Wolfgang Burde (1978)

A Discussion of European Free Jazz

Modern Music and Jazz

The interest taken by modern music in Jazz is almost as old as modern music itself. Claude Debussy, for example, writes a piano cycle in 1908 entitled "Children's Corner", which he concludes with "Gollywoog's Cakewalk", a particularly expressive successor of Ragtime, the first negro piano music. Jean Cocteau, an intimate of the musicians around Eric Satie and friendly with those of "Groupe des Six", writes in his little volume of aphorisms "The Cock and the Harlequin" in 1918:

"When Nietzsche praises Carmen, he commends the candor which our generation sought in the music hall. Impressionistic music, for example, is swept aside by a certain American dance which I have seen in the Casino de Paris."

Cocteau's friends, Milhaud and Auric, write pieces in Jazz style. And Igor Strawinsky not only inserts Tango and Ragtime in his ""Story of the Soldier", of 1918, but also composes with "Ragtime" (1919), written for an ensemble of eleven instruments, a caricature as it were of the new negro music. The basis of these and other works, however, were not only the piles of jazz-scores that his Swiss conductor-friend Ernest Ansermet had brought him back from New York; Strawinsky also owned the first recordings of the "Original Dixieland Jass Band", which had just been released by Victor in1917. Later followed the famous "Piano-Rag-Music" and then the Ebony Concert, which Strawinsky wrote in 1945 for Woody Herman and his band.

In Germany, Paul Hindemith (occasionally) takes up the coarse jazz sound, for instance in the "Suite 1922", and the young Ernst Krenek even devotes an entire opera to the jazz idiom, "Jonny strikes up" (Jonny spielt auf). Works by Kurt Weill, among others the "Three-penny Opera" and "Mahagonny" adopt the jazz-orchestra sound of the late twenties. Various forms of contemporary dance music like Boston, Shimmy, as well as Song and Blues mould this new style of opera, inaugurated by Weill, in every detail. "Mack the Knife", or, as the ballad was originally called, "Moritat vom Mackie Messer" became - not least of all because of Louis Armstrong's interpretation - an international jazz hit.

One should not forget that the composers of modern music are fascinated above all by the novel gestures of jazz, which is felt to be anti-romantic. This impudent, almost callous art-form with that aura of notoriety which emanated from the European music-halls and dance halls were regarded by the young neo-classicists as a chance to escape the overbearing German Romantic Tradition. By means of jazz-gestures and the simpler jazz forms, more streamlined composition was made possible: above all, the development of an entirely new range of expressive modes, extending as far as persiflage. With musical poker-face, an assumed pose of objectivity, one could convey the most caustic social criticism. Hanns Eisler, for example, employed such modes of expression in many of his workers' songs. This is especially evident in the "Ballad of the Sackheavers" and in the "Ballad of the Negro Jim", which originated in 1930. And it is an interesting contradiction that Eisler seemed sceptical about jazz, if not even somewhat disdainful, in conversations he had later during the fifties. Jazz was entertainment; boring and routinized at that. Holding such convictions, he came together with none other than Theodore W. Adorno. Indeed both musicians discoursed on jazz only after they had come into contact with swing, the most commercial of all jazz styles, during their sojourn in America. This fact is often overlooked in the assessment of such hostile opinions about jazz, which in the case of Adorno's "Dissonanzen" were exalted to a position of sociological cogency.

Neither in Strawinsky's music nor in Eisler's could one speak of a real integration of the compositional methods of jazz and modern music. This integration, this thorough blending of jazz and avant-garde music could only become possible once both forms had undergone manifold, revolutionary transformations, to such an extent that they really began speaking a comparable language.

Merging of Jazz and Avant-garde:

Thus, at the end of the fifties, modern music opened itself up gradually to improvisational processes. So-called "Aleatoric Structures", non-fixed measures, were inserted into the compositions, which were normally based on tone-rows, thereby allowing for greater freedom. To be sure, the instrumentalists could not simply improvise, but they did have a range of choices within the framework of thematic constellations which the composer made available to them. For this reason one spoke correctly of controlled contingency. The freedom of the instrumentalists, the unprecedented unbridling of the established compositional process was therefore extremely limited. On the one hand, there were either-or decisions, and on the other the possibility of reacting to a labyrinthine system of instructions. The results of such aleatoric (area, Latin: dice) work, meanwhile, were not especially conspicuous, for in fact the instrumentalists who were supposed to fill the free spaces produced mostly structures which fit neatly into the compositional context anyway. More important for the jazz of the sixties, though, were a whole series of newly developed musical forms, which later - during the sixties - were employed by European groups of Free Jazz as well as by avant-garde improvisation ensembles. Pointed and static structures, timbre and sound effects, and what has been designated serial gestures. A fundamental consideration indeed is that the improvisation ensembles exploited more the gestical aspects of the new discoveries and bothered less with the inherent compositional consistency and logic of the matter.

