Historical overview

Here, we take a look of how pieces of classical music has been 'borrowed' by musicians from other musical genres throughout the 20th century, with musical movements such as 'ragging the classics', 'swingin' the classics', and Third Stream, leading to adaptations by contemporary jazz artists.

Improvisation at the turn of the 20th century and 'ragging the classics'

It's well-known that improvisation was virtually extinct from the practice of classical musicians at the turn of the 20th century. This can be ascribed to historical developments in the preceding centuries, such as the effects of notation and literacy on the development of Western music, changes in pedagogy, a higher degree of reverence for art music (Moore, 1992), an increasing notion of musical works as art objects, a rise in the status of the composer, a stronger view of music performance as reproduction than in earlier periods, and a higher degree of control imposed by the score (Goehr, 1994). Until the advent of compositions that featured aleatoric elements in the 1950s – music with a lesser degree of notational determinacy – improvisation among classical musicians was mostly confined to the liturgical practice of church organists.

However, while improvisation was generally absent from the performance of classical music in the first half of the 20th century, the surge of new musical expressions in America, in the form of ragtime, had brought with it new ways of paraphrasing and expanding on classical themes through the use of syncopation and idiosyncratic embellishments. Although not a modus operandi of its pioneer, pianist and composer Scott Joplin, the "ragging" of classical music became a popular practice among other pianists, performances that were typically not transcribed or otherwise documented:

Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" and "Wedding March" and Rubenstein's "Melody in F" were among the favorite classics for "ragging." To "rag" is to syncopate the melody of nonsyncopated work. This technique, which predates the first publication of rags by several decades, was a common performance practice of pianists. Most of this type of ragtime, like most modern jazz improvisations on existing popular songs, was probably never written down or recorded (Hasse, 1985 p. 6).

 
While ragtime isn't mainly associated with improvisation, this way of paraphrasing pieces of classical music laid down a foundation for a later trend known as 'swinging the classics'. And, as has been pointed out, it's not easy to draw a sharp line between embellished rags and improvisatory jazz (Schuller, 2024).

Swingin' the classics

Adapting classical pieces also became a part of the early development of jazz, significantly through one of its pioneers – and the self-proclaimed inventor of the genre – pianist Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, born 1890 in New Orleans. Growing up in a musical family, Morton had early exposure to European classical music through the French Opera of New Orleans; romantic operas such as Gounod’s Faust and Verdi’s Il Trovatore, as well as harmonically advanced music such as Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. In this way, the European classical repertoire, with its concepts of melody and harmony, found its way into jazz and into Morton's emerging musical sensibility (Reich & Gaines, 2004). As Morton explains it, his adaptations involved changing the rhythmic character into “jazz time”:

I transformed a lot of those numbers into jazz time. And from time to time — for an instance, “Sextet” from Lucia — of course there’s a little . . . different little variations and ideas in it . . . no doubt would have a, a tendency to detract, or to masquerade the tunes. (Morton interviewed in Library of Congress, Meddings, 2003)

In the case of child prodigy Hazel Scott – born in 1920 in Trinidad and raised in Harlem, New York – the adaptation of classical pieces first arose out of necessity. Having learned much of the classical repertoire by ear from listening to her mother, former concert pianist Alma Long Scott, young Hazel often had to make adjustments to compensate for the size of her hands. This was the case as she learned to play Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor. In 1928, at the mere age of 8, Scott performed the piece with her own adaptations at the Julliard School of Music when she and her mother visited the prestigious institution to audition for a study place. A few rooms down the corridor, Dr. Frank Damrosch, the venerable head of Juilliard, overheard the audition through an open door. Shocked to hear someone improvise a classical masterpiece, Damrosch stormed into the room and interrupted Hazel's audition:

Damrosch demanded, ”Who is that paraphrasing Rachmaninoff?” When he saw the little girl with bows in her hair and legs dangling from the piano bench, he was shocked. I explained that I was only reaching the closest thing that sounded like it, not even knowing what a sixth was at that age, Hazel revealed. She played on. When she finished the piece, Professor Oscar Wagner spoke quietly: I am in the presence of a genius (Chilton, 2008, p. 23).

