A Transformational Approach to Jazz Harmony
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A TRANSFORMATIONAL APPROACH TO JAZZ HARMONY Michael McClimon Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University January 2016 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee Julian Hook, Ph.D. Kyle Adams, Ph.D. Blair Johnston, Ph.D. Brent Wallarab, M.M. December 9, 2015 ii Copyright © 2016 Michael McClimon iii Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the help of many others, each of whom deserves my thanks here. Pride of place goes to my advisor, Jay Hook, whose feedback has been invaluable throughout the writing process, and whose writing stands as a model of clarity that I can only hope to emulate. Thanks are owed to the other members of my committee as well, who have each played important roles throughout my education at Indiana: Kyle Adams, Blair Johston, and Brent Wallarab. Thanks also to Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, who would have served on the committee were it not for the timing of the defense during her sabbatical. I would like to extend my appreciation to Frank Samarotto and Phil Ford, both of whom have deeply shaped the way I think about music, but have no official role in the dissertation itself. I am grateful to the music faculty of Furman University, who inspired my love of music theory as an undergraduate and have more recently served as friends and colleagues during the writing process. Special thanks are owed to my theory colleagues, Mark Kilstofte and Dan Koppelman, and to Matt Olson, without whom I would not have discovered my passion for jazz. I have the privilege of having been at Indiana University at the same time as many talented individuals, including (and by no means limited to) Gabe Lubell, Nathan Blustein, Jeff Vollmer, Diego Cubero, Mark Chilla, and Garrett Michaelsen. The ideas that coalesced into this dissertation were formed in part over many years of friendly conversation with these people; these conversations are among my fondest memories of my time in Bloomington. I have been lucky to have the unflagging support of my parents while I earned three degrees in music theory, and they are to thank for untold amounts of money and time spent encouraging my love of music from a very young age. Finally, words cannot express my love and gratitude to my wife Carolyn for her undying love and support, in the writing process and in life. Without her, I would never have made it to this point (nor would I have the privilege of knowing our two cats, who lent their own brand of moral support to this project). iv Michael McClimon A TRANSFORMATIONAL APPROACH TO JAZZ HARMONY Harmony is one of the most fundamental elements of jazz, and one that is often taken for granted in the scholarly literature. Because jazz is an improvised music, its harmony is more fluid and potentially more complex than that of other, notated traditions. Harmony in common-practice jazz (c. 1940–1965) is typically represented by chord symbols, which can be actualized by performers in any number of ways, and which might change over the course of a single performance. This dissertation presents a transformational model of jazz harmony that helps to explain this inherent complexity. While other theories of jazz harmony require transcriptions into notation, the transformational approach enables analysis of chord symbols themselves. This approach, in which chord symbols are treated as first-class objects, is consistent with the way jazz harmony is usually taught, and with the way jazz musicians usually discuss harmony. Though transformational theory has been applied to later jazz, the aim of this study is rather different: the music under consideration here might be called “tonal jazz,” in which functional harmonic progressions are still the rule. After a general introduction, the first chapter introduces the transformational approach by developing a diatonic seventh-chord space. Chapter 2 expands this diatonic space to a fully chromatic space that focuses on the ii–V–I progression, laying the foundation for much of the work that follows. Chapter 3 extends the model to examine music in which root motion by thirds plays an important role, paying special attention to the way in which harmonic substitution interacts with more normative jazz harmony. Since the pioneering work of George Russell in the 1950s, many jazz musicians have drawn an equivalence between chords and scales; Chapter 4 develops a transformational approach to these chord-scales, enabling analyses of improvisations on tunes first analyzed in the preceding chapters. The final chapter centers on a single harmonic archetype, Rhythm changes, and brings together the theoretical framework in a series of analyses featuring solos by Johnny Griffin, Thelonious Monk, George Coleman, Sonny Rollins, and Sonny Stitt. v Julian Hook, Ph.D. Kyle Adams, Ph.D. Blair Johnston, Ph.D. Brent Wallarab, M.M. vi Contents List of Figures . ix List of Tables . xiii Notes to the Reader . xiv 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Problems of Jazz Analysis . 