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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.
List of contents
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.
About the author
Deborah Mawer is Research Professor of Music at Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University. Her books include The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation (2006), Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s (1997), Ravel Studies (Cambridge, 2010) and The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge, 2000). Her articles and reviews, also encompassing jazz and dance, have appeared in a variety of books and journals, including the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Twentieth-Century Music, Music and Letters, Opera Quarterly, Music Theory Online and Music Analysis. In 2008 she was awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship.
Summary
This book explores the rich historical-cultural interactions between French concert music and American jazz in the first half of the twentieth century (1900–65), from both perspectives. Deborah Mawer provides a set of detailed musical case studies on Debussy, Satie, Milhaud, Ravel, Jack Hylton, George Russell, Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck.
