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Jazz as autonomous music

About the music sociologic position of jazz before and after bop, and the reinterpretation by Scott DeVeaux


by Jørgen Mathiasen

Contents

Introduction (1) Autonomous music (3) Functional music (4); Autonomous music as the highest class (5) Bibliography (6)

 

Introduction

In the last couple of decades the American writing about history of jazz has often emphasized the significance of the black Americans in this music, as if doubt had been raised about the importance of such characters as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker or many others. This takes place in a music cultural environment, which also includes the European tradition, and a competition for resources and prestige therefore exists. Part of this is the effort to have jazz placed as the most important music in the USA, expressed in the notion "Jazz: America's classical music". Grover Sales and Billy Taylor have in writings been spokesmen for this point of view in the 1980s, and so has Scott DeVeaux in his book The Birth of Bebop from 1997, but in a characteristically cautious tone: Only 'in the recent years' has jazz taken steps, albeit substantive, to achieve this status. However, jazz never had the social position in the USA as classical music has in Europe, so doubt emerges about this analogy. The posthumous Pulitzer Prize awarded to Duke Ellington was certainly acceptable in 1999 but the proposal was rejected in 1965, and thus the most important composer in jazz so far ran into a borderline, which he and his defenders denied to take into consideration. Nonetheless there is an essential borderline in Western music culture, the idea of autonomous music, and it once again emerged when Scott DeVeaux, in his history of bebop, made a conclusion on the music sociological position of jazz, half a century after bebop started to exert its influence:

In its wake, all of jazz must be properly understood as an autonomous art, governed by its own laws and judgeable only by its own criteria.
(DeVeaux, p. 443)

The background for this change of status was a change of function, and here DeVeaux continues by drawing on Martin Williams' 'influential' account The Jazz Tradition:

And that meant, as Martin Williams argued in his influential book, The Jazz Tradition, 'a change in even the function of the music' : "The music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie represented a way for jazz to continue . . . . From now on it was somehow a music to be listened to, as many of its partisans had said it should have been all along. We will make it that Parker seems to say, or it will perish.
(DeVeaux, p. 443)

Even if the essence of DeVeaux's viewpoint seems clear at the first glance: that jazz changed its function and was followed by a change of category and status of jazz, on closer examination it turns out to be unclear what the extent is. It is generally understood by jazz historians that bebop changed the status of jazz, but they disagree on the reasons for it. A traditional borderline in musicology between style historians and social historians can be observed in the following quotations. Mark C. Gridley, who has written an account of the first type and one of the most widespread jazz books at all, writes for instance:

With the advent of bop, the status of jazz began to resemble that of classical chamber music more than that of American popular music. It became an art music in the sense that its performance required highly sophisticated skills and it was only appreciated by a relative elite.
(Gridley, p. 158)

If the structure of bebop has often been called complicated and if that has been offered as a reason to call it art, this was by no means the case to Ekkehard Jost. In his social history of jazz in the USA he observed that bop in comparison with the previous styles in jazz was without function and therefore had to be art:

Eine solche, vom täglichen Gebrauch sich ablösende Musik, konnte nach dem allgemeinen Verständnis von Publikum und Musikern nur eines sein: „Kunst". Woraus deutlich wird, daß der dem Bebop zugeschriebene Kunstcharakter a priori keineswegs in seiner musikalischen Struktur verankert war, sondern in der Funktion des Nicht-Funktionalen, die ihm in der amerikanischen Gesellschaft der Zeit zugemessen wurde. (Jost, p. 100)

[Music of that kind, which disbanded itself from daily use, could in the general understanding of audience and musicians only be one thing: "art". Through this it becomes clear, that the character of art a priori ascribed to bop in no way was anchored in its musical structure, but instead in the function of the non-functional, it was attributed with in the American society of the time.]

