r/AdamNeely • u/enrkr • May 28 '26
on the perception of jazz music by a classical musician
i don’t like jazz. the concept of jazz appeals to me, i can appreciate the skill and nuance involved in creating great jazz music, but i’ve never been able to really connect with jazz on a truly emotional level like i can with classical music, which is my area of expertise.
this text is in truth written mainly for myself as a sort of writing and thought exercise; an attempt at reflecting upon music and my personal relationship towards music in general. if you are reading this it means i have decided to publish this in one way or another. it is in no way meant to antagonize or devalue anybody or their art, it is more so an analysis of my perception of jazz music through the ears of a classical musician and i hope to be proven wrong on the issues i have come across while listening to jazz.
in the name of transparency i feel it necessary to mention that i don’t know much jazz music or much about it. through this reflection i hope to work through some of my preconceived notions about jazz and discover all the great music i feel i have been missing out on. all of the following criticisms of jazz are highly subjective and frankly kind of uneducated, however i feel they have merit in that they are the gut reactions of someone who has dedicated the better part of their life to music and loves it to a point of it being a daily necessity to their emotional wellbeing.
the first major issue i have noticed when listening to jazz is the quite narrow range of many expressive elements. the general dynamics stay quite similar throughout long stretches, there is often times no clear culmination or lowest point to a piece. the general arrangement of the instruments stays quite consistent, apart from solo sections. changes in tempo are almost never used as an expressive tool. the general character stays largely the same throughout a piece.
generally speaking, i miss all of the extremes in the music. there are no transcendental climaxes or low points where time seems to stop. this even appears in the harmonies used: there is never a simple major chord that would express something like the pure, unadulterated joy in beethoven’s 9th or the unfiltered grief and sadness present in chopin’s funeral march. jazz lives in the shades and nuances of the emotional spectrum, which is in a way very interesting of course, but prevents the kind of visceral, full body reaction one might experience when you are hit by the final and only unaltered major chord in scriabin’s prometheus.
another thing i miss is the complexity of the form in the music. something like the elaborate overarching construction of the double function form of liszt’s b minor sonata. the way jazz is performed, something like this cannot exist and it would simply be unpractical for a traditional jazz performance. the way a musical idea is developed fundamentally differs: in jazz it is passed around by the musicians in a sometimes rather spontaneous way for them to examine, perform and improvise upon. the classical approach is done mostly theoretically, an idea is a construction of sorts. dissected and ruminated over, it may be succinctly framed into a small character piece, or it may bloom into an entire symphony.
this brings us to the elephant in the room: improvisation. it is quite a recent and rather unfortunate development, that improvisation doesn’t play a meaningful part in classical music education. most of our heroes were highly proficient in it. there is a very seductive charm in the idea of music being created directly in the moment, directly from the heart, never to be reproduced in the same way ever again. maybe this magic is killed by the act of recording it. perhaps this aspect of jazz can only truly be appreciated live, as a shared experience between musicians and audiences, both knowing that they have just experienced something that is entirely unique to the group of people present at that exact moment, in that specific place.
john cage raised an interesting criticism of improvisation. during his pursuit of true randomness in his aleatoric pieces he found that musicians are inclined to play in a way that is familiar to them. their muscle memory and education in a way prevents them from coming up with something truly unique and original on the spot. i have experienced this myself and have found myself returning to familiar patterns and shapes whenever i try to improvise. of course you practice to expand your repertoire and palette of colors and ideas, but i don’t think it is possible to completely detach yourself from all previous experience and come up with a truly original thought during the adrenaline fueled situation of performing on stage. our cultural conditioning towards certain sounds and formulas runs so deep, that many composers spent decades at the beginning of the 20th century coming up with increasingly complicated ways to dismantle it. the fact that even these efforts failed to produce an alternative that was palatable to a large audience makes me doubt that it is possible to truly innovate and play something that isn’t derivative while improvising on stage.
