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French Music and Jazz in Conversation

From Debussy to Brubeck

Deborah Mawer author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:20th Oct '16

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French Music and Jazz in Conversation cover

This book explores the historical-cultural interactions between French concert music and American jazz across 1900–65, from both perspectives.

This book explores the rich historical-cultural interactions between French concert music and American jazz in the first half of the twentieth century (1900–65), from both perspectives. Deborah Mawer provides a set of detailed musical case studies on Debussy, Satie, Milhaud, Ravel, Jack Hylton, George Russell, Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck.French concert music and jazz often enjoyed a special creative exchange across the period 1900–65. French modernist composers were particularly receptive to early African-American jazz during the interwar years, and American jazz musicians, especially those concerned with modal jazz in the 1950s and early 1960s, exhibited a distinct affinity with French musical impressionism. However, despite a general, if contested, interest in the cultural interplay of classical music and jazz, few writers have probed the specific French music-jazz relationship in depth. In this book, Deborah Mawer sets such musical interplay within its historical-cultural and critical-analytical contexts, offering a detailed yet accessible account of both French and American perspectives. Blending intertextuality with more precise borrowing techniques, Mawer presents case studies on the musical interactions of a wide range of composers and performers, including Debussy, Satie, Milhaud, Ravel, Jack Hylton, George Russell, Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck.

'This is the book for which jazz scholarship has long been waiting: at last, the hugely significant interactions between jazz and modern concert music have been unravelled with the insight, technical understanding and contextual awareness they deserve. Professor Mawer delves deeply into this two-way process in a series of fascinating case studies which celebrate some of the most exciting and far-reaching musical cross-fertilizations of the twentieth century.' Mervyn Cooke, Professor of Music, University of Nottingham
'At once an important survey of French music and jazz history, Mawer's book also brilliantly draws attention to the compelling cross-references and interactions between these worlds. The theoretical sophistication of the academy seamlessly merges with the dynamism of a jazz club, and the resulting mix has the intellectual and musical power of both.' Michael Beckerman, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music, New York University

ISBN: 9781316633878

Dimensions: 245mm x 170mm x 18mm

Weight: 560g

322 pages