol notation in Mehldaus music or in jazz in general. Rather, this study points to the friction evident between two languages and how one jazz composer appropriates his musical style from the nineteenthcentury German Romantic tradition (as evinced in his writings) in order to create a renewed sense of tonality in this post-modern age.

Pg. 15 - Harmonically, jazz music embodies Schoenbergs notion of the emancipation of dissonance. Jazz theorists regard the dominant thirteen an independent entity. A sus chord is not considered to require a resolution (see chapter 3 for more on sus chords). Jazz harmony, in all its complexity, represents the reification of linear phenomena, frozen into a vertical form. Though received jazz methodologies teach smooth voice-leading when incorporating successions of complex harmonies, the focus is upon the law of the shortest way: parsimony and close proximity of pitch materials from one chord to the next. Parallel motion of consonant fifths and dissonant sevenths are permitted in jazz methods. As I will demonstrate in the literature review, below, the use of the term voice- leading is fundamentally different from the kind of voice-leading that lies at the foundation of tonal structure. With the multiplicity of tonal and non-tonal styles in a post-modern world, Mehldau has at his disposal a variety of compositional choices. That he gravitates so frequently to a nineteenth-century approach to tonality suggests that he simply chooses to compose anxiety-free in a post-modern time.

Pg. 34 - Today, a student of jazz theory learns that a chord symbol is available for nearly any collection of pitches. In jazz theory, only secondarily is there an emphasis on traditional consonancedissonance-based counterpoint, let alone the kind of recursive contrapuntal voiceleading that Schenker discovered in his theories.

Pg. 31 - These writers have demonstrated at length ideas that I consider fundamental to the jazz language: scales are intimately related to chords on the surface of the music, and chord types can be substituted with an extremely broad array of other chords and chord types.

Pg. 32 - The relationship of chord and scale has led to a generalized system that puts chords in terms of scales, presumably because the linear collections of scales is easier to understand in a spontaneous (i.e., improvisational) situation compared to the more difficult arrangements of stacked thirds..His book ultimately spreads a simple but effective principle: when confronted by complex harmonies encountered in chord changes, it is easiest to relate them to scales.

Pg. 59 - As stated, Mehldaus use of standard chord symbols at times masks the true nature of the voice-leading made evident by both his score and performance.

In some cases, identifying a chord as a simple vertical arrangement of pitches is misleading. These incongruities are significant for my argument that vertical interpretations exhibited by chord symbols may be more pragmatic for the performer while the analyst requires a better syntactic explanation

Pg. 79 (For country guitar song discussing Sehnsucht) - By establishing traditional voice-leading principles in the opening measures, Mehldau sets enough voice-leading constraints to cause a musical effect when the music denies an expected resolution.

This is a good quote about the approximations - what Im doing. Pg. 95 - Further, as much as this study seeks to expose tonal norms in a style that does not normally include such techniques, and inasmuch as I try to separate Mehldaus music from his jazz peers, I am also interested in identifying idiosyncrasies of Mehldau that sets him apart from his classical predecessors as well.

Pg. 206- I hypothesize that Mehldaus love for German Romantic traditions sets him apart from the French Impressionist style of Evans.

Pg. 209 - I made the case that these works demonstrated an essential reliance on the triad (rather than the seventh chord) and contrapuntal relationships in which dissonance and consonance are in a tighter relation than is typical of the music of Mehldaus contemporaries. That triads and counterpoint are both important features to Mehldau led me to identify linear strategies that incorporate a Schenkerian sensibility of dissonance and consonance.

211 - Indeed, it is strange (and refreshing) that, by the end of the twentieth-century, Mehldau relates his music to Brahmss.7
7. See, for instance, Brad Mehldau, Brahms, Interpretation, and Improvisation, Jazz Times (February 2001), reprinted on Mehldaus website http://www.bradmehldau.com/writing, accessed 22 February 2008. 8.

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