Mainstream

Let me explain: my doubt concerns classification. You can compose a piece in the Baroque style, you can play a solo in the manner of Charlie Parker and say it is in the bebop style, but if you play a piece in the manner of Bill Evans, what can you say other than "it sounds like Bill Evans' way of playing"? It seems to me that from this point of view there is a gap.

Tiger wrote:

Jazz?

well sure, but it seems a bit vague to me... if in a music history exam I say that Bach was a classical music composer... ;-)

To stay on topic, the type of problem I encountered is as follows: if I were to let you listen to a certain number of classical music pieces and ask you to tell me the genre each piece belongs to, you would hardly say "this does not belong to any genre"; let's just say that there wouldn't be many such cases.

In most books on jazz, we also find a classification based on genres, but a significant number of musicians performing swing pieces without particular references remain left out. In some texts, they are grouped under the term Mainstream, which remains difficult to define nonetheless.

Thallo?

DrJellyfish wrote:

if I were to let you listen to a certain number of classical music pieces and ask you to tell me the genre each piece belongs to,

So it's a new style, I mean... today we say Bach is Baroque... but in his era?

Today we say Scriabin is late-romantic, but in his era?

The mainstream argument is true, but it doesn't resolve all cases anyway, because you start from style as a prerequisite for expression (today I wake up and decide to play whatever is in my wallet... dixieland, ok, bebop... ok), whereas a jazz musician (and not just them) could simply do what is in their ears and coin a new Style... otherwise only Classic Jazz would exist.

Therefore, apart from the mainstream "engine"... you could always find yourself facing this case... all that's missing is the label"

I had promised myself to intervene but then it slipped my mind; it's been a while since I've read Doc... I hope he is well

In my opinion, regardless of the topic's placement in the Jazz section, there are the prerequisites to use the term even in the strictly classical world. I was thinking about what happened at the beginning of the last century thanks to Debussy (taken up by Stravinsky) and Olivier Messiaen.

To simplify, the Western method was that of development, of "succession." With the musicians I mentioned, it shifts to a type of composition by "juxtaposition," a form of panels or frames and therefore according to a cyclic model, which some call a "spiral."

In this context, in my opinion, one can speak of an initial rebellion against "inevitable progress," something that jazz musicians call precisely "Mainstream," meaning "main current," thus a "rebellion" against the mainstream and therefore a search for a second path, an alternative (and not a replacement, mind you!) to what... let's face it... was the German one.

To tell the whole truth, in my opinion, the first signs were already present in the Russian national school (see The Five), where however they relied instead on tradition.

In this context, open forms will become interesting; Claude Debussy's "La Mer" absolutely must be analyzed.

In this regard, there is an interesting essay that deals precisely with the birth of open forms.

I had never thought about it, Frank.