Dictionary of Music - Birding America

200 Jaques-Dalcroze, ÉmileJaques-Dalcroze (zhäk′ dAl krōz′), Émile (āmēl′), 1865–1950. A French-Swiss composer andteacher, remembered principally for his novelmethod of teaching music, called EURHYTHMICS.Although Jaques-Dalcroze wrote many songs andinstrumental pieces, and much choral music, hisworks are seldom performed outside Switzerland.jazz An important style of American popularmusic that originated about 1900 among black musiciansin the South, moved north to Chicago and thento the rest of the world. Jazz developed from severalearlier kinds of American music, mainly blues(which in turn derived from black work songs andspirituals), the ragtime of the late nineteenth-centuryminstrel shows (which was originally the whiteman’s imitation of black music), the music of thebrass marching band, and, finally, the music of thestring bands that accompanied dancing and otherfestivities in rural areas of the South. The ragtimepianist, accompanied by banjos and later by otherinstruments as well, gave jazz one of its most distinctivefeatures, a syncopated rhythm, with theaccents falling on unexpected beats, and beats themselvesdivided unevenly. This gives the music a verycomplicated rhythm, which is virtually impossibleto notate accurately. The blues, usually a vocal pieceaccompanied by guitar, contributed two more features,the use of “blue notes,” the half-flatted (notquite natural and not quite flat) third, fifth, and seventhdegrees of the scale, and the practice of improvisation,with the singer making up new verses inthe course of performance. This last feature makesthe history of jazz unique in that it is recorded not inscores but on phonograph records and tapes; moreover,since recording was rare before about 1923,the earliest materials of jazz have been lost.The merger of ragtime and blues into the newinstrumental music called jazz occurred sometimebetween 1900 and 1910 in New Orleans, Louisiana,among black musicians who were employed as entertainersin an unsavory neighborhood called Storyville,and who also played for weddings, funerals, and otherimportant occasions elsewhere in town. The mostimportant jazz musicians associated with this periodwere Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton (1890–1941) andJoseph “King” Oliver (1885–1938). Most of the earlyjazz musicians were not formally trained; they playedby ear, and few knew how to read music. Their skilllay in making music together, each influencing theothers during the course of a performance.The basic New Orleans (or Dixieland) jazzensemble consisted of wind instruments and arhythm section. A cornet or trumpet, along with aclarinet and trombone, carried the melody. Thetrumpet or cornet was the leader, with the clarinetand trombone providing high and low harmony,respectively. The rhythm section was made up of aguitar, a double bass, and drums. Some of the earlybands included a banjo and piano, and occasionallyalso a tuba. At first used principally for rhythm, thepiano in time supplied both melody (with the righthand) and rhythm (left hand). The string bass frequentlyplayed a walking bass, a steady series ofplucked eighth notes consisting of the ascending (ordescending) notes of a chord, with each notesounded twice in succession. On the piano a walkingbass is sounded by the left hand playing octaveintervals. A slightly different left-hand pattern is thestride bass, which, played in rapid tempo with virtuosotechnique in the right hand, constitutes thestyle called stride piano. (The left hand here plays atonic octave or tenth, then a two- or three-note chordabove it, followed by the fifth of that chord belowthe octave, steadily repeated over and over.)Near the end of World War I (1918) the illegalentertainments of Storyville were closed down, andmany jazz musicians left New Orleans to seek workelsewhere. “King” Oliver with his famous CreoleJazz Band moved to Chicago, which became thenew center for jazz. It was with this band that trumpeterLouis Armstrong launched his career. Anotherfine group was that of Fletcher Henderson(1898–1952), formed in New York City in 1919(Armstrong later joined it). Henderson’s band initiatedthe changeover to a new style of jazz and a newkind of ensemble, the big band. The jazz band’smain role was to supply music for dancing, a pastimethat became immensely popular in the 1920s,and bands were formed in all the large cities. In thecourse of the 1920s the band had begun to expandsomewhat, adding a second cornet, a tenor saxophone,and later a couple of alto saxophones. Thesegroups, numbering no more than nine players, could