Serial Music:

In the early fifties, when the composers of the younger generation: Boulez, Nono, Stockhausen, after detailed analyses of the works of Schönberg, Webern and Messiaen, went about expanding the concept of the row to correspond to the four dimensions of tone, integrating pitch-rows, rhythmic rows, rows for dynamics and timbre all into a mesh-like texture and deriving the composition strictly from such row-dispositions, one also began to orient oneself according to the degree of density and the registers.

Pointed structure and Statistical structure:

A structure, quantitatively unusually dense, in which the sounds per time-unit occurred so rapidly or "harmonically" that they were no longer audible, were called "statistical". And such a tone system could be analysed according to statistical methods for a greater or lesser density of information. A structure was termed "pointed" in which the sounds might stilI be individually audible and apprehensible, but whose individual "sound imprints", due to the size of the tonal space and the length of the intervals, led to a noticeable individualisation of the sounds. Both compositional methods, however, pointed and statistical, created an entirely unique and unprecedented feeling for time. Since the traditional measure based on accent intervals was abolished, the orientation according to metre or some sort of pulse abandoned, time seemed to glide; it now seemed that one composed in expansions and contractions of time, and articulated in superimposed time-frames with respectively different tempos, i.e. asynchronously. Stockhausen's quintet for wind instruments, "Measure" (Zeitmasse) established completely new standards here.

Timbre Composition:

The more thoroughly the composers worked on the rationalisation of their compositional craft during the fifties, the more difficulty they had with the remarkable unpredictability of the compositional form and, above all, of the sounds produced. György Ligeti, the Hungarian composer, was the first to call attention to the problem of permeability of superimposed lines or tone complexes. What was individually set tended under certain conditions to fuse into a tone complex: especially at high horizontal or vertical density.

Ligeti and at about the same time Penderecki were the two composers who drew radical conclusions from such destructive tendencies in serial music and achieved what was at the time virtually inconceivable: they gave up composing with tone-rows and fashioned tone, timbre, sound and sound-effects directly, without digressing into row organisation.

What resulted can be called the 'elementarisation' of composition. I call it 'elementarisation' because it is an irrefutable fact that timbre composition and sound-colour composition both dealt at their inception with macrostructures, with undifferentiated colour and tone complexes, with totalities similar to those on tachistic pictures, which only in the course of the sixties were subjected to an increasing differentiation. And indeed pieces like Ligeti's "Apparitions" and Penderecki's "Anaklasis" - performed for the first time in 1960 in Donaueschingen - were regarded as elemental occurrences, just as John Coltrane's "Ascension" or "Globe Unity" by Alexander von Schlippenbach were perhaps later.

Josef Häusler wrote about "Anaklasis":

"Everything in the score seemed new and exorbitant. It began already with the typeface. Next to the traditional notes there appeared graphic formations, which until then had seldom been encountered, if at all, on a score-sheet: flags of various widths, wavy lines, arrows pointing in different directions, which suggested the range of pitch as well as changes in tempo; numerous other symbols give exact directions for usual, but more often unusual kinds of tone-production on string and percussion instruments: rapid, non-rhythmic tremolos, erratic switching of the bow, playing between bridge and tailpiece, ambiguous pitches in the highest registers, percussive sound-effects on string instruments."

To be sure, the graphic notation led also to more lively and spontaneous playing. Its coarser manner of intonation and articulation - departing from the belcanto-song of the strings and winds - lent this music, on the one hand, a new suppleness and versatility, but on the other, a colourfulness and aggressive penetrating force, such as could be experienced up till then at best in the music of Edgar Varese. This tendency toward the big sound, toward a musical vocabulary of rather coarse consistency was common now to both modern music and the new jazz. Moreover, the spontaneity that had been lacking for decades in modern music had now been smuggled indirectly into the style of execution via aleatoric structures and approximate graphic notation-systems.

