How Jazz Entered Classical Music

From ragtime to the Third Stream, how concert music absorbed jazz.

Related

ModernSyncopationTimbreDrum Kit

The question

Jazz gave classical music two things: syncopated rhythm and blue pitch. The problem is that a score can write syncopation but not the slight give and take of swing.

Historical arc

Ragtime swept the 1900s, and Debussy imitated its syncopation in Golliwogg's Cakewalk. Stravinsky wrote Ragtime in 1918; Milhaud put a jazz band into the ballet La création du monde in 1923; Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue seated jazz in the concert hall in 1924. Ravel wrote a Blues movement into his violin sonata and let the piano speak jazz in his G major concerto, while Krenek put a jazz musician on the operatic stage. In 1957 Gunther Schuller proposed a Third Stream, placing improvisers beside strings; Bernstein folded Latin and jazz rhythms into musical theatre.

The turning point

Composers moved from quotation to grammar. The early generation borrowed rhythms and colours; the later one wrote improvisation, flexible pitch and timbre into the structure, loosening the border between score and performance.

What to listen for

Hear Gershwin's preludes, blue notes set beside concert-hall piano idiom. Then Schulhoff's jazz suite, dance rhythm turned into a recital piece. Ravel's concerto lets the piano imitate a jazz voice, and West Side Story drives plot with syncopation and harmony together.

Related

The line belongs to Modern; see Syncopation, Timbre and Drum Kit.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Jazz" — influence section checked, not quoted
• Gunther Schuller, Musings (Oxford University Press) — Third Stream context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.