Art, Jazz & Philosophy
INDEX: Dextern Gordon (An Ort und Stelle - jazz in Ko[penhagen, German TV, 1963) - St. John Coltrane Church of San Francisco - Paul Lafargue (The Rights of the Horse and the Rights of Man, 1990) - Thelonious Monk Quartet Live in Poland (1966) - Andrew Kania (The Philosophy of Music, 2017) - Don and Moki Cherry (It Is Not my Music, Sweden 1970s) - Margaret A. Boden (The Creative Mind, 1990)
|
30th Oct., 2020
Dextern Gordon (An Ort und Stelle – Jazz in Kopenhagen, German TV, 1963) Live in Copenhagen, 1962. Documentary made in 1962 for the German TV program, An Ort und Stelle: Jazz in Kopenhagen. eaturing Dexter Gordon (ts), Lars Gulin (bar), Sahib Shihab (fl/as), Harold Goldberg (p), Benny Nielsen (b) and drummer Alex Riel. Club scenes at Copenhagen's Jazzhus Montmatre. ired 1963. Radio Bremen, coord. Klaus Lonrenzen. This documentary opens with a train stopping at Copenhagen station. Waiting there are pianist Harold Goldberg, bassist Benny Nielsen and drummer Alex Riel. Lars Gulin gets off the train and they all meet with Gordon and flutist Sahib Shihab. Actress Hanne Borchsenius joins Gordon for awhile. An immaculate love and jazz dream. |
|
30th Oct., 2020
Paul Lafargue, The Rights of the Horse and the Rights of Man(1900)
Capitalist Civilization has endowed the wage-worker with the metaphysical Rights of Man, but this is only to rivet him more closely and more firmly to his economic duty.
“I make you free,” so speak the Rights of Man to the laborer, “free to earn a wretched living and turn your employer into a millionaire; free to sell him your liberty for a mouthful of bread. He will imprison you ten hours or twelve hours in his workshops; he will not let you go till you are wearied to the marrow of your bones, till you have just enough strength left to gulp down your soup and sink into a heavy sleep. You have but one of your rights that you may not sell, and that is the right to pay taxes.”
Progress and Civilization may be hard on wage-working humanity but they have all a mother’s tenderness for the animals which stupid bipeds call “lower.”
Civilization has especially favored the equine race: it would be too great a task to go through the long list of its benefactions; I will name but a few, of general notoriety, that I may awaken and inflame the passionate desires of the workers, now torpid in their misery.
Horses are divided into distinct classes. The equine aristocracy enjoys so many and so oppressive privileges, that if the human-faced brutes which serve them as jockeys, trainers, stable valets and grooms were not morally degraded to the point of not feeling their shame, they would have rebelled against their lords and masters, whom they rub down, groom, brush and comb, also making their beds, cleaning up their excrements and receiving bites and kicks by way of thanks.
Aristocratic horses, like capitalists, do not work; and when they exercise themselves in the fields they look disdainfully, with a contempt, upon the human animals which plow and seed the lands, mow and rake the meadows, to provide them with oats, clover, timothy and other succulent plants.
These four-footed favorites of Civilization command such social influence that they impose their wills upon the capitalists, their brothers in privilege; they force the loftiest of them to come with their beautiful ladies and take tea in the stables, inhaling the acrid perfumes of their solid and liquid evacuations. And when these lords consent to parade in public, they require from ten to twenty thousand men and women to stack themselves up on uncomfortable seats, under the broiling sun, to admire their exquisitely chiseled forms and their feats of running and leaping. They respect none of the social dignities before which the votaries of the Rights of Man bow in reverence. At Chantilly not long ago one of the favorites for the grand prize launched a kick at the king of Belgium, because it did not like the looks of his head. His royal majesty, who adores horses, murmured an apology and withdrew.
It is fortunate that these horses, who can count more authentic ancestors than the houses of Orleans and Hohenzollern, have not been corrupted by their high social station; had they taken it into their heads to rival the capitalists in aesthetic pretensions, profligate luxury and depraved tastes, such as wearing lace and diamonds, and drinking champagne and Chateau-Margaux, a blacker misery and more overwhelming drudgery would he impending over the class of wage-workers.