Free Jazz Groups - Ensemble Improvisation:

Then in the mid-sixties there arose around the avant-garde scene improvisation ensembles whose creative spontaneity was very much comparable to that of the Free Jazz Groups. What distinguished them, often hardly noticeable any more, was the concept of musicianship. Stockhausen travelled all over the world with his Cologne Ensemble. Occasionally, as in his "In the Seven Days", the musicians had only texts on their music-stands. For instance: "A tone lives like you, like me, like him, like her, like it. Moves, expands and shrinks. Transforms itself, gives birth, engenders, dies, is born again. Seeks, doesn't seek, finds, loses, joins itself, loves, waits, hurries, comes and goes". Other groups, such as that of the Italian composer Franco Evangelisti, "Nuova Constanza", polished up structures, which were then utilized during the improvisation sessions. Cornelius Cardew and his Scratch Orchestra favoured sound-colours; Vinko Globokar, the avant-garde trombonist, founded the outstanding group "New Phonic Art", which played free music quite the same way the group "Iskra 1903" did, whose music alternated between Free Music and Free Jazz. After Jazz had forfeited its special status as improvisational music, the boundaries between Jazz and Avant-garde music became blurred. And this tendency prevails up to the present day.

The group "Blow", for example, which performed in the Berlin Academy during "Workshop '77", cannot be classified ultimately as either FreeJazz or Free Music. And this tendency can be observed in many groups. Musicians such as Keith Jarrett, and perhaps even Cecil Taylor, whom I consider to be the greatest pianist of timbre composition, are as familiar with traditional as well as avant-garde techniques and have deviated to such an extent from orthodox jazz that categorizing them merely as jazz musicians may appear to be absurd. The opposite holds true for Terry Riley, one of the most accomplished pianists of the "minimal art" scene, who started out with Rock. Improvisation grew to be not only the mediator between avant-garde music and free jazz, but also a kind of vocabulary, comparable in many respects to the two, producing similar structures and modes of expression. Improvisation will be discussed at greater length shortly.

Interaction between Composition and Improvisations:

In 1971 Penderecki composed a jazz piece for the Donaueschinger Music Festival entitled "Actions". Perhaps it is not comparable to the works that originated in the circles of the Tentet around Misha Mengelberg, the Globe Unity Orchestra or the New Eternal Rhythm Orchestra around Don Cherry. But nevertheless, as an example of the convergence of modern music and free jazz, it is worth mentioning.

The title also suggests the style of the piece. Themes do not form the basis of the composition, but rather "Actions", playful actions, which are then further elaborated and expanded until they gradually become improvisation. Asked what it was that stimulated him to work with jazz musicians, Penderecki offered the following explanation in an interview:

"The opportunity to deal with a different type of musician, with a different mentality-that intrigued me. I endeavour to steer improvisation in certain directions, because the musicians should obviously not just play whatever they please. So I composed a normal piece, just as I would otherwise have written for a group or ensemble. Yet in this case I can reckon with unlimited technical possibilities, because I know that jazz musicians work much more with extreme techniques than orchestra musicians, and that improvisation is in their blood. When an orchestral musician, who has played in the orchestra for thirty years is suddenly supposed to improvise, he is not at all up to the task. He has to learn anew; jazz musicians, however, do not because improvising is easy for them; they do it quite naturally.

Jazz and modern music, improvised and composed music are presently in the process of disengaging themselves. During the historic decade 1965-1975, both forms of music and musicianship maintained exceptionally close contact. And a late result of these musical contacts is "Actions" by Penderecki.

But what happened in the new jazz in those years following the Swing Era, in the forties, fifties and sixties? Jazz overcame its phases of irritation, its Bebop phase, the Cool-Jazz phase and plunged into Free Jazz. The harmonic patterns and limits, as established by the jazz forms, Blues and Song, were discarded. Jazz freed itself from the form routine of chorus practice and rid itself thoroughly of its theme dependency. Of the twelve or thirty-two measure jazz themes, nothing else remained in Free Jazz other than the musicians' conception of a specific area of expression and sound, which they wanted to form and thereby alter. In the sixties, in Coltrane's "Ascension" as well as in Schlippenbach's "Globe Unity" or "Sun", jazz themes in the traditional sense play a negligible role.

Collective Improvisation:

Both pieces- or rather jazz processes- are executed collectively. The solo does not dominate, but rather the collective improvisation, as in early jazz. This can indeed be interpreted as a visible sign of a new musical feeling. The elementarisation of jazz, its neo-primitivism, as well as its new eruptive force grew primarily out of a mutual participation, out of the community feeling of the musicians' collective. The music was not shaped by the heroin or hash experience of those ruinously gifted lone-wolves of jazz, the soloists, but rather by the feeling of a new solidarity. By the feeling that only a common effort could accomplish something against the petrified structures of social convention.

