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the time will seem right to play it. W e also often take
numbers that we've been playing out of the book and
put them away for a while."
Ellington, especially b etween 1950-56 when his band
appeared to be belo·w his standards, has been sharply
criticized by some critics for not abandoning the grueling,
time-devouring life of a traveling band leader and
instead devoting all his time to composing.
"I have a fear of writing something and not being able
to hear it right away."
''I'm much too impatient to do that," he explains. "I
have a fear of writing something and not being able to
hear it right away. That's the worst thing that can
happen to any artist. In fact, if the band hadn't always
been there for me to try my pieces on, I doubt if I'd
have gotten nearly as much writing done as I have.
This business of just being a composer, in any case,
isn't easy. Look at the hundreds of good composers
who come out of the conservatories each year, write
hundreds of symphonies, and never hear them played.
No, I prefer being sure my music will be played and
will be heard, and the best insurance is having one's
own band around all the time to play it."
In view of his constant writing, playing and traveling,
Ellington is less concerned with analysis of his past
work- and with jazz criticism in general-than he is
with continuing to produce. H e is, however, wryly
skeptical of the over-generalization and romanticism
contained in much of the writing and talking about
jazz by non-professionals. Ellington, for example, was
recently the initial guest on the educational TV series,
The Subject Is Jazz, produced by NBC and the Edu ca~
tional Television and Radio Center. H e was criticized
by some of the staff after the program for having been
"difficult."
Ellington's own explanation is that he rebelled at the
vagueness of the questions and the attempts to have
some of his answers suggested to him. "I just wouldn't
fall into line," grinned Ellington.
On the air, Gilbert Seldes, host of the series, tried to
lead Ellington into the customary emphasis on the
primacy in jazz of the "b eat." Ellington resisted. ("They
wanted me to say, 'Yeah, man, that's it, give me that
rhythm!' ".) Instead Ellington said, "The 'beat' is a
. dangerous word in that it implies that the rhythm h as
to be steady, repetitious. Yet I've heard what to me
is real great jazz with no 'beat' as such."
24
"After all ," he told a friend after the program, "it was
more than twenty-five years before I had a drummer
who took a drum solo. The recurring b eat isn't the
most important element in jazz. The test is whether
each specific performance sounds good."
Ellin gton, in fact, has never composed or played according
to others' preconceived ideas of what jazz is
or should be. "I just write a piece; it's the others who
call it jazz."
A favorite Ellington axiom is "a man doesn't begin
to be educated until he knows what he wants to learn."
H e applies this dictum to his writing in the sense that
he regards most of his compositions as musical problems
to be solved, as challenges to be overcome. It's
not that Ellington doesn't write for emotional selfexpression,
but that he is also constantly b eguiled by
the technical delights of music-patterning itself.
In conversation with friends, Ellington has observed
that in his initial years as a composer, he emphasized
writing for specific soloists although he was also concerned
with the sound of the b and as a whole. Many
of the more creative soloists in those years did, however,
have technical limitations in terms of range or
quickness of facility; and Ellington enjoyed taking advantage
of their limitations by writing with their particular
skills and limitations in mind. H e found this
kind of challenge-writing to stimulate a soloist to
sound at his best-exhilarating!
Found-
A New Challenge
Today Ellington is somewhat saddened as a writer
by the fact that nearly all of the younger jazzmen can
technically play anything. Ellington, therefore, now
seeks his challenges more in what colors he can get
from varying groupings of instruments than in taking
as much care with the solo parts as h e used to. "A
primary challenge," Ellington says, "in writing for a
group is to make wh atever size group you h ave sound
"Hamlet, after all, is the story of a killer disguised
as a clown."
larger. In my case, the further challenge is involved
in the fact that I only have fifteen men and that it's a
matter of Im owledge that certain groups of instruments
usually produce only certain kin ds of colors. I, however,
h'y to group and voice the instruments in such a
way that the unexpected happens."
Ellington h as written relatively little music for
strings, although he's eager to experiment with them.
The lack, however, of chances to work with strings
H ;,:FI & MUSIC REVIEW