The Heat Is Off

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 24

The Heat Is Off

EONARD BERNSTEIN’S illustrated lecture on jazz from 2YD last week, which I had eagerly anticipated, in no way let my expectations down. I found it lively and illuminating. Did you realise, for example, that there is a distinct jazz scale, which is simply the major scale with the third, fifth and seventh flattened? And that this scale in conjunction with the major triads, produces dissonances which are ah attempt to sound the African quarter notes from which the whole form developed? It’s worth knowing. Bernstein loves jazz because it is an original art form, never wholly sad, nor wholly happy, which is a somewhat dubious and half-hearted claim to make for anything which calls the emotions into play, but there is something in what he says, particularly of modern, "cool" jazz, which, as he demonstrated, is discreet and subtle, working always towards a greater refinement, towards ever more musical, ever less kinetic end. As an introduction to jazz variations Bernstein played a few Mozart variations with glittering skill, and then gave us "Sweet Sue" performed so variously, that in the progressive jazz world, the sweetness vanished, and so, to my ear did Sue herself: He outlined the forms of blues music, which have an equally rigid pattern, and extemporised a perfectly respectable sounding one to two lines from Macbeth: "I will not be afraid of death and bane/Till Birnam Forest. come to Dunsinane."