Thrice happy is it for proletarian humanity that these equine aristocrats have not taken the fancy of feeding upon human flesh, like the old Bengal tigers which rove around the villages of India to carry off women and children; if unhappily the horses had been man-eaters, the capitalists, who can refuse them nothing, would have built slaughter-houses for wage-workers, where they could carve out and dress boy sirloins, woman hams and girl roasts to satisfy their anthropophagic tastes.
The proletarian horses, not so well endowed, have to work for their peck of oats, but the capitalist class, through deference for the aristocrats of the equine race, concedes to the working horses rights that are far more solid and real than those inscribed in the “Rights of Man.” The first of rights, the right to existence, which no civilized society will recognize for laborers, is possessed by horses.
The colt, even before his birth, while still in the fetus state, begins to enjoy the right to existence; his mother, when her pregnancy has scarcely begun, is discharged from all work and sent into the country to fashion the new being in peace and comfort; she remains near him to suckle him and teach him to choose the delicious grasses of the meadow, in which he gambols until he is grown.
The moralists and politicians of the “Rights of Man” think it would be monstrous to grant such rights to the laborers; I raised a tempest in the Chamber of Deputies when I asked that women, two months before and two months after confinement, should have the right and the means to absent themselves from the factory. My proposition upset the ethics of civilization and shook the capitalist order. What an abominable abomination – to demand for babies the rights of colts.
As for the young proletarians, they can scarcely trot on their little toes before they are condemned to hard labor in the prisons of capitalism, while the colts develop freely under kindly Nature; care is taken that they be completely formed before they are set to work and their tasks are proportioned to their strength with a tender care.
This care on the part of the capitalists follows them all through their lives. We may still recall the noble indignation of the bourgeois press when it learned that the omnibus company was using peat and tannery waste in its stalls as a substitute for straw: to think of the unhappy horses having such poor litters! The more delicate souls of the bourgeoisie have in every capitalist country organized societies for the protection of animals, in order to prove that they can not be excited by the fate of the small victims of industry. Schopenhauer, the bourgeois philosopher, in whom was incarnated so perfectly the gross egoism of the philistine, could not hear the cracking of a whip without his heart being torn by it.
This same omnibus company, which works its laborers from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, requires from its dear horses only five to seven hours. It has bought green meadows in which they may recuperate from fatigue or indisposition. Its policy is to expend more for the entertainment of a quadrupled than for paying the wages of a biped. It has never occurred to any legislator nor to any fanatical advocate of the “Rights of Man” to reduce the horse’s daily pittance in order to assure him a retreat that would be of service to him only after his death.
The Rights of Horses have not been posted up; they are “unwritten rights,” as Socrates called the laws implanted by Nature in the consciousness of all men.
The horse has shown his wisdom in contenting himself with these rights, with no thought of demanding those of the citizen; he has judged that he would have been as stupid as man if he had sacrificed his mess of lentils for the metaphysical banquet of Rights to Revolt, to Equality, to Liberty, and other trivialities which to the proletariat are about as useful as a cautery on a wooden leg.
Civilization, though partial to the equine race, has not shown herself indifferent to the fate of the other animals. Sheep, like canons, pass their days in pleasant and plentiful idleness; they are fed in the stable on barley, lucerne, rutabagas and other roots, raised by wage-workers; shepherds conduct them to feed in fat pastures, and when the sun parches the plain, they are carried to where they can browse on the tender grass of the mountains.
The Church, which has burned her heretics, and regrets that she can not again bring up her faithful sons in the love of “mutton,” represents Jesus, under the form of a kind shepherd, bearing upon his shoulders a weary lamb.
True, the love for the ram and the ewe is in the last analysis only the love for the leg of mutton and the cutlet, just as the Liberty of the Rights of Man is nothing but the slavery of the wage-worker, since our jesuitical Civilization always disguises capitalist exploitation in eternal principles and bourgeois egoism in noble sentiments; yet at least the bourgeois tends and fattens the sheep up to the day of the sacrifice, while he seizes the laborer still warm from the workshop and lean from toil to send him to the shambles of Tonquin or Madagascar.
