Jazz as the continuation of classical improvisation

Asked to define jazz in a single word, Barry reached for improvisation. He complained that jazz has been turned into a dumping ground for anything that sounds different, even though not everything put there is necessarily jazz.

Interview on Italian television9:3710:10

Barry’s core claim is that jazz is the continuation of classical theory. Jazz musicians simply never learned how the classical composers did it; he says he never studied figured bass himself. What drove him instead was love of the music: he kept asking what lay behind it, and came to feel he knows how to teach a person to improvise, because underneath it is simple.

Jazz theory, part 3: four dominants from one diminished0:00Jazz theory, part 3, with score0:000:36Jazz theory, part 2, with score7:55

Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt all learned to improvise, Barry points out, and the old masters left us a great deal of beautiful music. But at some point teaching turned toward writing and performing music and stopped showing people how to make music up themselves, which he calls a big blunder. A European theorist told him that when improvisation stopped in Europe it started in the USA, and Barry adds that improvisation is meant to go on forever.

Jazz theory, part 2, with score0:11Interview on Italian television6:12‘I am jazz’, set to animation2:242:58

Because those composers all learned to improvise, Barry reasoned, there must have been a system for learning it. He believed he comes closest to knowing that system, because he has delved into it. He is not ashamed of being a jazz musician, but he sees jazz musicians as continuing the line of those composers.

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So Barry lets people call him a jazz musician while insisting that he is really a classical musician, and jokes that Chopin would be glad to have him around. If he wrote a book, he says, he would call it classical so that classical players would pick it up, and they would find out it was bebop once they opened it. The theory he teaches, such as seeing the chords that sit on every degree of a scale, is in his view part of that tradition, not nonsense.

Jazz theory, part 3: four dominants from one diminished5:43Jazz theory, part 3, with score5:36Interview on Italian television9:029:37

Barry also notes that many of the American standards were written by classically trained composers who had moved from Europe to the USA, one more reason he hears jazz and classical music as a single continuing story.

Interview on Italian television7:54

Barry finds it disgraceful that some classical pianists don’t know the changes of the pieces they play, for example that a piece moves from the major to the relative minor and back. Once, in a class of classical students who shared a teacher, he explained the changes of a piece to a young woman who already played it well, and for the first time she understood it. For Barry, the reason to learn classical pieces is the same as for improvisation: ask why the composer went from here to there.

Classical pianists should know the changes0:000:411:13

There are huge numbers of classical pianists, enough for a new recital every night, yet, as Barry puts it, only a handful in the whole world. So a pianist stands a better chance as a composer than as a performer, and should study composition, such as how to write for strings, and should know movements.

Classical pianists should know the changes1:131:452:20Chopin’s changes1:14

Barry said he had never heard someone who truly knew jazz write a real piece for a symphony orchestra, and he began working on one himself. His warning: people think the piano is like the orchestra, but it isn’t. An orchestra works in layers of music, while the piano gives you only what is under your hands, so don’t write a symphony by looking at the keyboard. He also had no patience for songs that were obviously made up on a computer.

Jazz theory, part 2, with score3:484:21Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings3:534:25

Barry’s account of history: the great European composers stopped showing people how to improvise, which he called a big mistake, and when improvising stopped in Europe it started in America. He said a great theorist in Holland told him this.

Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings0:000:34Student performances and coaching23:3725:02

Many top European-trained musicians, who had studied figured bass and the theory that leads to improvising, came to America, fell in love with its songs and wrote standards. So in Barry’s view most standards were written by Europeans, and their chord movements are correct: Stella by Starlight, for example, travels all the way round and comes back to its beginning. That is why he urged students to learn the standards: the songs themselves teach you.

Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings0:342:15Believe: a talk to musicians32:5533:29

Composer credits on standards should be taken with a grain of salt, Barry said. Broadway songwriters sometimes sold a song for about $25 just to eat, and he had heard that Fats Waller sold many, so we don’t really know who wrote what; he mentioned What Is This Thing Called Love in this context. Some things you can tell: he believed Gershwin did write The Man I Love because it sounds like him, but he did not think Gershwin knew enough about jazz, Rhapsody in Blue notwithstanding.

Jazz theory, part 2, with score2:413:14Jazz theory, part 2: drop voicings2:463:18

Barry thought Bach was probably the best jazz musician of his time. He told how Chopin and Liszt went to a salon to jam, using music with something like chord symbols. If those composers were alive today, he said, they would not be in the concert hall, which mostly plays dead composers’ music, but in a corner bar playing their own music, like jazz musicians.

Student performances and coaching22:2523:0023:37

During a phone call, David Friedman in London had some Bach playing in the background. Barry asked him to play it again and heard that it was essentially I Got Rhythm changes. He took this as evidence that classical composers knew this harmonic material, and said that if he were a better reader he could show classical pieces that use it.

Jazz theory, part 4: borrowing diminished notes0:331:081:42

Going through Chopin passages with a student, Barry pointed out that one passage was all just the major scale, Chopin finding different ways to play it, and that another passage shows Chopin must have known about the diminished. The lesson for an improviser: there are many ways to play a scale, and borrowing a note gives you still more.

Chopin and Barry Harris part 1 2 msrcallula0:522:525:387:24

Orchestral players, Barry said, are the best readers in the world but know nothing of what jazz players know about improvising and changes. He recalled a Detroit Symphony concert, with Charles McPherson playing Billie Holiday tunes, where the music hadn’t arrived because Ernie Wilkins had it. Barry, who didn’t really know how to write for strings, wrote ten pieces on the spot while someone copied them out as he went. Afterwards a string player told him it was some of the most beautiful music she had ever played.

Jazz theory, part 4: borrowing diminished notes2:152:483:20