JAZZ INFLUENCE ON FRENCH TROMBONE MUSIC 1910-1960
From about 1917 (towards the end of the First World War) jazz became a strong influence on French classical music. As one of the characteristic instruments of jazz, this influence was something that particularly affected the way in which composers wrote for the trombone. If I could establish the nature, source of inspiration and intent of jazz influence in French music from 1917 to around 1960 this might be able to inform performances of works from this period.
From 1940 there was also a renaissance in the prominence of the trombone as a solo instrument. Often music from the period 1940 to 1960 (and onwards) demonstrates strong jazz influences. By examining the history and nature of jazz influence on trombone writing in France I hope to elucidate this important strand in the wholistic development of the trombone as a solo instrument.
Throughout I will use "jazz" as an umbrella term for the range of musical styles also referred to as "instrumental ragtime", "Tin Pan Alley songs", "foxtrot", "New Orleans", "Dixieland", "swing band music", "big band music", "swing" etc. Essentially the term will cover the more popular orientation of "jazz" up to the 1950’s.
Over the period from 1917 to 1960 I observed three essential stages to the approach French composers took to including elements of jazz in their use of the trombone. These stages occurred chronologically, the first being the use of the trombone in chamber music imitations of ragtime ensembles, from 1917 to around 1924. The second stage was the development of a jazz influenced solo style for the trombone within the orchestra, from 1925 into the 1930’s. The third and final stage was the introduction of jazz elements into solo compositions for trombone, from 1940 onwards.
Jazz first made its appearance in France in 1900, when the Sousa band brought several arrangements of "cakewalks" (the predecessor of ragtime) as crowd-pleasing encores for its tour of Europe. Right from this first introduction the Parisian public was infatuated with the rhythm, exotic origin and sexual innuendo of jazz. From then on all the shows and music hall productions involving jazz were massive successes and jazz bands touring from America would perform to sell-out audiences and huge ovations. By the time of the First World War jazz music had become a staple in the diet of Parisian cafés, music halls, nightclubs and record collections. The cafes and nightclubs were also the social milieu of the composers, artists and intellectuals of Paris during the early part of the twentieth-century, thus these people were exposed to the new sounds of jazz.
The 1910’s were a time of great rebellion against tradition in the interests and aims of composers, artists and intellectuals and sounds of jazz provided a vehicle for many of the new ideas. The highbrow intellectual aims of the nineteenth century were suddenly seen as being rather self-indulgent and interest was placed in the music of popular culture and in appealing to the average person rather than the intellectual elite. As the music of cafes and music halls, jazz had great lure in this respect. Large orchestras were replaced with small ensembles of soloists as a rebellion against romantic excesses (which was rather a convenient ideology given the financial constraints of the time). Here jazz was able to provide ideas about a new type of small ensemble based around winds, brass and percussion rather than the "warm caress" of strings. Blended, homogenous textures were similarly replaced by hard, distinct polyphonies. Again jazz was an inspiration with, as Cocteau put it, its sounds "stripped of the superfluous". Fascination with extending chromaticism was also overshadowed by the immediacy of relentless rhythm, in which jazz was naturally abundant. Thus in many respects jazz closely reflected the new aesthetics and composers began drawing sounds and ideas from jazz into their own music. Writing art-music that sounded like popular music was also a useful vehicle, as George Auric pointed out, for shocking the Parisian public from their "Debussian slumber".
Imitating ragtime ensembles, the first stage in jazz influence on writing for the trombone, was a fad that lasted from around 1917 into the early 1920’s. It involved composers taking their impressions of jazz and using these to write "ragtimes" or "foxtrots" in their own distinctive style. One of the first examples of this type is the Ragtime in L’Histoire du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky written in 1917. While this, and other pieces of its kind, take on the bouncy syncopated rhythms, catchy tunes and straight forward harmonies of jazz at that time, it is the perception of instrumental roles that provides the most interesting contributions. Stravinsky later, in his conversations with Robert Craft, claimed that he drew the inspiration for the choice of instruments in L’Histoire du Soldat (violin, double-bass, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone and drums) from a jazz band, simply replacing a saxophone with a bassoon for the purposes for balance. Whether this is an example of reasoning in hindsight or not, he is able to use this ensemble with fairly accurate stylisation of instrumental roles of jazz in the "Ragtime". In general the trombone in jazz from the period fulfilled the role of bass line support, with some modulatory solo sections. One distinctive feature of the way the trombone was used was, as Milhaud put it, the "lyrical use of the trombone, gliding over quarter tones in crescendos of volume and pitch, thus intensifying the feeling".Listening to the early bands of Louis Armstrong of King Oliver will provide many examples of this type of trombone playing.