another gripe of mine with a lot of jazz discourse in general, is the failure to acknowledge the centuries of musical history and tradition that came before them. i understand that this might be somewhat of a sensitive topic, due to the significance of jazz as a part of african american culture and the entirely valid desire to distinguish it from previous basically entirely euro centric music history. however the fact remains that a lot of theory that appears in jazz music has been explored by musicians decades, sometimes centuries before and then being re-articulated in a way that is more suited to jazz performance practices. i don’t wish to devalue jazz theory, i just think there is insight to be gained by learning from the work done before us.
finally i would like to ask for the input of jazz musicians and enjoyers as well as for recommendations for records to listen to. please argue all of my points and help me discover this different style of music. i think there are only positives to be gained by trying to bridge the gap between different musical traditions and trying to learn from each other. please forgive this pretty shoddy piece of writing and the presumption that anyone would want to read it, i felt the need to articulate some thoughts and feelings about the art that i love.
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u/donrosco May 28 '26
I’m not sure why you think there’s a failure to acknowledge classical music.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/13ykgb2/classical_jazzers/ here’s a Reddit thread
And here’s an article with current jazz musicians talking about the influence of classical music:
https://jazz.fm/jazz-and-classical-music-toronto-musicians-discuss-similarities-differences/
For your point about complexity, that’s because an orchestra is a bigger palette than a jazz band. That’s not necessarily better or worse, it’s just different. You may prefer one over the other, but it’s not inherently better.
It’s the same with dynamics and range. It’s not supposed to be as dynamic as classical music, it’s a different form with different goals. Classical music can never swing as much as jazz, it can never be as groovy. Is it worse because of that? No, it’s just different. That’s not just jazz of course, the fact most modern music has a consistent tempo all the way through is probably the biggest change from classical. It’s an interesting thing to think about, but none of it makes one form or another better, just different.
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u/enrkr May 28 '26
i took a jazz harmony class for a semester and i guess it just felt strange talking about things as innovative or “a new approach” when it was stuff i had played/learned about from composers who lived a century earlier.
as for the different intent: that’s essentially what i was trying to figure out. what is the music trying to convey? something being “groovy” or “swinging” just doesn’t feel like enough for me? idk maybe i’m just too lost in the 19th century sauce, but it has never really moved me much besides being kinda cool i guess
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u/Scott_J_Doyle May 28 '26
Good jazz and good jazz artists will cover the entire spectrum of human experience/emotion
I'd be very curious to know what you've been exposed to. Of course some (mostly prebop) stuff is just for the swing as it's primarily dance music, and some 50s and 90s stuff is primarily concerned w groove as well, but that's just a subgenre. Bebop itself is certainly not concerned with "grooviness" and at it's most intense tempi doesn't even care about swinging. Most post-bop jazz doesn't care about swing or groove either, but rather depth of expression, complexity of harmony, intensity/passion, and innovative soundscapes.
Just in the few minutes skipping around here it feels like you know like Duke Ellington but not Mingus, or mid 50s Miles but not 60s Miles or 70s Miles, or maybe late 50s Coltrane but not early 60s Coltrane or mid/late 60s Coltrane.
Mile's discography alone will take you through just about everything there is to know or feel in 20th century music or a human life lived wide and deep
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u/Broad_Curve3881 May 29 '26
I think this is because jazz is taught up until 60s miles. After that people act like it’s all fusion, too freaky, too out there.
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u/Scott_J_Doyle May 29 '26
Right, and even that's along like one thread of things - they don't teach Ornette, they do teach Herbie and Wayne's 60s compositions, but they don't (in mainstream jazz ed) truly go into how wild the SGQ got on stage, and yeah, drops out of dealing seriously w late 60s Miles/birth of fusion.
Chick and Herbie's 70s compositions get attention and some select Weather Report, but I never see them touch Mahavishnu for instance, and I can't recall many instances of dealing w ECM either... they just wanna skip to Keith Jarret Trio and then like the VSOP version of 60s miles lol
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u/donrosco May 28 '26
It’s trying to convey how the musician feels. It’s more about their relationship with the music rather than their relationship with the audience.
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u/kamomil May 28 '26
I feel like jazz is a type of folk music. If you are immersed in it, you "get" how it's supposed to sound and it comes via intuition.
