Journal of Music Theory

Reviews Givan on Larson 155

Steve Larson
Analyzing Jazz: A Schenkerian Approach.
Pendragon Press, 2009: x+204 pp.
($99.00 paper)

Benjamin Givan

Schenkerian studies of jazz improvisation have a curious history. The first

prominent theorist to examine the idioms pitch structure from a prolonga-
tional standpoint was almost certainly Allen Forte, in a 1958 lecture delivered
in Germany (Forte 2011). But Forte abandoned this research field, and almost
two decades elapsed before scholars such as Thomas Owens and Peter
Winklerneither of them primarily theoristspursued it any further (Owens
1974; Winkler 1978). As the broader discipline of music theory came into its
own during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Steven Strunk, Henry Martin, and
Steve Larson began to publish intensive Schenkerian studies of jazz improvi-
sation, and they remain the fields leading exponents to this day.1 In the last
twenty years, meanwhile, the landscape of jazz scholarship has been dramat-
ically transformed by the onset of the so-called new jazz studies, a culturally
focused interdisciplinary movement that has rather marginalized theoretical
perspectives. Indeed, it was recently declared in this journals pages that by
the late 1990s, music-analytical work on jazz and improvisation seemed to
fade (Steinbeck 2007, 335).
Larson, regardless, has continued to publish a steady stream of articles
establishing him today as arguably the worlds preeminent jazz theorist. He
has now cemented his standing with the publication of Analyzing Jazz: A
Schenkerian Approach, a book that will be among this research fields essential
sources of reference. It is worth bearing in mind, though, that the volume is,
by the authors own account, a lightly revised doctoral dissertation submitted
in 1987. Conceived during an era when jazz analysis was still viewed skepti-
cally by some theorists, and predating the new jazz studies, the book has two
fundamental aims: to enrich the knowledge and interpretative arsenal of
dedicated jazz theorists and to persuade skeptics that jazz shares enough aes-
thetic qualities with tonal Western art music to make it fully compatible with
Schenkerian theory. The former audience will find this book highly informa-
tive, at times even revelatory. The latter may or may not be convinced but are
in any case now greatly outnumbered by nontheorist jazz scholars who tend
to celebrate the idioms distinguishing features more than its commonalities
with the classical tradition.

1 For a comprehensive listing of Schenkerian studies of

jazz as of 2004, see Berry (2004, 3017).

Journal of Music Theory 55:1, Spring 2011

DOI 10.1215/00222909-1219223 2011 by Benjamin Givan 155

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156 J o u r n al o f M u sic T h e or y

At the heart of Larsons book are meticulous graphic analyses, with

exhaustive textual commentary, of the Thelonious Monk composition
Round Midnight as played by its composer and by two other leading
postwar American jazz pianists, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans.2 Following
these analyses are complete transcriptions of each discussed performance.
Even a cursory perusal of the beautifully engraved musical notation and
its accompanying technical notes reveals much about the volumes underly-
ing precepts. The large scale of the grand staves, on pages of correspondingly
broad dimensions, makes clear that the notation is intended not merely as a
study score but as a performing edition that can conveniently be read and
executed at the keyboard.3 Larson should be commended for having per-
suaded his publisher to undertake such a lavish production, especially given
academic publishings current climate of retrenchment, although it comes at
the hefty price of $99 for a softcover edition.
While the transcriptions are an extremely accurate depiction of the
recorded sound, Larson does not simply present them as such; in addition to
assuming, by convention, that eighth notes are swung, he explicitly acknowl-
edges having corrected what seem to be mistakes. None of these variances,
each identified in the supplementary notes, has substantive ramifications for
his analyses, but as a philosophical matter they indicate that Larson considers
his transcriptions to represent the music that he believes each player intended
rather than purely the authors best effort, within staff notations inherent
semiotic limitations, to capture what he hears on the recordings. The nota-
tion is thus somewhat more ontologically comparable to classical musics pre-
scriptive scores than is ordinarily the case with jazz transcriptions.
More to the point, Larson analyzes each improvisation much as he
would treat a European concert work; these jazz performances are, in his
view, essentially common-practice tonal music that can fruitfully be explained
by an orthodox application of Schenkerian principles. This premise is far
from a commonplace, but for now I will provisionally take it at face value and
consider the authors work on its own terms. The books first analytical essay,
devoted to Monks rendition of his own composition, offers the most rigorous
and comprehensive account of Round Midnight to date and will enlighten
even those who think they already know the piece well. Larson reads this
E -minor themes descant voice as a three line, deeming the prominent
recurring B (5) a cover tone; G (3) accrues greater structural weight
because it is the pitch at which two signature motivesone melodic, the
other harmoniccoincide on the downbeat of each eight-bar A-sections

