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I heard a performance of Rochberg's "Blues from Carnival Music Suite" recently at the USASU Bosendorfer Competition. I had never heard it before, and liked it and thought the pianist played it the best of the pieces he played (he played it in the semi's and made it into the finals).

Another listener thought it wasn't 'blues-y' enough. I thought it was very well played as a blues-inspired piece, but that it was clearly not, and not meant to be, a 'blues number' if that makes sense?

Which got me to thinking...I would assume that there are different expectations for the performance of a 'blues-inspired' 'classical' piece, especially one played in a non-blues competition, than there would be for a straight 'blues' performance.

Just as Copeland's Hoe-Down is clearly not meant to be performed the way an Appalachian fiddler would play Bonaparte's Retreat. I have symphonic recordings of the Copeland and also historic recordings of Bonaparte's Retreat played by a 'real, old-time' Appalachian fiddler. Same basic tune, very different music. And I like them both _very_ much.

I don't know if I've described the difference very well, I was just wondering what others with more experience (which is most of you) thought about the topic?

Gershwin's 2nd Prelude is kinda bluesy.

Off the top of my head, Copland wrote 4 piano blues, and Barber wrote a blues-inspired piece for the Excursions set.

What about the performance of the piece? Would you have different expectations for sound and style of playing, of, for instance, a blues pianist playing in a blues club, than for a pianist playing in (for wont of a better word) 'blues inspired classical piece' in a non-blues competition?

An audience member thought the pianist didn't play the Rochberg piece 'like a real blues pianist'...my take on it was that it was a blues inspired piece rather than a 'real blues' piece.

I dunno, is one expected to put on some shades, pull out a harmonica and curse women as well?

Isn't there in blues - as there is in jazz - a certain amount of improvisation? I don't know; I'm asking.

If that's the case, then anything that is played from a written score will only approximate blues because it will lack the improvisatory inspiration that makes blues what it is. If one is playing a classical blues-inspired composition, I think one is pretty well confined to the score, isn't one? How much liberty one has in interpreting such scores, I think might be open to debate.

The first such piece I remember ever hearing was a recording of the third movement, "Blues" from Morton Gould's Interplay (American Concertette) for Piano and Orchestra, composed in 1944. Note from the score : "The third movement is a "Blues" and is what the title implies - a very simple and, in spots, "dirty" type of slow, nostagic mood."

I guess the Gould is about as "authentic" blues as is the Barber movement from Excursions refered to above. Both are inspired by blues, but I wouldn't classify them as real blues, from what little I know of the genre.

Regards,

There is a Great Divide within American musical culture. I'm referring to the void between Classical music, and pretty much everything else, be it top forty, acid rock, hip hop, and yes, the blues.

When classical artists pick up on these other idioms and styles, their adherents are apt to resent it. Cross over singing--classically trained singers singing well known popular tunes in a semi-classical, semi-pop style--is just beginning to be accepted by those who love those tunes, and the traditional styles of performing them. Dawn Upshaw, a well know opera and art song artist, does a very nice job at cross over singing, but her performance of popular songs, although superbly done, at best, does not stir open resentment. And she only gets mild praise from the classical side of things. A half a century ago, Eileen Farrell, one of the finest dramatic sopranos of the 50s and 60s, nearly destroyed her career singing the same repertoire, and yet, her singing of that style was as fine as any. Helen Traubel, another dramatic soprano from even earlier, endured something similar. That space between classical, and anything popular, commercial, or ethnic, is a very dicy place to be.

I would be very surprised if the same thing wasn't true of the blues. Adherents of the blues feel it is theirs--they feel they own it, and they don't want to share. And they resent it when classically trained artists pick up on their idioms.

I understand how they feel, and so I don't really have much to say about this, other than to point it out.

Tomasino

Well, it's not really just American culture. There have been many non-American classical composers who were interested in jazz and blues, and appropriated at will. Ravel was one of the most famous, but there have been many many more.

Taking the Gershwin Prelude No. 2 as a case in point - I would argue that it is superior to the Blues as a form. Gershwin's bluesy prelude is so beautiful and colouristic. The basic chordal structure of Blues as played New Orleans circa 1900 when learned allows facile improvisation and leads to the spontaneous jazz. W. C. Handy was one of the earliest and very careful transcribers of authentic Blues songs. However, it seems that the Blues would never be played the same way twice. A lot of that free form improvisation unless it is played by masters such as Doctor John rapidly becomes hackneyed. And Doctor John is one of a kind being born into the New Orleans milieue and tutored by Professor Longhair and others.

Gershwin is a very seminal figure whose compositions are played every day in the free form by jazz quartets everywhere. They all to often tear apart the song with varying degrees of success using it as a prop to improvise on. Shostakovitch arranged Tea for Two and perhaps others which are very very beautiful classical pieces where every note counts yet swing so they mean a thing and cannot fail to delight.

The heritage of American music is not so pure and ghettoed that it cannot be played and studied as a classical form in the same way that Bach's gigues are themselves are a sophisticated form of country dances. No doubt people continued to dance gigues merrily in the town squares whilst Bach refined them to the highest art at his harpsichord.

Tomasino - don't forget Linda Rondstadt and Janice Joplin! But they didn't do their pop singing in a cross-over style, they were both just excellent at both genres.

Arabesque,

Somewhere in my reading of music history, I was led to believe that the dances of a suite were court dances rather than country dances. I may very well be wrong. Wikipedia just says dances. The Virginia Tech Online Music Dictionary suggests that the gavotte is a "pastoral" dance, and says that the "minuet was popular with the aristocracy." Can't find much more than that. Does anyone know for sure?

Tomasino