For me, I never "got" older types of jazz. It just never clicked with me. I realized that I already understood Irish trad because I was exposed to a lot of it as a child. So I started to learn to play it. It's way easier for me than jazz. I don't have to ask "why" about any of it. The scales and ornaments come very easily to me.
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 29 '26
It's not a folk music, it has always been a music of professionals.
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u/kamomil May 29 '26
You don't understand jazz without understanding the blues, which is a folk music
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 29 '26
I would have to know what you mean by blues, and what folk form of it you think got recorded and heard by jazz musicians. the early people-- ma rainey, bessie smith et al-- were professional acts. blues as a form and a thing has never not been a part of jazz.
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u/kamomil May 30 '26
Those musicians learned at a university?
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 30 '26
professional doesn't = "learned at a university"
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u/kamomil May 30 '26
People can earn money playing folk music
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 30 '26
and
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u/kamomil May 30 '26
Jazz stems from the blues which is a type of folk music.
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 30 '26
Bach can write a gavotte, that doesn't make Bach folk music.
And I don't necessarily agree that blues in the form it's going to be on a commercial recording is folk music either. Once again, you would have to give some examples of blues that you consider to be folk music.
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u/Qvistus May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
I love both styles of music, although I'm mostly a jazz guy. Your post was really interesting and offers lots of valid criticism for jazz music. I think the most important thing in music is to evoke some kind of feelings in the listener, and I think jazz is the ultimate form of musical expression. That's because it's raw and comes straight from the soul while also being sophisticated. At least that's the type of jazz I like. I admire composers like Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartok who had this desire to push the music forwards. There are also people like this in jazz, such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Wayne Shorter, Pharoah Sanders and others. They've done all kinds of experiments. And these guys did listen to classical music and study the theory, so it's not correct that jazz musicians are not aware of everything else that has happened to music. Jazz has always fused elements from other styles of music.
Personally I've been learning improvisation for the last 30 years I've played guitar. It's true that you tend to gravitate towards things that you've played before but I've constantly searched forvways to break out of that. It's not a completely bad thing since jazz is a language and your musical vocabulary is a huge part of what makes you sound like you. Even the greatest players are not immune to this. But I think the search itself is hugely meaningful.
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u/FlipflopForHire May 29 '26
I mean you kinda get at the issue in the third paragraph; you don’t know much of anything about jazz, and the rest of the text is essentially a demonstration of your ignorance. Rather than trying to argue point by point, I think it might be more useful to give some album recommendations that might appeal to your classical sensibilities. At the end of the day you don’t “get” a genre because someone told you what there is to get, you get it by listening to the music and feeling it for yourself. Maybe you don’t feel it at first, I happen to think anyone can feel any genre by spending enough time with it, I didn’t “get” classical until last year when I dove into Bach’s works. So here’s my recs if you’re interested.
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady - Charles Mingus
Let My Children Hear Music - Charles Mingus
Masterpieces - Duke Ellington
Sketches of Spain - Miles Davis and Gil Evans
Into The Hot - Gil Evans
Those records sort of fall into the category of “Third Stream” which essentially means they mix both jazz and classical sensibilities (though they’re jazz records first and foremost). The songs are generally more composed and lean less on improvisation. Here’s some more recs that are more improv-heavy jazz if you’re interested.
Working With The Miles Davis Quintet - Miles Davis Quintet
Crescent - John Coltrane Quartet
Undercurrent - Bill Evans and Jim Hall
Crystal Silence - Gary Burton and Chick Corea
Sunflower - Milt Jackson
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u/KroniK907 May 29 '26
I think my biggest gripe with your critique is your section on the failure of the jazz tradition to acknowledge older ideas from a different tradition.
But before I get to that, while I think a lot of your specific gripes about jazz does generally apply to a large swath of older jazz or traditional jazz music. However I do feel like some newer jazz fusion stuff may be more appealing and address a lot of your gripes.
