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Warne Marsh on Schoenberg


sgcim

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From Peter Ind's book "Jazz Visions': 

"In a lecture to the Norwegian State Academy which prided itself on its modernity, Marsh gained the enmity of many in the audience when a student asked his opinion of Arnold Schoenberg. After a motionless interval of ten seconds, he said, “Schoen-berg was probably the worst crock of them all, because he was the rst composer that managed to write music to death.” 

MLA (Modern Language Assoc.)
Ind, Peter. Jazz Visions : Lennie Tristano and His Legacy. Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2005.

APA (American Psychological Assoc.)
Ind, P. (2005). Jazz Visions : Lennie Tristano and His Legacy. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd.

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I´m not familiar enough with the Music of Arnold Schonberg. I think it´s abstract western music. On the other Hand if I would have asked Warne Marsh a Question About some fellow musicians, I´d ask him About Lennie Tristano, About Bird Maybe or others of his Generation, Maybe even what he thinks About Ornette Coleman or Miles´ stuff after 1970 and so on, but it wouldn´t come to my mind to ask him About Arnord Schonberg...…., but Maybe it was a School of classical Music where they asked it.

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1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

Without, or even with, further explanation on his part, Warne's words about Schoenberg are pretty much meaningless. 

Well, I think it tells us something about Marsh -- his predilections and preferences -- but nothing about Schoenberg. 

In that sense, it's not "meaningless." No?

 

Edited by HutchFan
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I was thinking about it as a meaningful or meaningless remark about Schoenberg. About Warne himself, it would depend on how much Schoenberg he knew. The flippancy of the remark suggests that Warne didn't know much about S's music.. In any case, without further explanation, it amounts to nada in either direction I would think.

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Lots of people were in LA when Schoenberg was.

"..[H[e was the rst composer that managed to write music to death,” again, strikes me as flippant and not a sign of much familiarity with the music on Warne's part. Also, even if familiar with it and not liking it, that's not the same as saying S "was the rst composer that managed to write music to death." The latter -- not a novel notion BTW and probably a received one -- almost certainly refers to the supposedly complex to the point of incomprehensibility nature of S's music -- factors that supposedly would be inclined to alienate many listeners and thus lead to its death. Funny in that many listeners found Warne's music to be, in its own way, highly complex to the point where it bordered on the incomprehensible and thus dismissible. In this -- IMO, and I'm sure in yours too -- those listeners were mistaken. Warne on S was too, or so I think.

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6 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Lots of people were in LA when Schoenberg was.

Wasn't it Schoenberg (or maybe Stravinsky - who also lived in or near LA around the same time, iirc), who semi-seriously thought he could write some movie soundtrack music, but had intended (or maybe actually fully wrote) some incidental music for a film, never having seen one frame of the movie in question -- ?

Is that ringing any bells for anyone else?  Not that he (whichever one of them it was) thought they were going to be the next Korngold.  But that they quite seriously more than half intended to write a score for 'a film' without ever really writing it to go along with said film, in any traditional sense of how movies have nearly always been scored.

I know I read/heard that somewhere -- and not just online -- but like way back in college, in my 300-level "20th Century Classical Music" class (which I took twice, actually, just for the fun of it -- under two different instructors, 3 years apart -- I audited it the second time).  Hell, if I'd stuck around that college town long enough to see a 3rd professor come along to that tiny little Music Department (in the liberal arts college I went to), I sure might have audited it again several years later.  God knows fully half the syllabus and required listening would have been different with each new prof.

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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From an Alex Ross New Yorker column:
 

'In 1933, Schoenberg arrived in America.... He Americanized himself with surprising alacrity, going so far as to listen to football games on the radio and to adopt the expression "Take it easy." In his new home, Los Angeles, he befriended Charlie Chaplin, played tennis with George Gershwin, became the celebrity's celebrity. In 1938, he was invited to present an Oscar for best music (the winner was the Deanna Durbin movie "100 Men and a Girl"), and although he fell ill just before the ceremony, he took pride in the fact that his short speech in praise of film music was read aloud. He entertained the idea of writing for Hollywood himself, and once met with Irving Thalberg at M-G-M. Thalberg had heard "Verklärte Nacht" and had complimented Schoenberg on his lovely music. "I don't write lovely music," Schoenberg snapped. Thalberg asked him to write a score for a film adaptation of  [Pearl Buck's] "The Good Earth".... Schoenberg agreed, on the condition that he receive fifty thousand dollars and control of every aspect of the production, including the pitch levels of the actors' voices. The negotiations faltered.'

Then there's this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Suite

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If that lecture of Warne''s came late enough in his lilife, and if biography are to believed, it was at a time when he had freed himself up about expressing things bluntly. He finally let go of his Lennie-ism, and apparently not always mildy. So, this sort of a summarial dismissal seems in line with that bluntness.