World Music:

Furthermore, jazz and avant-garde musicians alike evinced a fascination for the forms of musicianship and awareness that became apparent in non-European music. Indian, African and Arabian music was not only played ever more frequently in Europe and America, but was also adapted by the musicians themselves in their compositions and jazz procedures. In the course of the sixties, there arose gradually and quite logically the vision of a "universal music" that would incorporate all the ethnocentric musical achievements ever conceived of or realized - and that was to apply for compositional forms as well as for the improvisational forms, which were so very typical of non-European music. Conceptions of music came into being comparable to those which Peter Michael Hamel, composer and founder of the group "Between" formulated in 1971:

"Between means the intermediate world where Between-music occurs. Between-music is collective music, intuitive music. Between music is extemporaneous composition. It takes place between Philharmonic, Avant-garde and Jazz. The six Between musicians hail from two continents and three worlds. Their dream is the blue flower between the milestones on the way to a universal music of the future."

Globe Unity:

In 1966, on the occasion of the Berlin Jazz Festival and on behalf of RIAS, the pianist and composer from Cologne, Alexander von Schlippenbach, wrote "Globe Unity", A piece intended for a jazz orchestra. It had grown out of the collective effort and improvisation of fourteen European jazz musicians and was emphatically greeted as a work in which at last the long-awaited fusion of jazz and serious music was realized. Indeed "Globe Unity" is based upon a twelve-tone row, organized predominantly in thirds; moreover, the compositional organisation of the twenty-minute process is unmistakable. But still more important was indeed the new tone of the work; its independence of American models. The fact that European Free Jazz had found a self-sufficient basis or, at least, a viable beginning.

One might doubt whether avant-garde music and jazz were really integrated in this work, whether they really merged to form a new entity. Nonetheless it is undeniable that in this historic first work a new realm of expression had been conquered which had far-reaching consequences for the further development of European jazz.

"Globe Unity" brought about a temporary diminution of interest in American Jazz. The more than sixty year-old reliance on the innovations of exclusively American jazz musicians, black and white alike, was overcome for the time being. The young European musicians obliterated the traditions of jazz, its models of harmony, its repetition and improvisation practice, its dependency on beat, the usual techniques of playing and modes of articulation - all with a contemptuous gesture that made people sit up and take notice. And their work seemed all the more legitimate and genuinely European, just as the vehemence of their collective eruptions and uninhibited impetuosity of their solos seemed to reflect the revolutionary spirit of the age. A fundamentally rebellious attitude, disdainful of conventions and distrustful of the authority of the state as it had developed in the proceeding thirty years - an attitude which found expression in the manifold student activities of the late sixties. Before we analyze the structures and jazz characteristics of "Globe Unity", first the commentary which Schlippenbach offered on his record (SABA SB 15109):

"The sphericity of time: that means a world of universal musical connections. Player and composer, in jazz embodied in the same person from the very beginning, create intricate connections, whose primary formal principle is unity. The cosmic eye at the middle and at the periphery of the sphere sees the structures simultaneously from all sides. Out of the sphere's divine indifference, the solos burst forth with a gesture of revolt. They form arches after life's likeness. Rhythm is the breath of the world. Sound is fire, water, earth, air. Behind its coloured screen a figure glows phosphorescent in pure, inviolable beauty.

This music is the world of the orchestra. Fourteen European musicians of the last jazz generation have realized with admirable discipline and utmost exertion the idea of playing free tone jazz with a big orchestra. By their reaction to the scores, which consisted almost exclusively of directions for improvisations derived from certain principles and ciphers, they demonstrated the finest intuitive grasp of music. They were attuned to the new sounds and illuminated their dynamic properties. By their ability to grasp graphically drawn structures, to improvise with available groups of notes and interval dispositions, as well as to play strictly written phrases absolutely freely, they opened up a world of fascinating possibilities for such orchestras. With such an orchestra, in which spirit resists all musical subservience, Paul Klee's vision becomes possible: "One takes leave of the mundane and is transported to a realm beyond, which can be one total affirmation."

Timing of "Globe Unity":

""Globe Unity" is a process lasting 20' 12". Six structures emerge clearly which form the twenty minute compositional-improvisational process.

INTRODUCTION:

"Globe Unity" begins with drum actions, with quavering piano and rotating thirds from soloists around b.

FIRST RANGE OF MATERIAL:

1'00'' The piano begins with an accentuated chromatic scale, which, climbing from the low registers, is gradually taken up by the orchestra: gliding up and down. This complex of material will later (6'40") dominate an entire structure. The orchestra orients itself around the central note of b. Sudden regrouping into the high register; saxophone plays staccato off a-flat.

