Jazz for aficionados

To my fellow poets, @mahgister and @audio-b-dog , thanks for your contributions! 

I don't currently have anything to offer in this vein, currently but perhaps your work will inspire something...  ;o) 

@maghister, I applaud you for writing about music. So few poems attempt to.

I'm going to try to dig a little deeper into your poem as well as your wonderful talk about music and time. Since you mentioned Leibniz who was a mathematician as well as a philosopher, I am going try to take a step further into your discussion of time and music.

In Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, he discusses time a lot, talking about the human experience of time. In my mind, however, human is an example of consciousness. We need the concept of consciousness so that we can talk about "experiencing" time, which I think you are talking about in regards to humans listening to music.

Just to review some basics. A person traveling fast enough will age more slowly relative to a person "standing still." A person closer to a gravitational source will age more slowly than a person farther away. This time differential had to be taken into account in order to make gps work. Since the satellite is farther from the earth's gravitational field, it's time ticks a tad quicker than cars on earth. If the differential is not taken into account, cars would be running into trees.

Einstein also talked about basic human conscious experience. A rollercoaster distorts our conscious experience of time, as do other intense experiences. Although this kind of distortion cannot be measured against a clock. It's more of a feeling of time.

Yet I think I can safely say that our human consciousness is intertwined with time. If a person is looking at a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light, time is moving more quickly for the viewer. And thus, the twin experiment in which one twin is on the spaceship and returns to earth younger than the twin who was "standing still."

Getting back to music, I think you are talking about certain music--music which does not move to the ticking of a metronome--interacting with the listener's experience of time. And perhaps this is why some of us like music that does not accentuate a regular beat. 

I'm going to take a step here that I haven't heard others on this forum take--sex. I have never seen people grin so much and so deeply as jazz musicians on a stage. Often these grins seem to come from the bass player and drummer, the guys in charge of time. And when they get off a regular metronomic beat, they grin all the more. The only other place I have seen such an all-encompassing grin is having sex, which also distorts conscious time to a great degree.

Most of the things I can think of which are "fun," like rollercoasters (not at my age, though), sex, and music, (also some drugs), seem to have the effect of altering our consciousness of time. And I think maybe that is what you are getting at in your poem and your writings about Scriabin, music, and time.

As for the primal, we know that upper Paleolithic people (40,000 plus years ago) played music, because we have found musical instruments that old. From my studies, I believe that art and spiritual practices were one experience beyond distinction for the ancients. I also believe that womens were their shamans and leaders, but that's another story.

What was the essence of these primal people's "celebrations"? I think it was an ecstatic yowl that they existed as part of the universe. And now I will take a step that cannot be proven (although there is certainly evidence) and say that the universe itself is conscious. 

If primal people celebrated their existence as part of the conscious universe, then they were ecstatically crying out from their souls about being part of the entire creation. I don't think they believed in a creator yet. In my opinion that was a bad turn and led to metronomic time. 

Is this extrapolation close to what you were getting at?

BTW, I will be listening to Scriabin this week. I have a feeling that Horowitz is not on your list of people who play him well.

@frogman, 

Would I being going too far astray if I were to say that the melodic aspect of jazz came from Euro-Americans? In most of the American art I am familiar with the artists want to establish an American voice. Would this not also be true of jazz?

Horowitz is able to play everything more than well.... But Scriabin music ask for a magician dedicated to him in a total devotion ( like Wagner and Beethoven ask for total devotion)...

He is not my favorite in Scriabin, for example Igor Zhukov is better for Scriabin but who know him ?

Physical time has nothing to do with musical time, physical time is measured metronomically or with an hour glass or a watch...

Musical time cannot be measured by a metronome, there is a "beat" in it that swing for some heart  as another heart and cannot be measured... Musical time result from the encounter of the heart of a musician with the heart of another musician ( a collegue, a meastro, a composer ) then cannot be measured, it surge one moment to the next imprevisible...

It is like that Scriabin must be played... Scriabin ask for another musician because his goal was awaking humanity... On this he differ from Bach who serve God, and resemble Beethoven more than Wagner ( Wagner use an ideology on which and from which his music is born).

I discovered also that Liszt also like Scriabin is almost impossible to play for the same reason ...

I begin suddenly to be moved by Liszt now who became one of my God thanks to very few pianist able to play it...

Scriabin is born not only from Chopin  but from Liszt like a blacksmith in his forge, scuplting iron in the form of blooming flower.

 Here what Debussy has to say about his contemporary Scriabin:

«This is a recording from one of Debussy’s concerts. He performed this piece after traveling to the Gobi Desert. Debussy remarked once during his tour: "Even composers like Liszt, Beethoven, and Chopin could not reach the complexity brought by Alexander Scriabin." "I have never seen such genius in a piece."»

listen to Debussy  playing Scriabin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wZkA-HvPUU

I must add about Debussy that i discovred him with Ivan Moravec, a god pianist also who put me to ecstasy able to play the "cathédrale engloutie" so well i see the cathédrale before me appearing... Since i bought all albums of Moravec...He is my third God pianist.

 Even with the bad recording we can hear that Debussy get scriabin right. it is incredibly moving ..His playing is delicately chiseled with a timing sense extraordinary which prove out of any doubt that he understood Scriabin and not only loved him.

Compare to Sofronitsky interpretation the God pianist of Scriabin in his daughter opinion and in the mind of all Russians : 

Sofronitsky and his volcanic playing :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RwdHs756l4&list=RD1RwdHs756l4&start_radio=1

Now listen Scriabin himself as "recorded" by mechanical method  : 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfYMFNjSMnU&list=RDVfYMFNjSMnU&start_radio=1

 Scriabin is the greatest pianist  with Liszt ( i discovered Liszt with Ervin Nyiregyházi my second interpreter with Sofronitsky/Scriabin)

Is this extrapolation close to what you were getting at?

BTW, I will be listening to Scriabin this week. I have a feeling that Horowitz is not on your list of people who play him well.

@mahgister, what I am hearing from you, while listening to Scriabin played by Richter, is about how a musician can translate the composer's passion, and a large aspect of that is in the understanding of timing, or perhaps the composer's magical heartbeat. I was talking about the listener getting so involved in the music that she loses a sense of time. I think that is what passionate moments are about.

@stuartk, I will post a poem below about jazz. It might help in the understanding of the poem to know how I work. I was taught, and I have taught others, to write in images. As one of the most influential American poets, William Carlos Williams, said: "There are no ideas but in things." So poems are not about ideas, they are more about dreams and the translation of images. That approach to poetry is difficult to accomplish but also freeing. Perhaps it might free you?

Max Beckman was a pre-Hitlerian German painter who sensed what was coming and captured the distortions of Germany to come under Hitler. In Germany, as in America, jazz was considered "decadent" music. It was played in speakeasys here and in clubs in Germany shunned by conservative society. 

As @maghister said, rhythm is a very integral part of poems. And I worked carefully on the lines and the way the rhythm works.

MAX BECKMAN'S FACES

they were all caught

looking over

their shoulders stunned

by how easy young bodies

glide into jazz

&

the way cigarette

smoke

from a vamp

aging before our

eyes crawls

up the cheek

of an idle dandy

& disappears

in his hair

Listening to Lee Morgan,  Here’s Lee Morgan. (1960-2025 Remaster)