Jazz it up: Classical and Jazz crossovers

Editor’s note: Classical music of any kind often feels boring and inaccessible—but not with Narendra Kusnur. He offers an accessible and fun guide to Western classical music—which has shaped movie soundtracks and top 40 hits alike. 

In this month’s guide, Kusnur looks at the encounter between jazz and Western Classical music—which did not occur until the 1920s. But it eventually resulted in beautiful music, named Third Stream—where jazz soloists met symphony orchestras and classical tunes found improvisation.  

Written by: Narendra Kusnur has been a music journalist for over 40 years—including a decade-long stint covering the beat at the Mid-Day newspaper. He currently writes for The Hindu, Free Press Journal, Hindustan Times, and Rolling Stone India—besides the in-house magazines of prestigious institutions—such as NCPA and Shanmukhananda Hall.

If Rudyard Kipling had written a poem on musical genres, he'd probably use the line, ‘Oh. classical is classical, and jazz is jazz, and never the twain shall meet.’ Kipling passed away in 1936, and though jazz fever had stormed the US by then, it was considered totally different from European Classical music. As an article in Serenade magazine put it, “While Western Classical music emphasises structure, written scores and faithful interpretation, jazz thrives on improvisation, spontaneity and individual expression.”

In the 1920s, there were a few attempts by classical composers to include jazz elements. French composer Maurice Ravel, otherwise known for the piece ‘Bolero’, also used jazz elements in some of his concertos. American composer Aaron Copland had a segment ‘Jazzy’ in his composition ‘Three Moods For Piano’. A pioneer in blending the two genres was American genius George Gershwin, whose ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ (1924) and ‘An American In Paris’ (1928) were benchmarks in this style. 

Here's a rendition of Copland's ‘Jazzy’:

Below is Gershwin's ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by and featuring Leonard Bernstein.

Classical pieces were sometimes adapted by jazz musicians. In 1934, Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote his famous ‘Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini’. Though it is essentially a classical piece, its 18th Variation has had many jazz interpretations. Here's a rendition by the Jun Means Excellence music troupe:

The attempts were given light twists too. In 1939, Welsh composer and musical satirist Jack Templeton chose unusual names for his creations. The pieces ‘Bach Goes To Town’ and ‘Mozart Matriculates’ were recorded by American jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, whereas ‘Mendelssohn Mows Them Down’ became a favourite of many jazz pianists. These pieces used the broader style of the classical composers but had a swing flavour predominant in jazz those days. 

Let's check a piano rendition of ‘Bach Goes To Town’, played by Britain's Paul Barton.

This is ‘Mozart Matriculates’, featuring Goodman.

Naming the genre: All about the Third Stream

Efforts at blending the two genres have, however, been relatively few. Someone had to come up with a name for this odd concoction. So let's welcome American composer Gunther Schuller, who at a lecture in 1957 gave it the name Third Stream. Imagine it took three decades for someone to think of a name like that.

According to Schuller, Third Stream could refer to a group of jazz musicians or a jazz soloist playing with a symphony orchestra. However, unlike classical music, this form would involve improvisation. He tried to explain his theory with a few compositions. Let's check ‘Suspensions’ from his Symphony For Brass & Percussion, a recording which included jazz greats Miles Davis on trumpet and Charles Mingus on bass.

Schuller's thoughts were met with criticism by both camps, whose members thought their favourite style was being diluted. His observation was that the form was used by some leading composers like Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Leonard Bernstein from the US, and the Russian masters Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich. Nobody used the name Third Stream to describe their music. Here is Ellington's jazz take on Tchaikovsky's ‘Nutcracker Suite’, which was earlier mentioned in the column on ballets. 

This is followed by Stravinsky's ‘Ebony Concerto’, a jazz-flavoured piece specially written for clarinetist Woody Herman and his band.

Interestingly, Miles Davis's albums ‘Miles Ahead’ (1957) and ‘Sketches Of Spain’ (1960) were described as Third Stream. Of course, one section of listeners insisted Davis had nothing to do with classical. Another felt Davis should have focused more on the classical aspect instead of adding any jazz. While those arguments still occur, let's listen to the track ‘Miles Ahead’, played by Davis at the 1991 Montreux Jazz Festival with an orchestra conducted by Quincy Jones.

If some 20th-century classical composers have used jazz elements, there are also instances when jazz musicians have played classical pieces written by legendary composers. For instance, American jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has played Austrian composer Joseph Haydn's Trumpet Concerto. Here we see him play the first movement with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Raymond Leppard.

Another example is pianist Keith Jarrett, who has recorded many compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach. Finally, pianist Chick Corea has played the music of Bach. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Frederic Chopin on stage, besides composing his own Piano Concerto No 1 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In this video, we see him begin with Mozart's 'Piano Sonata In F' and move on to Gershwin's 'The Man I Love'.

From these videos, it might appear that fusing jazz and classical was a common practice. But in reality, it was not. Because of the contrasting approaches—classical being rigid and jazz being improvisational—many musicians have not been comfortable about crossing the river. For many who did attempt this crossover, it was just an experiment or a phase. And whenever they did, it may have been something like what Bernstein jokingly told Ellington: “You wrote symphonic jazz and I wrote jazz symphonies.” On a serious note, Kipling's imaginary quote may well be justified.

As always, we have created a handy playlist of all the tracks on splainer’s YouTube channel. It's a fair representation of efforts to blend classical and jazz, despite their vast differences.

PS: If you need a list of all the amazing music shared by Naren:

• ‘Jazzy’ by Aaron Copland
• ‘Rhapsody In Blue’ by George Gershwin feat. Leonard Bernstein 
• ‘Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini’ by Sergei Rachmaninoff
• ‘Bach Goes To Town’ by Jack Templeton feat. Paul Barton 
• ‘Mozart Matriculates’ by Jack Templeton feat. Benny Goodman  
• ‘Suspensions’ by Gunther Schuller  
• ‘Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite’ by Duke Ellington with Billy Strayhorn 
• ‘Ebony Concerto’ by Igor Stravinsky feat. Woody Herman 
• ‘Miles Ahead’ by Miles Davis 
• ‘Haydn's Trumpet Concerto’ by Wynton Marsalis 
• ‘Bach's French Suite No 3’ by Keith Jarrett
• ‘Mozart's Piano Sonata In F’ and ‘Gershwin's The Man I Love’ by Chick Corea