"Difficult"?

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Henry Musikar writes:
> Hoisted on your own petard: Bird IS difficult. Helps to know all the 
> tunes he touchs on and have enough experience with jazz to know where 
> a line would go if someone else were playing it. And even then, you 
> have to let go, just like people recommend for reading Joyce and TRP. 
> When I was a boy, I couldn't stand Bird - too strange and 
> complicated.

I think that was the point. It's not so much to do with musical depth,
more with the shallows you tend to paddle in. I sometimes hum snatches
of Bird tunes (ditto Schoenberg whose firm belief was that one day
people would be so familiar with serial music - or perhaps with
certain of his favoured series which share some key [sorry that's as
in critical, not musical key] intervals - they would whistle it in the
streets. I hum since I cannot whistle). I did not get into Mozart,
Bach or Beethoven until I had already heard more than my fair share of
C20th orchestral music (not to mention all that other C20th music). By
the tim e I became acquainted with Bird it did not seem at all
outlandish to me. In the 50s I doubt many could have had enough
exposure to unconventional harmonies and lacked enough exposure to
conventional harmonies to be able to find Bird's lines hummably
familiar.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.