Laborers of all crafts, you who toil so hard to create your poverty in producing the wealth of the capitalists, arise, arise! Since the buffoons of parliament unfurl the Rights of Man, do you boldly demand for yourselves, your wives and your children the Rights of the Horse.
Paul Lafargue, The Rights of the Horse and the Rights of Man(1900)
Capitalist Civilization has endowed the wage-worker with the metaphysical Rights of Man, but this is only to rivet him more closely and more firmly to his economic duty.
“I make you free,” so speak the Rights of Man to the laborer, “free to earn a wretched living and turn your employer into a millionaire; free to sell him your liberty for a mouthful of bread. He will imprison you ten hours or twelve hours in his workshops; he will not let you go till you are wearied to the marrow of your bones, till you have just enough strength left to gulp down your soup and sink into a heavy sleep. You have but one of your rights that you may not sell, and that is the right to pay taxes.”
Progress and Civilization may be hard on wage-working humanity but they have all a mother’s tenderness for the animals which stupid bipeds call “lower.”
Civilization has especially favored the equine race: it would be too great a task to go through the long list of its benefactions; I will name but a few, of general notoriety, that I may awaken and inflame the passionate desires of the workers, now torpid in their misery.
Horses are divided into distinct classes. The equine aristocracy enjoys so many and so oppressive privileges, that if the human-faced brutes which serve them as jockeys, trainers, stable valets and grooms were not morally degraded to the point of not feeling their shame, they would have rebelled against their lords and masters, whom they rub down, groom, brush and comb, also making their beds, cleaning up their excrements and receiving bites and kicks by way of thanks.
Aristocratic horses, like capitalists, do not work; and when they exercise themselves in the fields they look disdainfully, with a contempt, upon the human animals which plow and seed the lands, mow and rake the meadows, to provide them with oats, clover, timothy and other succulent plants.
These four-footed favorites of Civilization command such social influence that they impose their wills upon the capitalists, their brothers in privilege; they force the loftiest of them to come with their beautiful ladies and take tea in the stables, inhaling the acrid perfumes of their solid and liquid evacuations. And when these lords consent to parade in public, they require from ten to twenty thousand men and women to stack themselves up on uncomfortable seats, under the broiling sun, to admire their exquisitely chiseled forms and their feats of running and leaping. They respect none of the social dignities before which the votaries of the Rights of Man bow in reverence. At Chantilly not long ago one of the favorites for the grand prize launched a kick at the king of Belgium, because it did not like the looks of his head. His royal majesty, who adores horses, murmured an apology and withdrew.
It is fortunate that these horses, who can count more authentic ancestors than the houses of Orleans and Hohenzollern, have not been corrupted by their high social station; had they taken it into their heads to rival the capitalists in aesthetic pretensions, profligate luxury and depraved tastes, such as wearing lace and diamonds, and drinking champagne and Chateau-Margaux, a blacker misery and more overwhelming drudgery would he impending over the class of wage-workers.
Thrice happy is it for proletarian humanity that these equine aristocrats have not taken the fancy of feeding upon human flesh, like the old Bengal tigers which rove around the villages of India to carry off women and children; if unhappily the horses had been man-eaters, the capitalists, who can refuse them nothing, would have built slaughter-houses for wage-workers, where they could carve out and dress boy sirloins, woman hams and girl roasts to satisfy their anthropophagic tastes.
The proletarian horses, not so well endowed, have to work for their peck of oats, but the capitalist class, through deference for the aristocrats of the equine race, concedes to the working horses rights that are far more solid and real than those inscribed in the “Rights of Man.” The first of rights, the right to existence, which no civilized society will recognize for laborers, is possessed by horses.
The colt, even before his birth, while still in the fetus state, begins to enjoy the right to existence; his mother, when her pregnancy has scarcely begun, is discharged from all work and sent into the country to fashion the new being in peace and comfort; she remains near him to suckle him and teach him to choose the delicious grasses of the meadow, in which he gambols until he is grown.
The moralists and politicians of the “Rights of Man” think it would be monstrous to grant such rights to the laborers; I raised a tempest in the Chamber of Deputies when I asked that women, two months before and two months after confinement, should have the right and the means to absent themselves from the factory. My proposition upset the ethics of civilization and shook the capitalist order. What an abominable abomination – to demand for babies the rights of colts.