Stravinsky’s stylisation of this in the "Ragtime" from "L’Histoire" may seem a little tame by comparison, but never-the-less makes use of the same ingredients.
Similar usage of the trombone and similar approach to jazz influence can be seen in quite a number of works from 1917 to 1923. Basically the role of the trombone in these works is to reinforce the bass line, provide small melodic solos and occasional raucous glissandi to help create that naughty jazz atmosphere.
The only composer of the early 1920’s to really pursue jazz influence beyond casual impressions of music heard in cafes and curious perusal of jazz scores, was Darius Milhaud. In 1922 he jumped at the opportunity to visit the United States, really intending (he claims in his autobiography) to use the trip as a chance to do "research" into jazz in the night-clubs of Harlem. The result was the 1923 composition, "La Creation du Monde" for eighteen solo instruments. Here Milhaud was taking his now very informed knowledge of jazz and blues and attempting to write a composition with the structural clarity and formal techniques of a classical work and the expressive dynamism and compulsiveness of jazz language. The composition of the instrumental group was exactly that that he had seen in Harlem and the use of the instruments was intended to be identical also. While the trombone keeps the same role as in previous jazz inspired works it is here much more prominent and more "authentic" in its gutsy representation of the instrument. Many classical recordings of this piece choose a clean cut interpretation, particularly of the trombone’s role, however the background to the piece and Milhaud’s own 1932 recording support the idea of raucous sound, rough glissandi and a generally irreverent style of performance.
By the early 1920’s Americana was so much the norm in Paris that composers were discovering the need for a distinctly French identity. The new idea of neoclassicism was also dominating the musical scene of the time. It was no longer either shocking to the Parisian public or fashionable with the Parisian artistic community to write music that was meant to sound like jazz and most composers in Paris stopped writing music of this kind, ending the first stage in jazz influence on French music. This first stage did, however, have a lasting impact on the composers involved. Stravinsky and Milhaud, for instance, had noted a distinct relationship between the polyphonic textures and rhythmic momentum of jazz and those of baroque music. Many of the instrumental ideas and sounds discovered while composers examined jazz, found their way into the orchestrations for neoclassical works. For example the neoclassical works of Stravinsky, most particularly Pulcinella and the Octet for Winds, continue to use the trombone with the same sort of carefree raucous glissandos and small melodic solos that he had used to evoke a jazzy atmosphere.
The most influential change in jazz trombone playing in the 1920’s was the development of a solistic, lyrical style by performers such as Miff Mole and ‘Tricky’ Sam Nanton. This style was later perfected and popularised by the likes of Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller and Jack Teagarden. These performers revolutionised the trombone both technically and expressively, expanding the standard range of the instrument upwards by about a fifth, developing the habit of playing in a lyrical style consistently right at the top of this range, perfecting the use of slide movement as the source of vibrato and refining the use of glissandi so that they could be used as a subtle colouration rather than as a grotesque effect. All these elements can be heard in recordings of Tommy Dorsey playing.
While some would say that Gunther Schuller was engaging in polemics by claiming "Tricky Sam Nanton, Tommy Dorsey and Jack Teagarden could perform on their trombones feats of dexterity and agility, endurance and expressive versatility that no trombonist in the New York or Berlin Philharmonics could even imagine, yet alone duplicate", he is actually not all that far off the mark.
