Music notation and its development since jazz

Music

The Evolution Musical Notation -- Classical vs. Jazz Styles

Musical notation is one way that musical compositions can be passed from one generation of performers to the next generation of performers. Without any written musical notation at all, music would have to be learned by ear. This would mean that it would be impossible for someone from a different tradition or historical time to learn a musical composition, without hearing the song from someone to whom the music had 'passed down to,' through teaching. Musical notation makes musical training both more diverse as well as more practical.

Classical musical notation developed as written, precise and formalized style of notation. The composer gives instructions to the performers as to how the piece should sound and unfold. In contrast, the less precise and more skeletal framework of jazz notation reflects this musical tradition's improvisational style and origins. Rather than give directions to the musicians in a strict and formalized fashion, jazz notation acknowledges the fact that during a performance, the musicians may communicate with one another in a way that requires certain spontaneous derivations from the musical score to make the music come 'alive.' Derivations from the musical line are allowed, so long as the performers remain connected and still render the music as a coherent whole. Jazz musicians may know where they begin and end, but the journey to that end is often an open question.

Strictly adhered to, classical musical notation has certain obvious advantages. It enables the players to have a very directed plan of musical attack, which theoretically enables the musicians to always play according to the same melody and in the same harmony with greater ease than improvisation. Under the direction of a conductor, classical musicians are further directed how to render the various softness or loudness of the composition -- unity and smoothness is facilitated through this method. The usefulness of this unity of purpose was understood relatively quickly in the development of music. Although jazz notation's more improvisational style might seem to be closer to the 'natural' way that music is learned and played, musical notation has existed since ancient times. Today, standard notation includes a staff with notes, as well as information about pitch, rhythm, and other crucial aspects to render a performance with as much exactitude to the composer's original vision as possible. ("Musical notation," Wikipedia, 2006)

Jazz originated as a popular music form, a derivation of 'the blues,' and even farther back to the spontaneous "call and response" of the slave songs and their use of "improvisation as an essential part of the creative process; extensive use of slurs, moans, cries, and bends in both the vocal and instrumental performance." (Marsalis, 2001) Jazz was passed along, like music's oldest forms, in an aural tradition, as musicians learned by ear from other musicians, and developed their own jazz style. Gradually, however, there became a need to transcribe at least some of the jazz rhythms and notes down, but in a way that was still keeping with the music's origins and spirit. This was achieved through the use of fake books. Fake books utilized standard notation such as the treble and base clefs but contain key signatures only on the beginning stave, and the melodic line had letter notation for chord names and chord symbols written above the line. But new harmonies, variations in pitch, alternate instrumentation, and fluxuations in rhytmn were allowed. ("Musical notation," Wikipedia, 2006)

Fake books are now popular other forms of contemporary music and are available in many musical stores. Fake books with jazz notation might look as if they are intended for amateurs. However, although beginners may use the simplified notation to practice music, the fake book's original intention was to provide a stepping-stone for a musician or an ensemble to create their own, unique rendering of the music. Thus jazz notation reflects the stress in this musical tradition upon the musician or the band's individual style. The musician, rather than the composer is the star, when using jazz notation. Rather than attempt to slavishly recreate a performance from the past, which is impossible, as every audience, every musical context changes from night to night, jazz notation empowers the musician to create a living and vibrant performance on the stage, with his or her fellow musicians. ("Fake Books," Wikipedia, 2006)

Fake books and jazz notation originated with illegal transcriptions of overheard music, although most fake books today copyrighted with the permission of the artist. The original fake book transcribers were not trained musicians, however, merely persons who had overheard or played a particular song they liked and wished to improvise from the tune's base. The books began with music 'of the people' and were designed for musicians who were not often formally trained themselves, perhaps could not even read music very well, but knew enough to use the notes and skeletal information to create music in the context of a performance. Unlike a large orchestra, the musicians knew one another well, and could communicate with one another musically during a performance, unlike musicians across a large concert hall.

The imprecise nature of 'faking' might seem to outrage musical purists. But it is worth remembering that the supposedly precise, classical notations of music heard in concert halls today are not replicas of what persons long ago heard, when they listened to the original musical performances of Mozart or Beethoven. Instruments were constructed differently, of different materials and sometimes are almost unrecognizable to the forms that would have been familiar to the original composers -- compare the 17th century harpsichord with that of a modern piano. Orchestras are vastly larger than they were during the classical composer's lives, and even the acoustics of concert halls are structured differently.