Collective improvisation

Collective improvisation describes a style feature of jazz that is also used in contemporary improvisation music.

In contrast to solo improvisation , which is common in most jazz styles , collective improvisation means that the entire group of musicians improvises together over a certain (e.g. harmonic) framework. In New Orleans style as much later again in free jazz this collective, polyphonic form of improvisation is very common.

Collective improvisations in early jazz

With regard to collective improvisations in early jazz, a few restrictive specifications need to be made:

Whenever jazz was improvised in New Orleans, it was based relatively closely on the melody; a freer improvisation on harmonies only developed later. Since the transitions from ragtime, blues, spiritual and contemporary dance music to jazz were fluid (many bands simply played everything that hit the audience), the individual stylistic features (such as improvisation) that characterized early jazz were often different .

For some bands that played with the same line-up for a long time, whose members could read music, or who set up intensive rehearsals, improvisation in front of an audience often played no role. For example, Fate Marable , through whose "instructor hands" many later famous New Orleans musicians went, forbade improvisation at all (or allowed only a few exceptions, as with the young Louis Armstrong ). Jelly Roll Morton , as cornet player George Mitchell said, had every subtleties of a piece rehearsed before recordings and even gave the musicians guidelines for their solos ( Omer Simeon played the clarinet note, which was held over several bars, in the famous "Dr. Jazz" solo on instructions Mortons.)

At least in the case of bands that had no long common experience, intensive rehearsals or knowledge of sheet music, collective improvisation (or, as they said in New Orleans, "decoration") inevitably played a bigger role. Ideally, collective improvisation in New Orleans jazz was organized according to the following model: The lead voice, which was with the cornetist or trumpeter , initially paraphrased closely following the given melody, whereupon the other melody instruments alternate and at the same time, i.e. follow one another as well related to shifted chains of a call and response . The trombone responded with a simple, rhythmically accentuated bass voice and the clarinet and possibly other wind instruments with relatively free additional voices, which can be understood more as arpeggios over the chords on which the theme is based.

From the Chicago style onwards , the improvisation of individual soloists takes on an increasingly important role, although these polyphonic collective improvisations are not completely eliminated.

Collective improvisation in later jazz styles

Later, in the swing style, collective improvisation was allocated a space structured by so-called head arrangements . Here, too, it depended on the occasion and the mood of the musicians and band leaders whether the pendulum swung more towards rehearsed or more towards improvised music. The classic live recording of " Sing, Sing, Sing " from Benny Goodman's famous Carnegie Hall concert was made, for example, because the drummer Gene Krupa simply continued to play after the scheduled end of the piece and the individual "sections" of the band (with short riffs signaled to each other ) as well as the soloists ( Jess Stacy and others) spontaneously responded.

In swing, bebop and cool jazz, too, there was collective improvisation in the limited sense that not only the solos, if necessary, but of course the accompanying parts of the rhythm section were usually improvised - only that the solo was in the foreground here and not the "overall experience" of the so to speak "equal" voices. Exceptions to this representation can be a few smaller ensembles where the overall impression of the interplay was brought to the fore, for example in some piano trios, such as that of Bill Evans .

The actual collective improvisation only experienced a real renaissance in free jazz, very clearly with Ornette Coleman's recording of Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1961), which had a style-forming effect and experienced a further high point in John Coltrane's Ascension (1965). However, it is present in preliminary forms in musicians such as Charles Mingus and George Russell , but there it is still strongly related to the polyphony and to predetermined schemes. An exception are two recordings made by Lennie Tristano's band in 1949, who recorded the first structurally open collective improvisations in “Intuition” and “Disgression”.

It was only in free jazz that the simultaneous improvised communication of the musicians was understood as organizing the structure of the pieces. At the same time, reaction patterns play a role, such as those worked out by Vinko Globokar for the free improvisation that also emerged from New Music : imitate, play the opposite, suggest ideas, accept ideas, develop together, etc. The classic division of labor into soloists and accompanists is abandoned.

literature

Ekkehard Jost : improvisation. In: Wolf Kampmann (Ed.), With the assistance of Ekkehard Jost: Reclams Jazzlexikon . Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-010528-5 .
Martin Kunzler : collective improvisation. In: Ders .: Jazz-Lexikon. Volume 1: A – L (= rororo-Sachbuch. Vol. 16512). 2nd Edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-499-16512-0 .

Remarks

↑ The transitions between solo and collective improvisation cannot be strictly demarcated, since it is always a question of interpretation and also of the listener's habits, what he perceives as the dominant auditory impression, the overall impression or individual voices. (Actually, the solo improvisation of a wind player accompanied by a rhythm group - be it in a combo or in a big band - is a collective improvisation, since the members of the rhythm group usually also improvise their accompaniment.) This is how many younger listeners who are used to conventional pop music feel older jazz (but also, for example, music by Bach and other classics) initially as strange and takes getting used to, because it does not correspond to their listening habits to concentrate their attention on several almost equal voices at the same time, which interlock, like wheels in a gearbox.
↑ Who was allowed to improvise and who had to reproduce what had been studied probably also depended on the experience of each individual musician. (The traditional exclamation Oh play that thing! In the "Dippermouth Blues" came about because bassist Bill Johnson in Oliver's Creole Jazzband foresaw during a recording that the young drummer Baby Dodds had forgotten his break - which he had learned by heart, of course.)

[1] The transitions between solo and collective improvisation cannot be strictly demarcated, since it is always a question of interpretation and also of the listener's habits, what he perceives as the dominant auditory impression, the overall impression or individual voices. (Actually, the solo improvisation of a wind player accompanied by a rhythm group - be it in a combo or in a big band - is a collective improvisation, since the members of the rhythm group usually also improvise their accompaniment.) This is how many younger listeners who are used to conventional pop music feel older jazz (but also, for example, music by Bach and other classics) initially as strange and takes getting used to, because it does not correspond to their listening habits to concentrate their attention on several almost equal voices at the same time, which interlock, like wheels in a gearbox.

[2] Who was allowed to improvise and who had to reproduce what had been studied probably also depended on the experience of each individual musician. (The traditional exclamation Oh play that thing! In the "Dippermouth Blues" came about because bassist Bill Johnson in Oliver's Creole Jazzband foresaw during a recording that the young drummer Baby Dodds had forgotten his break - which he had learned by heart, of course.)