“THAT JAZZ BABY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 762, 7 September 1929, Page 29

“THAT JAZZ BABY”

RAPID GROWTH OF NEW MUSIC ALMOST AN ART 1 A decade ago the jazz orchestra was | a very noisy baby, a fearful and tvon- , derful thing'. It was composed ,of a 3ute, a clarinet, drums, a couple of violins, a double-bass, cornet, and trombone, with a pianist who had modelled his touch on a steam-ham-mer trying to maintain diplomatic relations between the strings, woodwind and brasses. The unorclies trai dissension in those early hands began rudely with a desire to translate the old negro croons into festive rhythms, i writes a contributor to “The Cape i Times." Jazz as we know it today originated j in San Francisco, and the head of the j first orchestra known to fame was not a pianist or violinist, as might have happened in the ordinary string combination, but a drummer of surpassing wit and foresight for one of his position. To him, Art Hickman, we owe the soothing wooings and cooings of soft jazz, and the steady, but certain elimj (nation of the dog-fights and what not which gave loud or “hot" jazz its i riotous entry into music. At the ' beginning, there was no scoring for | jazz. A piano score of some melody | was seized upon and pondered over. If found suitable, it became the musi- ! cal calico whose comparative dowdi- | ness was concealed by the crochet j work of other instrumentalists in rehearsal. Those fellows would listen | to the tune played over and over j again on the piano until they had grasped its purport, and then proceed jto fabricate the yodellings, snorts, j sneezes, frog-sonatas and caveman ; asthma which delayed the melody in the execution ol’ its duty. This was hot the worst; the instrumentalists would alter then’ contributions after the first night, add pizzlcatti and obbligati of strange design which were never polite enough to apologise for their intrusion, and thus brought to j life the dictum that no two perform- ! ances of jazz were ever alike j It should be borne In mind that | the saxophone, now so prominent in j jazz, and assured of even more prodigal consideration on the part of American composers, was practically unknown in those early days. It came into use some years later, very be latedly justifying the hopes of its inventor three decades after his death j in Paris. The Saxophone’s Inventor There is so little told about Adolphe Joseph Sax that one may be pardoned for rescuing him temporarily from oblivion. He was a Belgian, born at Dinant seven months after the downfall of Napoleon at Waterloo. He inherited from his father a peculiar gift for improving musical instruments, and he started off after his arrival in Paris in the lS4o’s by patenting a saxhorn, a dulcet offspring of the bugle. Tlten came a squad of cyclinder instruments calied saxatrombas, followed by the saxaphone proper. This latter instrument was eloquent of the then novel principle that it Is not the material of an instrumental tube which governs the quality of the tone produced, but the quantity of air blown in by the player. Needless to say, Sax died poor. Plis little factory passed out to the tap of the auctioneer’s hammer. His was the fate of the aesthetic ivvo lutionary in all walks of art. He was completely misunderstood. An obscure composer named Kastner introduced the saxophone into one of his forlorn operas many years ago, and Bizet, Meyerbeer. and. Massenet have fed the orphan on a few bars at odd times, while John Philip Sousa employed a quartette of saxophones in his famous band without showing any suspicion of Its future possibilities; but for tire most part it remained neglected. Who was responsible for its present popularity is not known, but since it became the American national instrument its production and development have become enormous. Already three new types have been added to the original Sax four, though the burliest of the party, the contrabass, is rarely engaged, because it is too weighty, and requires a young hurricane down its tubes to make it whisper huskily of love and roses. Its smallest brother, the soprano, is, however, assured of many a night out. Its top note, the second G above the treble cleff. is somewhere above the Everest of melody. And it can ski down the scale with a honeyed sandpaper effect. The significance of the saxophone to the jazz merchant is its virtue as a substitute, the modern soprano in C serving as a good imitation of the oboe, just as the tenor in B flat can understudy for the ’cello. As for its ousting the clarinet, it has become the tertium quid of young American writers, especially married to the older instruments for orchestral pur poses, and it is beginning to lurp larger composers from the downy bed of orthodoxy and take them out for jaunty midnight walks, where this metaphor need not further follow them. Jazz orchestricians have succumbed in droves to the new—or late | comer’s —burning glances, and we, I secure in the fond belief that the ; stranger kept no better company than ; the ukulele, hare bellowed for (lie | police to move her on. What is to become of jazz now | that it has emerged from its barj room adolescence, and has started to preen itself and choose a good tailor for an onslaught on superior society? Seemingly enriched by the addition of the saxophone, it is also relying for its progress on the despised banjo and the formerly despicable noises produced by the drur r in his corner. No longer improvising like his forerunner Of a decade ago, but carefully orchestrated for, like the proudest saxophonist in the combination. (e is now a man of eminence. What will the jazz b-“y grow up into, in another decade? America has recently heard George Gershwin’s “One Hundred and Thirty Fifth Street,” the first serious operatic production in jazz music, and an ex-conductor of the M-w-h Royal Opera found it fondling his inner sensibilities with its extraordinary dignity and taste.