2 The recordings can be found on the following OJCCD-263-2); Bill Evans, Conversations with Myself
CD releases: Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Himself (Verve, 314-521-409-2).
(Riverside, OJCCD-254-2); Monk, Monks Greatest Hits
3 A recording of Larson playing his transcription of Petersons
(Columbia Legacy, CK65422); Oscar Peterson, Freedom
performance can be heard at www.stevelarsonjazz.com/
Song (Pablo, 2PACD-2640-101-2); Bill Evans Trio, At
all_Round_Midnight.html (accessed June 9, 2010).
Shelleys Manne-Hole, Hollywood, California (Riverside,

Published by Duke University Press

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Reviews Givan on Larson 157

penultimate measure (the theme is a standard thirty-two-bar AABA). Indeed,

the themes call-and-response alternation between these motivesbeginning
with an incipit five-note melodic gesture answered by a quarter-note chordal
progression between the downbeats of m. 2 and m. 3is but one of many
fascinating compositional features that Larson, to my knowledge, is the first
to discuss in print.
The bridge in Round Midnight contains an even richer matrix of
structural relationships: its opening two-bar statements echo the end of the
A-section (Larson calls these figures the linking motive), its sixth bar recalls
its first and third, and the eighth replicates the fifth. Furthermore, two con-
cealed repetitions of the linking motive appear in Monks coda to a 1957
studio recording of the piece. Larsons elegant analysis shows that, concur-
rently, the codas series of pungent tritone substitutions and superimposi-
tions expresses a single overarching IIVI cadential progression. This sort of
orthodox Schenkerian interpretation, disclosing normative strategies
beneath surface level complexities, is a highly effective way of relating a
famously idiosyncratic musician like Monk to certain prevailing stylistic con-
ventions and traditions. As such, it resonates intriguingly with biographer
Robin D. G. Kelleys recent revisionist portrait (2009) of the pianist as more
of a dependable family man and shrewd professional than the erratic eccen-
tric bohemian figure of the popular imagination.
Hidden repetitions of the same linking motive also appear in Oscar
Petersons 1982 live solo rendition of Monks theme. Along with devices such
as cadential suspensions, phrase elisions, and structural puns (multivalent
material at the intersection of overlapping formal sections), these concealed
motivic parallelisms enable Peterson to make his performance less sharply
sectionalized than the underlying theme, whose phrasing is conventionally
symmetrical. Evans likewise uses hidden motivic repetitions to counteract
sectionalization in both of his discussed recordings of the piece, one with his
working piano trio of the mid-1960s (featuring bassist Chuck Israels and
drummer Larry Bunker), and the other a contemporaneous studio produc-
tion in which he overdubs three concurrent keyboardtracks.
Larsons close scrutiny of these aspects of structural continuity certainly
enhances our experience of these recordings, and his tour-de-force analyses
are replete with insights too numerous even to synopsize here. Still, it is not
self-evident that formal sectionalization in jazz is necessarily an aesthetic
problem, as Larson sees it. Indeed, many jazz performances feature delib-
erately intensified sectional demarcations: rhythm-section accompanists rou-
tinely accentuate hypermetrical downbeats and soloists often introduce new
motivic figures at or near the top of a chorus. And for that matter, Western
classical theme-and-variation formsespecially in eighteenth-century
idiomsare often just as sectionalized, with clearly defined cadential points
of arrival within, and particularly at the end of, each successive variation.
The author seems disposed against sectionalization in principle even when