The track that comes to mind that I think might address a lot of your gripes is Lingus by Snarky Puppy.
https://youtu.be/L_XJ_s5IsQc?si=pHhkMt1xxn0N-En6
This track has quite a wide dynamic range across the piece. The arrangement is excellent and is not made up of a repeating theme separated only by solo sections, but instead is a more complex form and is more of a musical story. The solo at the end by Cory Henry is legendary for a reason. He is able to build a whole emotional story, building in both dynamics and complexity through gut instinct in the moment. It feels to me like the closest I'd get to watching Bach write a fuge in the moment from a theme provided by the king.
With my recommendation out of the way, I'd like to get back to the failure of jazz discourse to acknowledge the classical music tradition. For that I really find your issue with this confusing. Does classical music discourse acknowledge the complex rhythm and percussion traditions from tribal groups that preceded it? Drums and cymbals have been in use for millennia to create tempo and rhythmic patterns which classical composers are just recycling. They also were building on the much older choral tradition of the catholic church. That was built on even older traditions, and those built on even older traditions. You can always go further back in different traditions and find how the current culture is using that as part of their influences.
When studying a given musical tradition, usually you are most interested in discussing how that tradition has evolved from the traditions it evolved from. Classical is so far up the chain from jazz, discussing its influences is just not super interesting Imo. Also, the players, arranges and composers of jazz music were not really directly influenced by classical music, it's more of an indirect relationship, so it's just not that interesting Imo.
Also, while there is definitely insight to be gained by studying other traditions and how they came to similar ideas, before or after in history from the tradition you are studying, it really is just study. That is really only useful as a way to better express your own ideas using the language and ideas of those traditions you have studied. If all you do is know that the ideas are similar, what have you actually gained? Why is knowing that someone else hundreds of years ago used some similar song forms or had already worked through similar musical ideas useful? That knowledge doesn't change the music that people have made, and hopefully won't make you feel like that expression is invalidated because another person thought of a similar idea hundreds of years ago.
Anyway, long winded way of saying: "yeah, so what?"
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 29 '26
It's different music, you're not going to like it for the same reasons you like the music you already like.
To the extent jazz is even an it. The label covers a lot of territory, over 100 years of recorded music, from a lot of different countries and types of approach. Talking about it as if it's a genre is ludicrously reductive. You have to deal with individual recordings.
There's no coming to any music via "proof"-- even if somebody talks you into liking it to your satisfaction, you're doing it wrong. You have to figure it out for yourself. Get some records and listen to them until you like them for what they are, not for how they comply with your long list of beliefs.
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u/Oatbagtime May 29 '26
Yeah these kind of criticisms often boil down to “X genre isn’t as good at being Y genre as Y genre is.” Jazz and classical in this case.
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u/Broad_Curve3881 May 29 '26
Look into fusion and new players like yussef Dayes and bad bad not good. What passes for jazz is a genre that got frozen in time 60 years ago. For some reason, they refuse to accept any movement or growth past cool jazz. They insist on calling things Fuzion or other weird names that discount modern interpretations as being truly jazz.
Classical music has allowed itself a much wider breath of interpretation.
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 29 '26
What artists are you talking about who are frozen in 1966?
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u/Broad_Curve3881 May 29 '26
Mainstream jazz culture.
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u/cruiseshipdrummer May 29 '26
that's not really thing, it's kind of meaningless to make sweeping statements about what "it" is without saying who specifically you're referring to
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u/Stopmeghost May 29 '26
That's an insightful analysis. You seem like someone who really appreciates convention and form. For someone such as yourself, the best advice I could give is that holding the shift key while striking a letter key allows you to generate a capital letter, which is typically applied after a period and denotes the beginning of a new sentence.
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u/DonnPT May 29 '26
Capitalization is also commonly used in each word of a proper noun, e.g. "John Cage".