The category change of jazz is by Jost just as firm as it is by the other authors, but he offers another explanation. In the USA of the 1940s, art was not necessarily connected to something positive, and bop musicians experienced reception problems not long after the breakthrough of bop, as Jost also suggests, and were hit by unemployment in the years surrounding 1950. The audience had correctly observed that the new generation had other goals, and the musician of it had an identity different from that of the swing musicians:

Die Mehrzahl der Swingmusiker verstand sich - im Einklang mit der Funktion, die sie im Musikleben erfüllten - als Entertainer. Ihr Anliegen war es nicht, Kunst zu produzieren, sondern eine Musik zu spielen, die die Leute zum Tanzen animierte.
(Jost, p. 82)

[Consistent with the function they fulfilled in the musical life the majority of the swing musicians considered themselves entertainers. Their matter was not to create art but to play music that encouraged the people to dance.]

Finally, in these examples from the literature it should be mentioned that the function of jazz is apparently also a crucial criterion to the authors of the articles on popular music in the two most important encyclopaedias of western musicology: Richard Middleton in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Peter Wicke in Musik in der Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG). They consider early jazz and a number of styles, including swing, as a part of popular music, but neither says precisely when this early period ends.

Autonomous music

So far nobody has had the authority to give a final definition of autonomous music. Many have made contributions to the notion and what they believe it ought to be, and yet others refer to the notion when the borderline between music, which is art and music, which is not, is going to be drawn, particularly against popular music. The idea of autonomous music emerged in the second half the 18th century and was directed towards the precepts connected to functional, representative music. In the generation of contemporary poets of Beethoven, that is writers like Novalis, Wilhelm H. Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann, the notion became an early sign of Romanticism and the notion absolute music. Surprisingly autonomous music is neither indexed in New Grove or MGG, but it is indexed in the music encyclopedia Brockhaus-Riemann, edited by Carl Dahlhaus and Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht, adn it was Dahlhaus, who wrote about the demarcation of autonomous music:

in sich selbst begründete, nicht an Zwecke gebundene Musik, die den Anspruch erhebt und durchsetzen vermag, um ihrer selbst willen als in sich geschlossenes Kunstwerk rezipiert zu werden. Eine scharfe Abgrenzung von dem Gegenbegriff funktionale Musik ist schwierig [...] Im Extrem könnte von der autonomen Musik behauptet werden, daß es sie nicht gebe. [...] Wie weit sich der Bereich der autonomen Musik in die Vergangenheit erstreckt, hängt davon ab, welche Definition ein Historiker für den Terminus wählt.
(Dahlhaus und Eggebrecht 1979, 1998)

[It is justified by it self and not bound to purposes, it is music, which claims and is able to convince about this that it should be received for its own sake and as an independent work of art. A sharp demarcation against the opposite notion, functional music, is difficult [...] In the extreme case it can be claimed, that autonomous music doesn't exist [...] How far the area of autonomous music goes back in the past depends on which definition a historian chooses for the term.]

If the impact of the notion in the past depends on the historian's definition, it implies that the notion is not secured, but the autonomous art received a new foundation through Immanuel Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft in 1790 and the above-mentioned Romantic poets. When the middle class audience in the time after 1830 began to mistrust art as a means to promote its interests, the idea that art was beyond interest was strengthened as a sociological dogma of art (compare Hauser pp. 771f).
Even if the dividing line in the literature of music is not always distinct, autonomous and absolute music are not identical. Autonomous music designates a music sociological borderline, while absolute music are absolute music is an programme music are not absolute music, but they are by no means excluded from aesthetic category (of instrumental music). Thus vocal and programme music are not absolute music, but they are by no means excluded from the category of autonomous music:

Vom Begriff der absoluten Musik, der eine ästhetische Kategorie ist und als solche das Merkmal der Unabhängigkeit von äußeren Zwecken einschließt, jedoch außerdem noch zur Vokal- und vor allem Programmusik kontrastiert, unterscheidet sich der Begriff autonome Musik, der Vokal und Programmusik keineswegs ausschließt, durch seine primär soziologische Bestimmtheit [...]
(Dahlhaus und Eggebrecht 1979, 1998)

[From the notion of absolute music, which is an aesthetic category and as such and in contrast to vocal and programme music includes the characteristic of independence of external purposes, autonomous music differs. It does not at all exclude vocal or programme music, and it is primarily sociologically defined.]