The second stage in the evolution of jazz influence on French trombone writing came when certain composers recognised the importance of this shift in the approach to the trombone and began using the "new" style of trombone playing in their compositions. Ravel is the ideal example of this. We have a unique insight into how Ravel meant his trombone parts from the 1920’s to be performed through scripts of conversations with Leo Arnaud-Vauchant. In 1924 Ravel heard Vauchant performing jazz trombone at the popular Parisian nightclub Le Boeuf sur le Toit and was fascinated by the "shadings of pitch" that Vauchant was able to achieve on the trombone. Always interested in the exotic and unusual, he invited Vauchant to his home in Montfort-Lamaury, in order to find out more about this style of playing. For the next four years the two would cook and discuss music almost every Friday night. Ravel’s main orchestral output from 1924 onwards, L’Enfant et les Sortileges, Bolero, the Concerto for Piano Left Hand and the Piano Concerto in G minor, all have lyrical trombone solos of some kind and aspects of distinct jazz influence, whereas none of Ravel’s music before this does. Vauchant is able to give us a unique insight into how Ravel intended his trombone solos to sound as he performed them for Ravel before anyone else did. The most apt example is the solo in Bolero.
Vauchant performed the Bolero solo for Ravel privately and also in the preview performance of the ballet with the Monte Carlo Symphony and the Ballets Russes in 1929 for a small invited audience. Descriptions of his performance (no recordings were made) indicate that he played it with a lot of vibrato, no articulation when this was possible, with no glissandi and with some mordents where he felt it was appropriate. He said that Ravel wanted the solo to be in the style of "a gypsy woman singing bare-chested as she puts out the laundry". Vauchant also reports that Ravel was fascinated by the way that the solo begins using the first two slide positions, then adds a third, then a fourth, fifth and finally the sixth. When Vauchant pointed out that it did not use the seventh position, Ravel retorted "(expletive deleted) the seventh position".
The orchestral premiere of Bolero and two original recordings from January 1930 with Ravel conducting featured Andre Lafosse, principal trombone of the Paris Opera and future Professor of the Paris Conservatoire as the trombone soloist. At initial rehearsals Ravel was unhappy with Lafosse’s rigidity in the trombone solo and told him to "do like Arnaud, do a little jazz". The only way that Lafosse could think of to impart a jazz style was to include some glissandi, which, according to Lafosse, hadn’t been intended by Ravel. The placement of glissandi by Lafosse is the same in both recordings, but is significantly different from those used nowadays. We also have a good idea of the slide positions used by Lafosse from Jean Douay, current principal of the French National Orchestra, who claims that his interpretation is correct as he learnt it from Lafosse.
In preparing the final version of the score for Bolero, Ravel added some glissandi to the trombone solo, possibly to aid orchestral players in achieving the jazz-coloured style he intended. These glissandi have become entrenched in the modern performance of the piece. In general nowadays a Tommy Dorsey-like style, sound and legato are acknowledged as being important for the character of Bolero everywhere outside France, where "correct" performance is considered to be the Andre Lafosse style. The improvisatory freedom to add turns, use extreme vibrato and add glissandi etc. at will are, quite understandably, seen as being inappropriate, despite the fact that Ravel was partial to these in his original conception of the solo. A prominent American trombone player reports that after first hearing from Vauchant how the solo was originally conceived, he played the solo "a la Vauchant" and the conductor "stopped the orchestra and said ‘No, that’s not the way that it goes, can’t you read the music?"
There are many examples of orchestral music from the second half of the 1920’s and the 1930’s that contain similar treatment of the trombone as a solo instrument. Perhaps pieces by other composers were written without Ravel’s keen insider’s knowledge of jazz or the trombone, but the intention for the sound and style is undoubtably the same, even if it is less well informed. Quite a number of French composers who began using jazz-coloured lyrical trombone solos. In works by these composers it should be borne in mind that jazz-style performance was only a colour and should only be attempted when it is obvious that this was the intention. It should also be noted that jazz influence in these works meant a refined solistic style, as opposed to the boisterousness of earlier jazz influence. When these composers are clearly attempting a soloistic jazzy sound, however, a performer can do as Ravel himself suggested, "do like Arnaud, do a little jazz".