As for the young proletarians, they can scarcely trot on their little toes before they are condemned to hard labor in the prisons of capitalism, while the colts develop freely under kindly Nature; care is taken that they be completely formed before they are set to work and their tasks are proportioned to their strength with a tender care.
This care on the part of the capitalists follows them all through their lives. We may still recall the noble indignation of the bourgeois press when it learned that the omnibus company was using peat and tannery waste in its stalls as a substitute for straw: to think of the unhappy horses having such poor litters! The more delicate souls of the bourgeoisie have in every capitalist country organized societies for the protection of animals, in order to prove that they can not be excited by the fate of the small victims of industry. Schopenhauer, the bourgeois philosopher, in whom was incarnated so perfectly the gross egoism of the philistine, could not hear the cracking of a whip without his heart being torn by it.
This same omnibus company, which works its laborers from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, requires from its dear horses only five to seven hours. It has bought green meadows in which they may recuperate from fatigue or indisposition. Its policy is to expend more for the entertainment of a quadrupled than for paying the wages of a biped. It has never occurred to any legislator nor to any fanatical advocate of the “Rights of Man” to reduce the horse’s daily pittance in order to assure him a retreat that would be of service to him only after his death.
The Rights of Horses have not been posted up; they are “unwritten rights,” as Socrates called the laws implanted by Nature in the consciousness of all men.
The horse has shown his wisdom in contenting himself with these rights, with no thought of demanding those of the citizen; he has judged that he would have been as stupid as man if he had sacrificed his mess of lentils for the metaphysical banquet of Rights to Revolt, to Equality, to Liberty, and other trivialities which to the proletariat are about as useful as a cautery on a wooden leg.
Civilization, though partial to the equine race, has not shown herself indifferent to the fate of the other animals. Sheep, like canons, pass their days in pleasant and plentiful idleness; they are fed in the stable on barley, lucerne, rutabagas and other roots, raised by wage-workers; shepherds conduct them to feed in fat pastures, and when the sun parches the plain, they are carried to where they can browse on the tender grass of the mountains.
The Church, which has burned her heretics, and regrets that she can not again bring up her faithful sons in the love of “mutton,” represents Jesus, under the form of a kind shepherd, bearing upon his shoulders a weary lamb.
True, the love for the ram and the ewe is in the last analysis only the love for the leg of mutton and the cutlet, just as the Liberty of the Rights of Man is nothing but the slavery of the wage-worker, since our jesuitical Civilization always disguises capitalist exploitation in eternal principles and bourgeois egoism in noble sentiments; yet at least the bourgeois tends and fattens the sheep up to the day of the sacrifice, while he seizes the laborer still warm from the workshop and lean from toil to send him to the shambles of Tonquin or Madagascar.
Laborers of all crafts, you who toil so hard to create your poverty in producing the wealth of the capitalists, arise, arise! Since the buffoons of parliament unfurl the Rights of Man, do you boldly demand for yourselves, your wives and your children the Rights of the Horse.
|
24th Oct., 2020
THE THELONIOUS MONK QUARTET LIVE IN POLAND (Varsaw, April 1966) "Epistrophy" by Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke "Round midnight" by Thelonious Monk, Bernie Hanighen, Cootie Williams "Lulu's back in town" by Al Dubin, Harry Warren Personnel: Charlie Rouse, tenor sax; Thelonious Monk, piano; Larry Gales, acoustic double bass; Ben Riley, drums. Recorded in April 1966 in Warsaw. |
This live session (one of two) recorded by the Polish public television in 1966 took place two years before Monk appeared on the cover of Time magazine. 'Everyone who came to meet his plane wore a fur hat, and the sight was too much for him to bear. "Man, we got to have those!" he told his sidemen, and for fear that the hat stores would be closed before they could get to downtown Helsinki ...' http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873856,00.html
|
Cover Credit: BORIS CHALIAPIN
|
23rd Oct., 2020
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Hazrat Inayat Khan
The Philosophy of Music
First published Mon Oct 22, 2007; substantive revision Tue Jul 11, 2017
Philosophy of music is the study of fundamental questions about the nature and value of music and our experience of it. Like any “philosophy of X”, it presupposes knowledge of its target. However, unlike philosophy of science, say, the target of philosophy of music is a practice most people have a significant background in, merely as a result of being members of a musical culture. Music plays a central role in many people’s lives. Thus, as with the central questions of metaphysics and epistemology, not only can most people quickly grasp the philosophical questions music raises, they tend to have thought about some of those questions before encountering the academic discipline itself. (This is as good a place as any to note that I, like most in the English-speaking philosophical world, focus exclusively on Western musical traditions. For criticism of this tendency, see Alperson 2009. For some exceptions to it, see S. Davies 2001: 254–94) and Feagin 2007.)