1 1.2 Theoretical Approaches to Jazz Harmony . 7 1.3 Transformational Theory . 14 1.4 Aside: Lead Sheet Notation . 17 1.5 Diatonic Chord Spaces . 21 1.5.1 Intervals and Transformations . 21 1.5.2 Analytical Applications . 28 2 ii–V Space 38 2.1 A Descending Fifths Arrangement . 38 2.1.1 Formalism . 38 2.1.2 Analytical Interlude: Lee Morgan, “Ceora” . 45 2.2 Tritone Substitutions . 49 2.2.1 Formalism . 49 2.2.2 Analytical Interlude: Charlie Parker, “Blues for Alice” . 53 2.3 A Few Extensions . 56 2.3.1 Minor Tonic Chords . 56 2.3.2 Other Kinds of Tonic Chords . 60 2.3.3 Interaction with Diatonic Spaces . 65 2.3.4 Summary . 70 3 Thirds Spaces 71 3.1 Minor-Third Substitutions . 71 3.1.1 Formalism . 71 3.1.2 Analytical Interlude: Joe Henderson, “Isotope” . 75 3.2 Major-Third Spaces . 80 3.2.1 Introduction: Coltrane Changes . 80 3.2.2 Developing a Transformational System . 83 3.2.3 Analytical Interlude: Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart, “Have You Met Miss Jones?” . 90 3.3 Parsimonious Voice-Leading . 94 vii 4 Chord-Scale Transformations 99 4.1 George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept ...................... 99 4.1.1 Lydian Tonal Organization . 100 4.1.2 Chord/Scale Equivalence . 108 4.1.3 Chord-Scale Theory after Russell . 113 4.2 A Chord-Scale Transformational System . 115 4.2.1 Introduction: Scale Theory . 115 4.2.2 A GIS Proper . 118 4.2.3 Relaxing the GIS . 121 4.3 Chord-Scale Transformations in Analysis . 129 4.3.1 Rahsaan Roland Kirk, “Blues for Alice” . 130 4.3.2 Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, “Autumn Leaves” . 138 4.3.3 Joe Henderson, “Isotope” . 142 5 Rhythm Changes 149 5.1 Rhythm Changes in General . 149 5.1.1 Substitution Sets . 150 5.1.2 Harmonic Substitution vs. Chord-Scale Elaboration . 157 5.2 Thelonious Monk, “Rhythm-a-ning” . 158 5.2.1 Head . 158 5.2.2 Johnny Griffin’s Harmonic Strategies . 160 5.2.3 Monk’s Solo Harmony . 167 5.3 George Coleman, “Lo-Joe” . 169 5.4 Sonny Stitt, “The Eternal Triangle” . 177 5.4.1 Harmonic Peculiarities . 177 5.4.2 Interactional Elements . 184 5.4.3 Extended Analysis: Trading Eights, Harmony, and Interaction . 190 5.5 Concluding Remarks . 198 Appendix A List of Recordings 202 Appendix B Transcriptions 205 “Autumn Leaves” – Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt . 206 “Blues for Alice” – Rahsaan Roland Kirk . 210 “The Eternal Triangle” – Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins . 213 “Isotope” – Joe Henderson . 230 “Lo-Joe” (head) – George Coleman . 236 “Rhythm-a-ning” – Johnny Griffin and Thelonious Monk . 239 Bibliography 254 Discography 262 Curriculum Vitae viii List of Figures 1 Introduction 1.1 A sample lead sheet of “Just Friends” (John Klenner/Sam Lewis). 18 1.2 Two piano realizations of “Just Friends,” mm. 1–8. 20 1.3 The changes to “Autumn Leaves” (Joseph Kosma), A section. 21 1.4 The changes to “Autumn Leaves,” arranged around the diatonic circle of fifths. 22 1.5 The “Autumn Leaves” gis, generated by diatonic step and descending fifth. 25 1.6 The complete changes to “Autumn Leaves.” . 29 1.7 A transformation network for “Autumn Leaves,” bridge. 29 1.8 The diatonic cycle of “Autumn Leaves,” with a hypermetrically displaced copy spanning the formal boundary at the end of the bridge. 30 1.9 Changes to “Alice in Wonderland” (Sammy Fain/Bob Hilliard), mm. 1–16. 31 1.10 The changes to “Alice in Wonderland,” with transformational labels between harmonies. 31 1.11 A diatonic cycle in C major. 32 1.12 Changes to “How My Heart Sings” (Earl Zindars), mm. 1–12. 33 1.13 Changes to “All the Things You Are” (Jerome Kern). 34 1.14 Two versions of “All the Things You Are,” final nine bars. 35 2 ii–V Space 2.1 The bridge of “All the Things You Are” (Jerome Kern). 39 2.2 A transformation network for a single ii–V–I progression. 39 2.3 The underlying transformation graph for a single ii–V–I progression. 40 2.4 Voice leading in the ii–V–I progression. 42 2.5 A transformation graph and network for a small portion of ii–V space . 43 2.6 The complete ii–V space, arranged around the circle of fifths. 45 2.7 Changes for the A section of “Ceora” (Lee Morgan). 47 2.8 The A section of “Ceora” in ii–V space.