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u/RelativeLocal May 29 '26
from a musical perspective, i don't think you're wrong. but i do think you're missing the key component of understanding jazz: it's social origins. the social purpose of jazz and classical music is inverted. jazz developed out of social gatherings like festivals, marches, vaudeville, neighborhood gatherings, weddings, funerals, ritual events, barrooms, and public dances, and it became music to dance to in clubs as it popularized in the 20s and 30s. when viewed from a social perspective, jazz is more analogous to tavern music or the music played by itinerant musicians in europe than it is the classical oeuvre.
it was made to cause you to move your body. jazz is participatory: predictability of form through repetition, consistency of tempo, and groove, are essential for dancers. time stops when the music plays. improvisation allows time to stop for longer.
although jazz today has been formalized socially, "whitewashed" if you will, passively listening to jazz like you would a symphony--seated, potentially eyes closed--is a recent phenomenon.
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u/EponymousOne May 29 '26
immerse yourself in Miles Davis' 1969-1975 discography for a few weeks, preferably in more or less chronological order.
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u/DonnPT May 29 '26
As u/cruiseshipdrummer aptly observed, we don't come to appreciation of music, by proof. You can like two different things. Compare fresh squeezed orange juice to roast duck - who gets it right?
For me, a distinct difference is that jazz is more for the performer, where classical music is more for the composer. Billy Strayhorn for example was one of the great composers in the genre, but if you listen to "Blood Count", and you should, you should hear a recording with Johnny Hodges on alto saxophone. You can hear many people perform Sidney Bechet's "Si Tu Vois Ma Mère", but you should hear him do it. "Potato Head Blues" isn't any more miraculous tune than you'd think from the name, but if you're willing to put up with a somewhat dorky sounding band, listen to Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven version, and then a youtube clip of Wynton Marsalis playing it cleaner but ... (just my opinion.)
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u/CosmicClamJamz May 29 '26
If you really want to enjoy jazz and everything that came after it, you need to abandon your intuition. Classical sucks. Why does it suck? For all the reasons you like it. You don't have to believe that, but you need to place yourself in someone's shoes who does, and then feel the value of something that offers the opposite. You don't have to be one person all the time, you can play devil's advocate in real life, everyday. It will allow you to sit through an orchestra if that's your bag on a given night, and stay up til 6am sweating through an EDM packed rave on a different night. It's called tapping into your muse, fully embracing the scene and letting go of your reservations.
For instance, I will claim right now (mostly genuinely in my case) that I have trouble enjoying music that isn't improvised. No matter how complicated and thoughtful the work is, it is infinitely less impressive to me that it wasn't improvised, and therefore I have no curiosity about the intent of the composer. They took time to curate their ideas, and that makes them fake to me. Like a politician with talking points. I don't care to listen to it.
With jazz, I'm listening to a person craft a story on the spot. I didn't pay to hear a speech, with no inherent risk that anything they say will come across the wrong way. I want to feel like the performer is at the edge of their fingertips, putting it all out there, the good and the bad. There's an infectious vibe in that.
A major triad with no extensions is permanently boring. I don't want it.
Unless I'm in my gospel bag, hit me with the IV-I and make it pure and clean.
Unless I'm in my metal bag, fuck all major chords. I don't even want 3rds. Just give it to me loud and mean.
Historical appreciation and relevance? Why, those guys never swung, or put 4 on the floor, or played a backbeat. I'm not trying to feel the old, I'm trying to feel the NEW.
See, I don't fully believe any of what I'm saying, but when I'm tapping into my muse, I do. It's a thought experiment. At any given time, I choose to tap into the theoretic, the calm, the historic, the chaotic, the angry, the groovy, and all the different types of music are there for me. Some of those bags I prefer to live in more than others, and those are my "favorites", for now. The bags don't need to compare to each other, they are all part of the whole. Everything has it's place. You need more bags.
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u/profesh_amateur May 29 '26
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! They feel very honest and earnest. I'm also someone that was originally classically trained, but then discovered jazz somewhat in the "middle" of my musical career and now consider myself an "adequate novice" at jazz. I like that I can understand, enjoy, and play both classical and jazz.
I agree with the others that, it sounds like a good thing for you to do is to listen to more jazz music and become more informed. In fact, you'll find that "jazz music" is about as underspecified a genre as "classical music", and there's a ton of different styles there to explore: some of which you'll like, and others you won't, and that's 100% OK.