SECOND RANGE OF MATERIAL:

2'30" The orchestra united in blocks of sound, as two groups of twelve chords (orchestra pedal). Then follows the first fully-elaborated saxophone solo. Preference for extremely high register, phrases played as possible, breathing, rounded off despite flatness and clamour, swinging. A piano counterpoint is gradualIy shoved in beneath the drawn-out saxophone solo - It cites the chord blocks, which the orchestra then takes up. Reiterating and dovetailing, they are now expanded upon. Shrieking, gasping, shrill conclusion of the saxophone solo; rolling drum emerges.

EXECUTION:

6'40" (Bell chimes) Chromatic scales, gliding up and down, organized according to instrumental groups: saxophone group; group of brass-winds; group of woodwinds; trumpet group. The groups blend. Alternation during ensemble. Soloist lines of the saxophone also become audible.

10'00'' Cornett-solo: Thirds (Introduction), then lines of great suppleness - rapidly gliding, racing up and down, hovering peculiarly. Orchestra structures mount in the background. They sound metallic. The orchestra as a large drum, perforated by tone-repetitions like morse-code and ticking motifs. The structures call to mind pieces by Edgar Varese: "Arcana", "lonisation". Signals, again and again, riff-like insertions.

13'00'' "Chaos"-structure. Only perceptibly statistical points in tonal space; counter pointed by the underlying twelve-tone row, which can be heard from the tuba in the deep register.

15'00'' A hollow rolling on the drum.

15'30" Piano-solo - Schlippenbach uses clusters of varying bandwidth, that are articulated as rapidly as possible and race through the registers. But he also sets Beat-accents and Cluster-blocks in time with precision. Developments become audible which remind me of Cecil Taylor: whirring and flapping bands of sound.

This part of the improvisational process gradually becomes more rampant, dissolves more and more into individual actions of the groups and single instruments: interjections by the double-bass, single notes blared out, finally flowing into several rhythmic pulsations of the entire orchestra.

20'12" Conclusion

At that time, 1966, "Globe Unity's" astonishing balance between composition and improvisation was emphasized. But in fact this piece contained in condensed form the entire repertoire of the new jazz gesture and forms of expression, which would be developed and exploited by the European Free-Jazz scene in the course of the next years.

For quite a while after "Globe Unity", twenty, thirty and even forty-minute improvisation sessions became a matter of course. Jazz themes receded more and more into the background; the sessions became even freer, even less organized and attained, for example in Brötzmann's "Machine Gun" (FMP 0090), explosive degrees of intensity; they were comparable to outbursts of elemental power. What had once been elaborated somewhat fastidiously in avant garde music as pointed or stastical structure was now restored to its original significance by the jazz musicians: powerful thumping, scarcely comprehensible "chaos", remote fringe-realms in which savagery and magic reigned. A delight in outpourings of sound became audible, in dynamic dissipation as well, which denounced the contemporary efforts of Rock as dwarfish.

European Free Jazz:

At that time, during this initial upheaval (1966-1970), Free Jazz was comparable neither to American Free Jazz since the former was already too emancipated from all American models and not "intellectual" enough to be akin to the Chicago School (Braxton), for instance - nor was it comparable to the sound-colour compositions of Penderecki. And yet it could hardly be denied that Schlippenbach and Brötzmann are inconceivable without the experience of Penderecki's "Anaklasis" or "Hiroshima", or without knowledge of Ligeti's timbre-compositions- for example, "Apparitions" or "Atmospheres".

Emancipation of Dynamics:

It was not only their emancipation from jazz patterns and swinging geniality of Go-Go that was conspicuous in "Globe Unity" and "Machine Gun", but also an entirely different relationship to dynamics. As in the contemporary Rock-music, the dynamic range expanded to an extent that had scarcely ever been considered possible. And it turned out that dynamics in these improvisation sessions no longer functioned accessorily, by underscoring or clarifying. The new forms, the new contents of European jazz were not at all educible without that rampant dynamic range. The latter was essential to them. After the emancipation and expansion of duration - a new feeling for time also belonged to Free Jazz - one could speak meaningfully of an emancipation of dynamics. The already complete emancipation of timbre as a medium of expression in jazz marked the revision of its third important compositional dimension.

Avant-garde and Jazz Congenially Related:

And if one delves into the compositional dimensions and considers not only the still divergent stylistic foreground, the affinity between Avant-garde and jazz becomes doubtless apparent.