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established practice, both within and beyond jazz, suggests this principle may
not always be applicable.
The book raises many such methodological questions that will engage
a variety of readers besides theorists specifically interested in the discussed
musicians or seeking an exemplary model for applying Schenkerian tech-
niques to jazz. Some such questions are addressed in the second chapter,
which was previously published as a Music Theory Spectrum article. Larson
begins it by broaching the global topic of whether it is even appropriate to
analyze improvised music with a theory devised for composed works, which
is probably a less contested matter today among the volumes target audience
of music theorists than it was when he first confronted it a quarter century
ago, skepticism among this constituency having since abated. Nevertheless,
these pages provide a welcome opportunity to reflect on the authors thought-
provoking viewelaborated in Larson 2005that (good) jazz embodies cer-
tain of classical musics key aesthetic principles even better than does classical
music itself. In the end, I imagine that todays theorists will largely find his
fallback rationale sufficient: analyses should be judged by their results, and
even if composed and improvised musics are indeed substantively dissimilar,
close analysis helps explain their differences. The converse of Larsons argu-
ment is of course that Western art music may be receptive to theories origi-
nally conceived for other idioms, a disciplinary avenue whose considerable
potential has only recently begun to be explored (see Cohn 2010 for a recent
example).
Larson rightly notes that jazzs characteristic chromatic tonesninths,
elevenths, thirteenths, and so forthlikewise occur in many tonal classical
works, where they have often received orthodox Schenkerian interpretations
that reduce them to underlying triadic structures. Naturally, Schenkerian
theorys inherent drawback in this respect is that it often effaces unique or
atypical features; all else equal, a priori norms are assumed to supersede
idiosyncrasies at deeper structural levels. And Larson acknowledges that
jazzs chromaticism occasionally eludes the theory altogether, such as when
Monk superimposes a chords unresolved major seventh and raised eleventh
over a low-register root and fifth. Faced with such unequivocal flouting of
common-practice norms, we inevitably run up against the ultimate method-
ological question: is the problem with the music or with the theory?
Before offering his own answer, Larson turns to one other issue: whether
jazz musicians intend to create the complex structures shown in Schenkerian
analyses. This discussion is in my view among the books most valuable
contributions, even though both the question and Larsons answer seem to
me rather tangential to the study overall. We are treated to a masterful exege-
sis of an excerpt from Bill Evanss 1978 radio interview with fellow pianist
Marian McPartland in which Evans describes, both verbally and with keyboard
demonstrations, his conscious thought processes while playing the popular

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song The Touch of Your Lips. Evanss explanation of how he goes about har-
monically elaborating a basic structure is strongly redolent of Schenkerian
notions of diminution and prolongation. Yet, as a rationale for applying
Schenkerian theory, it seems to me inequitable to demand that jazz musi-
cians exhibitto adopt David Temperleys terms (2006, 283)declarative
(verbally articulated) knowledge rather than simply productive (implicit)
understanding of the relevant theoretical concepts, given that no such burden
of justification is ordinarily placed upon Western canonic composers such as
Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. At any rate, Larson has no such expectations
of his other subjects, Monk and Peterson, whose music he analyzes without
citing any comparably self-reflective remarks of their own. Nonetheless, his
meticulous account of Evanss interview, a fascinating glimpse into a legend-
ary jazz artists creative process, deserves to be widely read, especially by those
who may underestimate the degree to which professional improvising musi-
cians can be consciously self-analytical about their craft.
But when all is said and done, what more do we gain by gazing at jazz
improvisations through an interpretative lens whose principal ideological
function has, by and large, been to valorize European canonic masterworks
of centuries past? Larson, to his credit, is completely forthright. Schenkerian
analysis is, he contends, a means of qualitative assessment: it may either show
the shortcomings or illuminate the exceptional quality of any given jazz
performance. For allaying misgivings among those remaining conservative-
minded art-music scholars, this unabashed application of Schenkers aesthet-
ics to a twentieth-century African American musical idiom may well be rhe-
torically effective. Yet such an unqualified claim seems liable to alienate
musicologists and ethnomusicologists, for whom cultural relativity and his-
torical contingency are bedrock beliefs. This is unfortunate, for such readers
have much to learn from Larson. Might these graceful analyses have instead
been presented, more circumspectly, as guides only to those aspects of the
music that intersect with traditional European formal principles? And might
we allow that structural features that Schenkerian theory treats as shortcom-
ings could well be facets of exceptional quality from an Afrodiasporic per-
spective? Schenkerian analysis, as Larson has demonstrated beyond all doubt,
can greatly enrich our knowledge and appreciation of jazz improvisation at a
fine level of musical detail, but to make the strongest case for it we should
modestly acknowledge its limitations.

Works Cited

Berry, David Carson. 2004. A Topical Guide to Schenkerian Literature: An Annotated Bibliography
with Indices. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon.
Cohn, Richard C. 2010. Brahms the African, Kwashi the German. Paper presented at the
First International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music, Amherst,
MA, February.

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160 J o u r n al o f M u sic T h e or y

Forte, Allen. 2011. The Development of Diminutions in American Jazz. Journal of Jazz Stud-
ies 7: 323.
Kelley, Robin D. G. 2009. Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. New
York: Free Press.
Larson, Steve. 2005. Composition versus Improvisation. Journal of Music Theory 49: 24175.
Owens, Thomas. 1974. Charlie Parker: Techniques of Improvisation. Ph.D. diss., University
of CaliforniaLos Angeles.
Steinbeck, Paul. 2007. Review of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experi-
mental Music, by George E. Lewis. Journal of Music Theory 51: 33340.
Temperley, David. 2006. Review of Music in the Galant Style, by Robert O. Gjerdingen. Journal
of Music Theory 50: 27790.
Winkler, Peter. 1978. Toward a Theory of Popular Harmony. In Theory Only 4/2: 1418.

Benjamin Givan is associate professor of music at Skidmore College.

Published by Duke University Press