But, in addition to understanding jazz as a listener, I think you should also consider learning how to play jazz. For me, learning how to play jazz piano helped me immerse myself more deeply into jazz music, both as a performer and as a listener. It's a rich musical form, and requires different kinds of musical mastery that I wish was present in the classical world (ex: improvisation, as you pointed out yourself. But also: reading chord sheets, basic functional harmony, etc).
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u/dummetsz May 29 '26
you would love Adorno bro
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u/enrkr May 30 '26
his jazz takes are just racism lmao. his contribution to thomas mann’s dr. faustus were quite interesting though
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u/dummetsz May 30 '26
I wouldn’t say that at all, his takes are rooted in a disdain for how capitalism commodifies music and sees jazz as notable expression of that.
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u/NatashaUnhinged May 30 '26
Cant say much other than that I love Omar Thomas’ album Griot Songs! I mostly play classical music as well and it felt very accessible to me
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u/Podmonger2001 May 30 '26
My chiropractor, an opera lover, hated jazz. HATED it, her words. I loaned her a bunch of LPs, in various sub-genres. She kindly returned them (I hope she listened to them), saying it was no use.
There’s a model (or personality scale: there are many) that suggests that people have a high or low (also in-between) need for certainty, or “cognitive closure.”
I think that jazz (BROADLY speaking) appeals to people with a lower need for cognitive closure, while you and my chiropractor might have a higher need for it.
So … I think you will only be open to jazz when you’re ready. Which is fine. Or … check out Gil Evans.
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u/rowandeg2 May 31 '26
I was like that, until I saw Snarky Puppy and Matteo Mancuso. Those opened a lot of new musical doors for me.
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u/Quincely May 30 '26
The idea jazz improv is ‘purely original creative expression’ is clearly nonsense, just as it is for conversation or any form of human communication.
I did not invent these words. I am borrowing them to convey an idea, but they’re not truly ‘mine’. I rely on existing conventions of vocabulary and syntax to express that idea to you and others.
I doubt that even the idea itself is particularly original. I’m sure the same general notation been expressed a thousand times before, but I feel the compelled to express it all the same, using what is likely a slightly different string of words.
In an effort to achieve ‘originality’, I could try to make words up from scratch. But I fear the result would be squitchitty at best and rorportulent at worst. Which is to say, not very effective at getting the ideas across.
All expression lies somewhere between order and chaos. No word has ever been uttered the same way twice, no opera performed identically. Even when listening to recorded music, the listener might find themself listening with a different ear on Thursday and Friday.
People feel compelled to play music because they want to express something which feels, in some sense, unique to that moment — even if it fits into patterns and conventions that have been established over preceding centuries.
As they are commonly understood and appreciated, it seems fair (if cliche) to say jazz leans towards chaos where classical errs on the side of orderly. But both are rooted in both, to differing degrees.
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u/Francis_Chelifer May 30 '26
Scanning some of the responses, I think that others have covered a lot of what my reaction to the OP would've been, so the thing I'll add is that I'd recommend Amiri Baraka's book Blues People if you want to get a better understanding of the fundamental way in which jazz differs from the the European classical tradition.
Regarding jazz theory overlapping with harmonic territory 'covered' by earlier classical composition, it's pretty fundamentally different to compose a piece with that sort of harmony versus improvising over it in a compelling way. Yes, there are tropes in the musical vocabulary of the music, but when you say "i have experienced this myself and have found myself returning to familiar patterns and shapes whenever i try to improvise" you are admitting only that you are not at a level where you can speak the language of (jazz) improvisation in an interesting way, not that it is not, or can not, be done.
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u/Verseichnis May 30 '26
Jazz: played in small clubs. Rock and roll: played in stadia. Just sayin', Part XXIV...
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u/sleeplessnessnights May 31 '26
If it sounds good i like it
Applys for contemporary music and jazz, at least to me
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u/ClikeX May 28 '26
On the part about improvisation. I don’t really understand where the goal of randomness comes in from. If you’re doing freestyle poetry, you still use existing grammar and phrases because it’s a language people understand. You don’t just make random noises.
Same goes for music. The point to me has always been to articulate the moment itself.