I really find it hard to believe that a musicIan of Warne''s time and inclinations did not have a basic familiarity with Schoenberg, some basic exposure . Maybe he didn't, but how would that have happened?

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I can't prove a negative, but I've learned not to be surprised by almost any jazz musician's lack of familiarity with almost anything outside of his relationship to his instrument and similiar matters. The opposite too, of course, in some cases, but the former often enough. Speaking of Tristano-ites in that regard, Sal Mosca, some years after IIRC Oscar Pettiford's death, had no idea that he had passed and said he was looking forward to playing with him. Nor did Henry Grimes, many years down the road from the event, know that Albert Ayler was no longer among the living.

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I was playing a gig in Philadelphia in the early 1990s, a concert, with Jimmy Knepper, and my bass player didn't like a chord I'd written, thought the melodic line did not fit the harmony. We began having a friendly enough but slightly tense conversation about it. Jimmy leaned in, tongue-in-cheek, and said "what would Schoenberg say?" I look at him and said, 'the hell with Loren, this is MY piece." Jimmy laughed for about 10 minutes,

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

What do Sale Mosca and Henry Grimes have to do with Warne hearing Schoenberg?

Geez, I've baffled JSngry, Mr. Cryptic himself.
Mosca and Grimes had to do with what I said earlier in that post -- "I've learned not to be surprised by almost any jazz musician's lack of familiarity with almost anything outside of his relationship to his instrument and similiar matters [as in Warne's possible lack of familiarity with Schoenberg's music, despite his IMO flippant putdown of it --  to me the flippancy suggesting lack of familiarity]. That BTW was my response to your "I really find it hard to believe that a musicIan of Warne''s time and inclinations did not have a basic familiarity with Schoenberg, some basic exposure. Maybe he didn't, but how would that have happened?" That is, if it didn't happen, what I said was my guess as to how it didn't happen.   And I offered two examples, one of them right from Warne's world (Sal Mosca), of the sort of self-aborption/isolation that might have been involved. But, again, I can't prove a negative.  Let's ask K.C. Marsh.

OTOH, I love Warne's music and Schoenberg's music too. If Warne really thought that Schoenberg "managed to write music to death," that doesn't change my mind about either of them.

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Henry Grimes went off some kind of deep end, and Sal Mosca essentially drank the Kool Aid from birth. 

Now, what kind of "familiarity" are we talking about hete? If you mean a deep engagement, then, no probably not. But if the guy checked it out enough to be put off by it, then what are we expecting here, an objective scholarly evaluation, with anything less being fakistic bullshit?

I take his statement at face value, and am happy to note it with a big yawn, like Bird wanted to study with Varese and everybody dug Stravinky, and yes, but so fucking what? Neil Hefti still wrote Batman, Sal Mosca put himself into some  weird isozone, Schoenberg did nothing like that,  Warne was still genius, and really, what was Bird going to do with Varese, and/or vice-versa.

At the end of the day, opinions don't matter,  results do.

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Well, you know, Schoenberg ruined the OP''s life, so there's always gonna be shit like that here for as long as there's electricity and a crushed...whatever it was that got crushed, still not sure what that was, another big yawn, from Yous Truly, Mr. Cryptic, Finder Ol Lost Loves and Other Random Animals.

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4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I can't prove a negative, but I've learned not to be surprised by almost any jazz musician's lack of familiarity with almost anything outside of his relationship to his instrument and similar matters. The opposite too, of course, in some cases, but the former often enough.

For some reason reading this specifically reminded me that it was a 4-5 nights a week gigging jazz musician (10-15 years my senior) back in Kansas City circa 1995 who, when I mentioned that I was increasingly trying to get into more complicated and modern string quartets, told me to listen to the late Beethoven quartets (but especially the Große Fuge) -- and also Alban Berg's Lyric Suite.  I will never forget his exact words (and the look in his eye) as he told me "that Grosse Fuge, and Alban Berg... will. FUCK. YOU. UP!"

No specific point, other than to relate a story and cool memory.

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Well, you know, Schoenberg ruined the OP''s life, so there's always gonna be shit like that here for as long as there's electricity and a crushed...whatever it was that got crushed, still not sure what that was, another big yawn, from Yous Truly, Mr. Cryptic, Finder Ol Lost Loves and Other Random Animals.

According to Peter Ind, the author of the book, and an intimate of Warne's, Warne was a man of few words, and when he calls AS "the worst crock of them all", you can best believe it is no 'yawn'.

AS didn't 'ruin my life'; the 'fad' in the Universities with his Twelve Tone Method of Composition in the 70s  convinced me that I didn't want to spend my time there writing a type of music that didn't speak to me in a special way. I call it a fad, because the very composition teacher that insisted that his students must write Twelve Tone music, today is writing an extremely tonal, triadic New Age type of music that is the exact opposite of Schoenberg's music.

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