GRGR(5) - Cherokee and bebop

[Michael Arnowitt]

Andrew Dinn wrote:
"Well, that's not quite what I meant. I was talking about the selection
of the tone row, which is done by perming the original monotonically
increasing sequence of semitones. Somtimes the original perm was built
so that the front and back halves were retrogrades/inversions (after
transposition, naturally) but this was not a requirement merely a
pleasing congruence (ok, it's quite possible that Webern never used a
row which did not have some such symmetry but that's Webern).

"But to respond to your doubt I have actually heard improvised
inversions and retrogrades, from a (Edinburgh born but no longer
Edinburgh resident) sax player called John Burgess.

"Also, I think some of Miles Davis' recordings use either inverted or
retrogade lines or maybe both - can't recall the details but the
likely culprit is probably an early 1980s album - forgotten the name
of the album too - anyway, an album whose track titles are all colours
and which marked both a return to form for Davis and a resumption of
collaboration with some old time mates including John McLaughlin.
Davis' efforts are probably not improvised, though."

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   This last recording is entitled "Aura" and is one of my favorite Miles
recordings -- and you're right:  guilty as charged, the music is indeed
based on serial techniques.  It was recorded in 1984 on Columbia but it
looks like it didn't come out until 1989.  Great music.

   Another bebop tune, "Oleo," mentioned in one of the other posts, also has
a "theme" that consists of some very striking transformations of about a
five-note set.  They don't seem to be serial by the letter of the law, but
perhaps in spirit.  I assume the tune is named "Oleo" because the
permutations are a little slippery...

   Regarding Anton Webern, folks may be interested to know that he died by
being shot accidentally by an American soldier (hmmm...) in the last weeks
of WW II.

   In my previous post I spoke of looking at the Kenosha Kid variations as a
musical performance by Pynchon, sort of a jazz improv.  I should have
mentioned that I was set off on this idea by a perhaps inadvertent pun in
the second paragraph of (4), where Pynchon writes, "These changes on the
text 'You never did the Kenosha Kid' are occupying Slothrop's awareness..."
The word "changes" or "the changes" is a jazz term for the progression of
chords (harmonies) underlying a jazz tune.

-- Michael Arnowitt