Schlippenbach and the years thereafter:

In 1969 Schlippenbach took up a series of his own works and some of Brötzmann's and Schoof's, which were all published as "The Living Music" (FMP 0100). If one listens to "Tower" for a while, one is at first surprised at the unusually elegant piano-entree with which Schlippenbach commences. Equally surprising is a thematic formation, consisting of short phrases pieced together, with which the improvisation session is later concluded. In the meantime, however, between entree and conclusion, music is audible, whose pulsing, driving gesture cannot be ignored. Apart from Schlippenbach's astonishingly relaxed rhapsodic piano-excursions, this music has nothing elastic about it, nor anything tending toward a restructuring or change of expression. It insists on emphasis, on the cry it literally wants to crash through, tear open horizons.

Differentiation of Jazz Idioms:

It was not much later in the mid-seventies, that "Globe Unity", i.e. Schlippenbach along with other European musicians, transformed the European jazz scene in an astonishing way. One need just think of "Evidence" (FMP 0220), of "Into The Valley." (FMP 0270), or of "Pearls" (FMP 0380), recordings of 1975, and, of course, Schlippenbach's solo album (FMP 0430) of 1977. Before that a recording had come out, extraordinary in its stylistic attitude, "Bavarian Calypso" (Schlippenbach) and "Good Bye" (Gordon Jenkins). Both pieces (FMP S 6) gleaned unabashedly from various traditions- Bavarian-South American and new New Orleans.

What had happened and what distinguishes these works? If one listens to "Alexander's Marschbefehl" (Mengelberg) and "Evidence" (Monk arrangement by Schlippenbach), one notices from the very first the virtuoso control evinced by the musicians over the basic themes and theme complexes. "Alexander's Marschbefehl", for instance, begins with a kind of quick-step, and, as in a Ragtime potpourri, a melody soon strikes up which bears a certain similarity to shawm music. The march is taken up again, and the musicians begin to work now with the central 5/16 motif, a stiltedly recurring one-tone figure. A precision work on the level of chamber-music results from this coordinated effort of the orchestra musicians. The thematic aspect is as humouristically as it is fantastically interpreted. Everything ceases abruptly, uncannily. Typical of this style, then, is the technique of cutting derived from film. The piano commences its prelude as if a Haydn sonata were beginning, intonates a waltz, and the tuba amuses with a hobbling solo. The saxophone spins delicate threads, music so beautiful - as if Brecht's robber Macheath were saying to Polly, 'I love you'. Then quavering, tender music from the piano. But that is not Cecil Taylor who figured here, but much rather Debussy or Ravel. Then out, march excerpt and conclusion.

"Evidence" was performed with similar skill. One hears practically barren, but gently extended lines by Steve Lacy and very precise, independent drum lines by Paul Lovens. The other soloists, however, produce pointed counter-currents, which are gradually enlivened by grotesque distortions of sound.

Ten years after "Globe Unity", B. A. Zimmermann's former student of composition (Zimmermann is one of the most convincing representatives of the advanced collage technique) and the musicians around Schlippenbach not only made jazz more communicative and supple by enriching it with traditional forms; the musicians, the instrumentalists themselves are also on an astonishingly high technical level now, which is equal to all the demands of modern jazz improvisation. The freedom that the jazz musicians seized in the sixties in order to be able to bellow out the subcutaneous, the subliminal in emancipative thrusts- these strivings for freedom and conquest rendered the musical material more exact and accessible. The result is a new flexibility of the jazz idiom in the seventies.

"Pearls", "Globe Unity's" last record to date, made in Baden-Baden on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, presents the orchestra in its greatest possible stylistic breadth. And to this realm of expression belongs the Bebop pianist Thelonious Monk, just as much as the free-roaming adventures of apparent unattachedness. But Alexander von Schlippenbach, the pianist, delights in Anton von Webern's spidery piano gesture as well as in Debussy's drapes of sound or in the exuberant swinging surge of Cecil Taylor's piano style; in Strawinsky's drily pointed waltz gestures; in popular marches or classical excerpts.

Digression about Tradition:

Even this fleeting glance at the accomplishments of the "Globe Unity" Orchestra in the last ten years makes clear what tradition the European jazz musicians are beholden to: those of classical and modern music, European and American popular music, folk-music, and, of course, the styles of jazz as they evolved historically. For the European musician there is not merely one indigenous style, be it Blues, Ragtime or New Orleans. He is not bound up in one tradition, because in Europe there is in fact none. We have no big names from whom we could learn directly, every single evening in the dance hall just around the corner. And this lack of tradition, on the other hand, affords European jazz the very chance - which it has now taken advantage of for the first time in its history - to gain its independence.

