Sunday, March 19, 2017

Henry Martin on Miles Davis's "Four"

Continuing the series of posts based on entries from my internet search on "Ascending Urlinie," I look at an article by Henry Martin and a response by Mark McFarland.

The citation is Henry Martin. 2011b. “Schenker and the Tonal Jazz Repertory.” Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie [Dutch Journal of Music Theory] 16, no. 1: 1–20. I found this through the journal's archive: link. Martin has been a long-time advocate of Schenkerian analysis applied to the jazz repertoire. His publications can be accessed through his personal website: link.

"This paper proposes ways of expanding the three Schenkerian paradigms (Ursätze) to enable more convincing readings of problematic pieces found in the traditional jazz repertory of standards written generally before 1950. . . . I hope to show that background paradigms differing from Schenker’s provide superior readings of these pieces. I also hope that these additional paradigms will suggest yet even further extensions applicable to jazz literature that is less conventionally tonal" (1). Martin takes up this last issue in a detailed list at the end of the article (pp. 16-18). Here I am concerned with the three analyses that provide the case studies: (1) Buster & Bennie Moten, "Moten Swing," A section only; (2) Sy Oliver, "Opus One," cadencing A section; (3) Miles Davis, "Four" (he shows the final eight bars).

(1) Buster & Bennie Moten, "Moten Swing," A section only;

(2) Sy Oliver, "Opus One," cadencing A section;

(3) Miles Davis, "Four" (he shows the final eight bars, that is, all of the continuation). Here is a condensed version of his level c, a middleground 2, showing the elements of the rising line with its pre-figuring in ^6 as neighbor to ^5. Note the interruption symbol in bar 4 -- we have seen this interruption of the rising line at ^6 before, in the recent post on Naphtali Wagner's chapter about "She's Leaving Home."


Here is a lead sheet I downloaded from an online source (there are multiple copies of this out there and so I am assuming that it is acceptable to use). In any case, I have annotated -- in red -- to show at (a) and (b) the strong motivic directionality at the two-bar level of idea [note that "Four" is structured as a sentence], at (c) a hint of movement still further up beyond ^5, then at (d) the turn back down, and at (e) the crucial and decisive move up to ^8. Note there are two chord differences in the continuation: where Martin has EbM7 in the first bar, the lead sheet has G-7, and where Martin has Dm7(b5) and G7 in bar 4, the lead sheet has simply Bb7. Neither of these materially affect the reading.



In the next example, for reference I have fashioned an "obbligato grid" based on the chord symbols in the lead sheet.

Finally, here is my own simplified graph (without interruption and encompassing both statements, with first and second endings):