As mentioned above, autonomous music manifests itself already in the 18th century, while absolute music only emerges in the 19th. The concept originates neither from the Romantic poets nor the music critic Eduard Hanslick, as it has often been said, but surprisingly from Richard Wagner, the composer of programme music and the philosopher of the Gesamtkunstwerk, who in 1846 declared his opposition to the concept but actually was convinced of its fundamental truth (compare Dahlhaus 1978, p. 24). While the notion of absolute music played a major role in the understanding of music in the period 1850-1950, the idea of autonomous music still plays an active role as a music sociological notion, and it is neither exclusively connected to European score music nor to a closed period in the past, but has instead spread from the European enlightenment to other periods and continents.

Functional music

The counter-notion of autonomous music is functional music. As it has already been suggested, many considerations have been made to identify the demarcation of these notions and what each of them comprises and whether it in the end is possible to draw a line between both:

Eine scharfe Abgrenzung von dem Gegenbegriff funktionale Musik ist schwierig, weil man zu den Funktionen, die durch Musik erfüllt werden, außer der Begleitung von Tänzen oder von liturgischen Handlungen auch weniger Handgreifliche Zwecke wie etwa die gesellige, die ethische, die Repräsentations-, oder Prestige-, sowie die Unterhaltungs- und die Bildungsfunktion zählen kann.
(Dahlhaus und Eggebrecht 1979, 1998)

[A sharp demarcation against the opposite notion functional music is difficult, because included in the functions fulfilled by music can besides the accompaniment of dance or liturgical acts also be added less concrete purposes like social, ethical, representative function or prestige as well as entertaining and educational function.]

European music has pretty solid experiences with functional music, which constitutes the major part of the tradition. It is with the new understanding of art after 1750, and for the new middle class audience, that functional music becomes associated with something of negative value. This also explains the scepticism this audience gradually develops against entertaining music and music looking for popularity. Autonomous music has an ideological function and it seems as if the notion thereby collapses, but this is not necessarily the case. If it is possible to distinguish between music that is not dictated by precepts, music that is being made for its own sake and wishes to be heard as such against music that is supposed to exercise a function, we have a music sociological fact. The musical institution of the middle class has made this distinction since the change of era in 1750. We also find it in the citation of Scott DeVeaux as well as in the reception of bebop, which didn't meet the functional expectations of the jazz audience. From time to time it has been claimed that bop was not connected to a loss of function. Thus when Chet Baker played with Charlie Parker in the end of the 1940s in Five Four Ballroom (California), he observed – perhaps somewhat surprised – that the black audience was dancing to the music. Nonetheless, dancing to bop was a marginal phenomenon, while listening soon became the adequate way to experience this music, and the musicians adapted to this expectation, if they didn't strive for it. Dizzy Gillespie commented:

I've struggled to establish jazz as a concert music, a form of art, not just music you hear in clubs or places where they serve whiskey. I did a lot of playing along those lines in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
(Reprinted in DeVeaux, p. 442)

Whether this was to make a virtue of the necessity or not: The functionality the audience connected with early jazz disappeared with bebop and through this the dividing line is once again substantiated.

Autonomous music as the highest class

Autonomous music belongs to the highest category in the musical institution of the middle class. Besides the active role it plays by the reception of music it is also manifested when music is used in state ceremonies, when prizes are awarded, when the objectives for musical education are determined or when the organisation of tax financed public service mass media is structured. If the criticism implied in autonomous music from the beginning was aimed at representative music, it was aimed at popular music too when it during the 19th century established itself as an important part of music culture and became omnipresent in the course of the 20th century. This latter century also saw the emerging of a music education policy, which supplied the inherited effort to distinguish between autonomous and functional music with a firmer economic-political parameter, more precisely the financing parameter. The first priority of tax-financed music in the European welfare societies is to support autonomous music economically and ideologically. This is done with direct subsidies in the culture and education policies and through the objectives of music education. Contrary to this, functional music is as a rule financed through the market economy and has – so far – only received indirect subsidies. (It would be unwise to underestimate the economic dimensions in the welfare state economy of popular music, it easily equals other parts of the economic production usually regarded as essential for a nation.) The distinction based on the financing parameter has turned out to be operational for politicians, who thereby avoid difficult discussions on aesthetics and music sociology. To a certain extent this borderline is active in jazz too. Certain current jazz styles with roots in early jazz maintain the original functionality, and are basically financed by the market. In DeVeaux' thesis these activities are classified as autonomous music together with bop and post-bop styles in jazz, if it isn't intended to retrospectively classify early jazz in this category and to reinterpret early jazz against the objectives of its practitioners. It is difficult to understand the effort by DeVeaux otherwise, since he has emphasized the word all and it matches with his effort to reinterpret jazz as America's classical music. While some musical genres have no problems in enforcing their autonomy, other types of music inadvertently end up in the autonomous category because it doesn’t seem to have any obvious function and the category of art music therefore is the only one left. Autonomous music must claim to be so, according to Dahlhaus' demarcation, but it is not absolutely clear how this should take place - whether the creator(s) of it should make the claim or it is supposed to be apparent from the content of the music. Duke Ellington is an example of a creator of music who in general didn't claim to write autonomous music, even though he occasionally wrote music that had no function and was meant to be listened to for its own sake. There are examples of this already in his early jazz period such as Creole Rhapsody and Reminiscing in Tempo. Nonetheless, in his biography of Ellington, John Edward Hasse characterized his early production as follows:

At this time, and until the 1940s, Ellington was proudly and unapologetically an entertainer serving primarily the nightclub world. Only later would he create art with a self-conscious quality. Now he was making utilitarian music, Gebrauchsmusik, and developing it quite splendidly.
(Hasse, pp. 79-80)

Whether one agrees with this evaluation of Ellington or not, it mirrors quite precisely the categorizing of Ellington as a writer of popular music, not only in the period Hasse discusses, but, as the first decision of the earlier Pulitzer Prize Committee shows, also after. Occasional excursions into autonomous music by Ellington didn't change that, not surprising since he at the same time publicly made it clear that he had to fulfil audience expectations in order to finance his big band. When, around 1940, the claim of autonomy in jazz generally was about to be realised, it was met with fuming refusal by the so-called revival movement and by the split-up of the jazz public. The disagreements that arose were to continue for a long period after the break-through of bebop in 1945. If early jazz is to be added to the category autonomous music, one has to ignore the function of this music, its reception and the identity of it practitioners or create a new definition of autonomous music. How this can take place without obscuring the considerable difference in the music sociological position of jazz before and after bebop is not clear, but it is clear that autonomous music continues to play an important music sociological role in the Western understanding of music.

Bibliography

Carl Dahlhaus: Die Idee der absoluten Musik. 1. Ausgabe. Basel 1978
Carl Dahlhaus und Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Herausgeber): Brockhaus Riemann Musiklexikon in vier Bänden und einem Ergänzungsband. Erster Band A-D. Herausgegeben von Carl Dahlhaus und Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht 1979. Die überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage Berlin 1995
Scott DeVeaux: The Birth Of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley 1997
Gridley, Mark C with contributions by David Cutler: Jazz styles. History and Analysis. Eight edition. Upper Saddle River 2003
Hasse, John Edward: Beyond Category. The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. New York 1933
Arnold Hauser: Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur. München 1953. Sonderausgabe 1990
Ekkehard Jost: Sozialgeschichte des Jazz in den USA. Frankfurt am Main 1982.
Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft. 1790. Werkausgabe Band X. Herausgegeben von Wilhelm Weischedel 1957. Frankfurt 1993.
Richard Middleton: “Popular Music”. (2001) pp. 128-153 in: Stanley Sadie (ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd edition, London 2001
Grover Sales: Jazz: America's classical Music. Englewood Cliffs, New York 1984
Philip Tagg: “Notes on how classical music became «classical»”. Extract from chapter 1 (“Towards a musicology of the mass media”). March 2002 version. http://tagg.org
William "Billy" Taylor: "Jazz: America's classical Music". Black Perspective in Music, The Vol. 14 Nr. 1, 1986 p. 21-25. Reprinted in: Robert Walser (ed.) Keeping Time. Readings In Jazz History. New York 1999
Peter Wicke: “Populäre Musik”. pp. 1694-1704 in: Ludwig Finscher (Herausgeber): Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik begründet von Friedrich Blume. Sachteil Band 1-9. Zweite Ausgabe. Kassel 1997