Music is perhaps the art that presents the most philosophical puzzles. Unlike painting, its works often have multiple instances, none of which can be identified with the work itself. Thus, the question of what exactly the work is is initially more puzzling than the same question about works of painting, which appear (at least initially) to be ordinary physical objects. Unlike much literature, the instances of a work are performances, which offer interpretations of the work, yet the work can also be interpreted (perhaps in a different sense) independently of any performance, and performances themselves can be interpreted. This talk of “interpretation” points to the fact that we find music an art steeped with meaning, and yet, unlike drama, pure instrumental music has no obvious semantic content. This quickly raises the question of why we should find music so valuable. Central to many philosophers’ thinking on these subjects has been music’s apparent ability to express emotions while remaining an abstract art in some sense.
This entry focuses almost exclusively on work in the philosophy of music that is recent—from within the last fifty years—and in an analytic vein (broadly construed). For a much broader introduction to philosophy of music, covering its history, major figures, connections with other disciplines, and a wider range of topics, see Gracyk & Kania 2011. Useful single-author overviews include Scruton 1997, Kivy 2002, and Hamilton 2007.
Kania, Andrew, "The Philosophy of Music", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/
First published Mon Oct 22, 2007; substantive revision Tue Jul 11, 2017
Philosophy of music is the study of fundamental questions about the nature and value of music and our experience of it. Like any “philosophy of X”, it presupposes knowledge of its target. However, unlike philosophy of science, say, the target of philosophy of music is a practice most people have a significant background in, merely as a result of being members of a musical culture. Music plays a central role in many people’s lives. Thus, as with the central questions of metaphysics and epistemology, not only can most people quickly grasp the philosophical questions music raises, they tend to have thought about some of those questions before encountering the academic discipline itself. (This is as good a place as any to note that I, like most in the English-speaking philosophical world, focus exclusively on Western musical traditions. For criticism of this tendency, see Alperson 2009. For some exceptions to it, see S. Davies 2001: 254–94) and Feagin 2007.)
Music is perhaps the art that presents the most philosophical puzzles. Unlike painting, its works often have multiple instances, none of which can be identified with the work itself. Thus, the question of what exactly the work is is initially more puzzling than the same question about works of painting, which appear (at least initially) to be ordinary physical objects. Unlike much literature, the instances of a work are performances, which offer interpretations of the work, yet the work can also be interpreted (perhaps in a different sense) independently of any performance, and performances themselves can be interpreted. This talk of “interpretation” points to the fact that we find music an art steeped with meaning, and yet, unlike drama, pure instrumental music has no obvious semantic content. This quickly raises the question of why we should find music so valuable. Central to many philosophers’ thinking on these subjects has been music’s apparent ability to express emotions while remaining an abstract art in some sense.
This entry focuses almost exclusively on work in the philosophy of music that is recent—from within the last fifty years—and in an analytic vein (broadly construed). For a much broader introduction to philosophy of music, covering its history, major figures, connections with other disciplines, and a wider range of topics, see Gracyk & Kania 2011. Useful single-author overviews include Scruton 1997, Kivy 2002, and Hamilton 2007.