Indubitably is American Jazz, American jazz history an immeasurably rich, barely fathomable possession. American Jazz, however, which did rend the bonds of tradition with the same decisiveness as the European, thereby becoming modern, is now endangered and lacking in tradition quite the same way the Free Jazz of Europe is. Everything depends now upon the musicians themselves, upon their feeling, their adaptability, and not least of all upon the receptivity of the public that is to accept them. For indeed, even during its incipient period, jazz relied directly upon being heard, loved and lived. Therein lies the essential difference between jazz and advanced composed music. Free Jazz of the seventies contains two streams - an American one and a European one. Both are in constant competition with each other, both have to realize their creative possibilities openly. To speak of dominance or even, as is so often the case, of the superiority of American Jazz is unfounded. But one could certainly find enough examples of arrogance and prejudice among jazz musicians.

Rumours about a Teuton: P. B.

Joachim E. Berendt, for instance, writes the following about Peter Brötzmann in his most recent jazz book:

"Foreign observers have occasionally characterized certain 'berserk' traits of German Jazz as typically 'teutonic': the authoritative English music periodical 'Melody Maker', for example, in referring to the improvisations of the German saxophonist, Peter Brötzmann, whose devastating power had appalled many listeners. 'It is music which literally charges you with hate', the guitarist Attila Zoller once said about Brötzmann, 'I can't listen to it. I want to set everything ablaze or hack it all to pieces after l've listened to Brötzmann for a while.' Significant in this context is that Brötzmann, though highly thought of in our country, has found comparatively little acclaim abroad despite various festival and concert appearances.''

Peter Brötzmann:

Orgiastic dissipation to the point of physical exhaustion, the radical transformation of typical 'dirty playing' into a continuous stream of noise; the perfect countertype of the cultivated belcanto saxophone style a la Paul Desmond was suddenly there, a man from Wuppertal, who played in trio or octet. The first demonstrations of this extraordinary Saxophone-Bruitist are fortunately extant: "The Peter Brötzmann Trio" (FMP 0080) and "Machine Gun" (FMP 0090) - music which had to perturb every jazz guitarist, even the less sensitive ones; indeed this was the express intention. Around that time - Lila Eule, Bremen 1968 - Brötzmann was already working together with Han Bennink, the drummer, and Fred Van Hove, who played the piano for many years in the trio. And if attempts to grasp the distinctive quality of these musicians, one invariably encounters two essential constants: first, an explosive power of formulation, marked by an astounding impact, and secondly, a quite unusual adaptability in ensemble. In other words, here are three musicians who have an extraordinary musical and emotional potential at their disposal. Moreover, they are intelligent and versatile enough to avail themselves of it. What was at that time conceivable was then actually fulfilled. These three men - especially Brötzmann and Bennink - made jazz history. Without these creative and ever regenerative musicians, European Free Jazz would certainly not be on the level it is today.

In August 1970, the trio recorded "Balls" (FMP 0020), a record which already contains remarkably many chamber music passages.

"Filet Americain":

Especially noticeable in "Filet Americain", a jazz piece lasting eight minutes and twenty seconds. If one listens closely to the music, four structures emerge clearly. The piece begins with a group of rapid figurations by saxophone and piano, with the persistent pounding of the drum - starts right in, then, strained to the utmost dynamically, and Brötzmann heightens the tension with those saxophone threads which he gradually draws tighter and tighter, until, being played extremely 'dirtily', they are audible still only as a high-pitched sound. Finally torn asunder in the high register, they simply cease abruptly.

1'40" A second part begins, a piano and drum duet. Spatially far-reaching, 'flapping' piano passages in ascending and descending motion are particularly emphasized by Bennink: metallic" beating accents alternating with drum-rolling. Finally it becomes a kind of cadence, vibrating on one note, and the saxophone strikes up fortissimo, leading into the third part.

3'25" A new musical sphere is opened up: blaring saxophone tones repeated in mezzoforte. The intensity subsides; Hove produces a chirping sound from within the piano. It ebbs. Then flourishing, echoing saxophone tones. A grumbling voice becomes audible. Renewed surging of dynamics based on repetitions. Screams, then a trickling away of the excitement. Grumbling. Soft, tender, uncommonly sonorous piano-insertions.

6'30" What now follows would seem to be a reprise of the beginning. The flourishing gesture is taken up, and the musicians work their way up to that orgiastic level of expression which has become the hallmark of the group. Participating are Bennink, with his entire arsenal of beating, rolling, screeching gestures, Brötzmann, who is preparing one of his great outbursts, and van Hove slamming steely accents on the piano.