Jazz influence had been one of the large factors in introducing and defining the role of the trombone in chamber ensembles towards the end of the First World War, then again in creating a solo style for the trombone in orchestral music during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Thus it would seem logical that elements of jazz would infuse solo works for the trombone also during this period. In France, however, solo music for wind instruments was very heavily associated with the conservatoires (most importantly the Paris Conservatoire) as these were vehicles for the performance and commissioning of solo works. These bastions of tradition were not at all receptive to the notion of having "dance" music influencing serious compositions. Andre Lafosse, who was trombone professor at the Paris Conservatoire from 1948 until 1960 was quite clear in his view of jazz, saying in his treatise "Methode Complete de la Trombone", "without denying the interesting contributions of jazz, it must nevertheless be put into its place. It is to music what caricature is to painting. Comical effects of tone and production joined to rhythms as curious as they are irresistible make of it a very special art, of which the main object is, for the listener, the relaxation of the mind and dancing………Its style is a very special one, and it can not be too strongly recommended that it should be greeted with great reserve."
The French composers of the 1930’s and 1940’s had also started grouping around Olivier Messiaen in the search for music of very serious content and the popular association of jazz did not at all suit this aesthetic. Thus there was an impasse and the French solo works of the 1930’s and early 1940’s show no definite signs of jazz influence at all.
The solution to this impasse was the "Ballade for Trombone and Piano" by the Swiss composer Frank Martin. The Martin "Ballade" was very influential, particularly in France, as it opened up completely new ideas on how the trombone could be used as a solo instrument. Most importantly, the "Ballade" demonstrated how the jazz language could be used to great dramatic effect in music of a "serious" nature.
There is actually a curious link between Martin and the origin of jazz influence in France in the Swiss conductor Ernst Ansermet. Ansermet was one of the first classical musicians to promote the virtues of jazz in Europe, particularly in the group of Stravinsky, Milhaud and Auric and also through many articles proclaiming the importance of jazz. He had actually given Stravinsky a pile of written jazz music which Stravinsky used in composing the "Ragtime" in L’Histoire du Soldat and the Ragtime for Eleven Instruments. Ansermet’s influence similarly affected Martin, who had used jazz elements in several works. Thus when Martin, was commissioned to write the set piece for the 1940 "Concours d’execution Musicale" in Geneva, it is hardly surprising that he sought an opportunity to use his familiarity with jazz in the unfamiliar idiom of solo trombone music. In the "Ballade for Trombone and Piano" Martin for tackled the issue of combining the latest classical compositional ideas, particularly a novel approach to twelve-tone writing and serial thematic development with a variety of musical styles. The jazz influence is heard the middle section of the work, with highly syncopated passages, runs against the slide (an effect developed in jazz) and in crooning lyrical phrases that lend themselves beautifully to jazz styling
The "Ballade" by Frank Martin was the direct inspiration for a work of the same name by Eugene Bozza. Bozza’s "Ballade for Trombone and Piano" of 1944 was the first of several compositions by this composer, including "New Orleans" (bass trombone and piano) and "Quartet for Trombones" to feature the trombone as a solo instrument and to contain distinct jazz influence. In general Bozza applies jazz influence to the slow, lyrical sections, often with blues-like colourings, strong glissandi and, in this case, elements very reminiscent of Ravel’s"Bolero".
The use of blues-like sounds in slow movements of trombone works became something of a fashion during the 1940’s and 1950’s to the extent that it was considered self-explanatory to entitle whole sections "tempo di blues" in both the 1946 "Capriccio" by Paul Bonneau and the second movement of the 1956 "Concerto for Trombone" by Henri Tomasi. Even Milhaud, who had moved away from jazz influence entirely immediately after writing "Creation du Monde", used blues effects in the second movement of his "Concerto d’Hiver" of 1953 for trombone and string orchestra.
I finish the chronology of jazz influence in French trombone music in the 1950's for several reasons. Most importantly because it was during this period that music that used jazz influence did so freely and with the clear intention of sounding jazz-like. Examples of this type of writing include the last movement of the "Concerto for Trombone" by Tomasi, the 1958 "Sonatine for Trombone and Piano" by Casterede that began this recital and the 1954 "Deux Danses" by Jean Michel Defaye. The 1950's was also the start of a more complex relationship between classical music and jazz, as jazz began to be recognised by classical musicians as a serious art form in its own right, making the issue of influence between the two quite a different matter. The 1950's was also the time respect for and knowledge of jazz-style performance began to be recognised in the French classical trombone world.
From the above information, however, it should be clear that when approaching performing French music from this era, we can do as Ravel himself suggested and "do a little jazz".