Kania, Andrew, "The Philosophy of Music", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/
23 Oct., 2020
Don and Moki Cherry lived in Tågarp, Sweden, in the 1970s. This one-hour film includes music sketches and street improvisations in SoHo, New York, as well as cameos and performances by Collin Walcott, rashied Ali, James Blood Ulmer and others. https://www.modernamuseet.se/stockholm/en/event/it-is-not-my-music/
|
20th Oct., 2020
|
|
How does a jazz musician create pleasing harmonies, interesting rhythms and acceptable melodies? These questions have tackled by the psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird. An accomplished jazz-pianist himself, he has written a program modeling improvisation in the style pioneered by Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie. The program generates schematic chord-sequences and then, using the chord-sequence as input, improvises both actual chords and bass-lines melodies (and rhythms).
Modern jazz is a special case of tonal music. It is based on underlying chord-sequences (the twelve-bar blues, for example), agreed before the performance is begun and repeated until (after a certain number of repetitions) it ends.
Each chord in the chord-sequence is defined by its key and its harmonic type (tonic, dominant and so on); six types are commonly used. Modulation is more common, and more free, within chord-sequences than in classical music. For instance, the jazz-musician can modulate to any new tonic (although Johnson-Laird mentions one harmonic interval which is very rarely used).
The conceptual space of all possible chord-sequences is not only very large, but structurally complex. Modulation, for instance, involve the embedding of mini sequences within other sequences –whose beginning and end have to ‘match’ (for example, by returning to the home key).
Modern jazz is a special case of tonal music. It is based on underlying chord-sequences (the twelve-bar blues, for example), agreed before the performance is begun and repeated until (after a certain number of repetitions) it ends.
Each chord in the chord-sequence is defined by its key and its harmonic type (tonic, dominant and so on); six types are commonly used. Modulation is more common, and more free, within chord-sequences than in classical music. For instance, the jazz-musician can modulate to any new tonic (although Johnson-Laird mentions one harmonic interval which is very rarely used).
The conceptual space of all possible chord-sequences is not only very large, but structurally complex. Modulation, for instance, involve the embedding of mini sequences within other sequences –whose beginning and end have to ‘match’ (for example, by returning to the home key).
Johnson-Laird points out that this hierarchical can be defined only by a grammar of considerable computational power. ‘Nesting’ chord-sequences within sequences, while keeping the harmonic context coherent at every level, puts a large load on memory –so large that a written notation (allowing for deliberate backtracking) is helpful. Indeed, jazz composers may take many hours of careful thought to build their chord-sequences, which they write down using a special harmonic notation.
To appreciate what Johnson-Laird is saying, we need to wrestle with the jazz-buff’s arcane musical notation. (It is even less familiar to most of us than are bar-lines, crotches and quavers.) Instead, consider an analogy from language: The potato that the rat that the cat that the flea bit chased around the block on the first fine Tuesday in May nibbled is rotting.
If you can understand this multiply nested sentence without penciling in the phrase-boundaries, or at least pointing to them, I take my hat off to you.
Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths & Mechanisms (Weidenfield and Nicolson, London 1990)
To appreciate what Johnson-Laird is saying, we need to wrestle with the jazz-buff’s arcane musical notation. (It is even less familiar to most of us than are bar-lines, crotches and quavers.) Instead, consider an analogy from language: The potato that the rat that the cat that the flea bit chased around the block on the first fine Tuesday in May nibbled is rotting.
If you can understand this multiply nested sentence without penciling in the phrase-boundaries, or at least pointing to them, I take my hat off to you.
Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind: Myths & Mechanisms (Weidenfield and Nicolson, London 1990)
13th Oct., 2020
Interfacing Jazz: A Study in Computer-Mediated Jazz Music Creation and Performance
Rui Miguel Silva Sampaio Dias
Universidade do Porto
https://repositorio-aberto.up.pt/bitstream/10216/116202/2/293204.pdf
Cognition in Jazz Improvisation: An Exploratory Study
David Mendonça (mendonca@njit.edu)
William A. Wallace (wallaw@rpi.edu)
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.59.7096&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Strategy in Contemporary Jazz Improvisation: Theory and Practice
Thomas Williams
http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/842640/1/Strategy%20in%20Contemporary%20Jazz%20Improvisation%20-%20Theory%20and%20Practice.pdf
© Daniel Yáñez González-Irún 2021