8'20" Abrupt cessation of Fortissimo process.

Dissociation of the Jazz Process:

The jazz of the seventies cannot merely be subsumed under the rubric "back to." To be sure, Peter Brötzmann also plays pretentious jazz ballads; his lines are not only played in extreme registers, his sound is not merely clamorous, but in fact contain melodious and tender nuances. And Bennink surrounds himself in the course of the seventies with an increasingly sophisticated, occasionally overwhelming variety of instruments, which cannot be described merely as percussion instruments. For a small short-wave radio, a metronome, a garden hose, clarinet, as well as an Alpine Horn or conch are natural additions, just as much a matter of course as large and small drums, cymbals, and hi-hat. Of course, one can occasionally detect stylistic acquisitions. Much sounds like Bop or Cool Jazz. Formal patterns taken from the Blues, as well as marches and waltzes have served as models. Decisive, however, are not really such stylistic adaptations, but rather the basic readiness to interrupt the established musical context and through dissociation render time adjustable (as it were). Thus the jazz process resembles an art of particles, a succession of adhesive images, "paving" the time-span. One could speak of collage, of the mounting of certain strange elements onto idiomatic musical material, excerpts from jazz tradition, for example. But this is seldom the case. Jazz procedures distinguish themselves mostly by persistent, delightful and often extremely subtle and witty restructuring. Time is dissociated. The coherence of consciousness and the associative function burst suddenly.

Chamber-music:

Thus jazz chamber-music comes into being surreptitiously. There is an indication of this that is more or less common to all the recordings of the seventies. The pieces become shorter, many even extremely short. They shrink into miniatures. ln 1973 the trio recording (FMP 0130) is made, and the longest piece lasts 5'56". But no. 9 is 1'35" in length. And the forms?

"For Donaueschingen ever", 3'40", races like a music-box out of control. "Tschüs" (FMP 0230) is recorded in 1975 and manifests a similar tendency. Traditional characteristics - Petit blues fourré, Van Hove - and chambermusic - 2 B clarinets, Brötzmann-predominate in the repertoire, and Brötzmann even sings a real show-stopper by Walter Kubiczek: Tschüs. Finally, to cite still another example from recent times, from 1977, "Schwarzwaldfahrt" (FMP 0440), an open-air festival given by Brötzmann and Bennink in close co-operation with such fascinating and gifted musicians as streams, lakes and birds of every conceivable kind. When l look through my "Window of Jazz", l see chamber art flourishing, friendly jazz countenances - neither hate-filled, nor in conniptions of rage. Did 'Bird' ever play music with birds?

Colleagues, the Scene:

That this tendency of the Brötzmann trio or duo is by no means isolated, but rather predominant in European Free Jazz, is borne out by enough examples if one takes a look at their colleagues. Albert Mangelsdorff, this great musician and soloist, has indeed spent his entire life playing chamber-music. But also his younger colleagues, for instance the Duo Christmann-Schönenberg, as "Remarks" (FMP 0260) proves, cultivate a chamber-music, which - besides its eccentric humour - also reveals a true stylistic mobility and musical solidity. And whoever has had the good fortune to experience them live will not least of all have been astounded at how sparingly, with what economy of means and gestures they perform their art, which would tend toward miniature theatre or pantomime. Chamber-music is also Hans Reichel's art. Whether in "Gier", "Lurch" or "Maria Hilf" - see "Bonobo" (FMP 0280) - Reichel's double-necked guitar always produces an accurate, almost baroque music, toccatas, preludes, or timbres of fascinating hue. That might well be music which takes off on literary association or comic-strip visions. But the days of Reichel's eruptive guitar shrieks are long gone. Musicians like Kowald or Schoof, Irène Schweizer, the English group "Iskra 1903", the jazz-cellist Tristan Honsinger have all helped develop the language of Free Jazz during the seventies into a distinct and diverse medium of expression. Nobody will venture to prognosticate about the coming tendencies and trends for the end of the decade or even for the eighties. If one regards jazz as a crucible especially attuned to time- one which reacts to the present with a true directness-then such prognostications become even vaguer than those for serious music. This essay, "A Discussion of European Free Jazz", dealt with a form of music which has involved and fascinated us for over a decade already. It is also meant as an expression of gratitude to the musicians who have made the last ten years so enthralling. And perhaps it will serve as a useful reference for the "profane": really, it exists, European Free Jazz.

Translator: unknown

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