Despite her young age, Scott secured a scholarship at the prestigious music institution, and subsequently moved on to take part in jazz bands in the Harlem area. These experiences eventually converged in her interpretations of classical pieces that brought her fame ther fame in the late 1930s, interpretations that were later captured on the Decca album Swinging the Classics: Piano Solos in Swing Style with Drums (Scott, 1940). Pieces featured on the album are Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 in C Sharp Minor, Bach’s Two-Part Invention in A minor, Chopin’s Waltz in D-flat Major, and Grainger’s Country Gardens, all reimagined in boogie woogie versions. Breaking sales records of its time, Swinging the classics became hugely popular and secured Scott's position as an ambassador for incorporating classical music into a swing jazz context. Scott also became an important voice in fighting the racial injustice of her time, refusing to perform in venues that separated listeners of color from white audience members. Her ways of uniting music rooted in European and Afro-American communities can thus be seen from a larger political perspective, as a part of a civil rights activism that involved breaking down both musical and social barriers (Chilton, 2008).

Scott wasn’t alone in her approach to ‘swinging the classics’; the late 1930’s also saw the surge of many swing orchestras who created arrangements based on this repertoire. Examples include Tommy Dorsey’s recordings from 1937 of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko – released as Song of India –  and Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 in A flat Major, Arnold Johnson Orchestra’s recording of Grieg’s Anitra’s Dance from the same year, Larry Clinton’s version of Debussy’s Rêverie from 1938 – released as My Reverie, with lyrics sung by Bea Wain – and John Kirby And His Orchestra’s recording from 1941 of Tchaikovsky’s Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy, recorded as Bounce Of The Sugar Plum Fairy. New interpretations also appeared of pieces that had already been recorded by other orchestras, such as Jack Teagarden’s recordings of Anitra’s dance from and Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# minor, the same piece performed by 8-year-old Scott at her audition for Juilliard.

Besides adapting the melodies to a jazz phrasing played over a swing accompaniment, many of these versions involved adapting the form of the original work to the chorus-based form common to jazz performances. In this way, the classical themes could be treated like themes taken from Tin Pan Alley or Broadway numbers in a jazz performance, where a chorus structure is repeated as a basis for improvisation. One adaption that stands out in this respect is Teagarden’s interpretation of Debussy’s Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un faune, recorded 1941 as Afternoon of a faun, credited as a composition by Maurice Ravel (!). Teagarden’s version reads like an abridged version of the original piece, without solo improvisations, where most of the thematic material from the source material is used but rhythmically adapted to a 4/4 swing feel (Jack Teagarden and His Orchestra, 1991).

Adapting classical pieces could also involve raising the tempo significantly. This is perhaps best illustrated by Art Tatum’s (1940) recording of Massenet’s Elégie; as Tatum picks up the tempo of the piece at around 190 bpm, he is playing it over 3 times faster (!) than the indicated lento – 45-60 bpm – of the original. Here, Tatum turns Massenet’s piece into a virtuoso show number by playing the melody in the left hand while adding his trademark runs in the right hand, before going into a stride piano rendition of the theme.

Adaptions of classical works in jazz contexts can also be seen in the European jazz that emerged around the same time, particularly in the works of French-Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt, whose repertoire included reworked compositions by Bach and Debussy – heard on his recording Django's Dream, based on Debussy's Rêverie – performed in the milieu of hot clubs in Paris. This trend was also picked up by pianist Claude Bolling, another Paris-based musician, who found his own way of combining the worlds of Bach and jazz, in addition to initiating several 'crossover' collaborations with classical musicians.

Third Stream and beyond

In particular, Evans way of reinventing pieces – sometimes referred to as ‘recomposing’ – deserves mentioning, beside his skillful instrumentation. As trumpeter John Carisi explains, Evans’ reputation was largely based on his arrangements for Claude Thornhill, particularly his way of taking classical music by Moussorgsky, Albeniz and Granados and retaining the original structure:

He showed great respect for things done by pretty influential writers and didn’t just do it for the sake of showing off his expertise. He really retained the feeling of the original. And what was also so special were his voicings, the way he’d apportion the instruments for that band. He’d have the brass playing without vibrato, and utilized a lot of things from 20^th century symphonic writing. And from what I know, a lot of those voicings originated with Claude. (Carisi in Crease, 2003, p. 141)

In Concierto de Aranjuez, Evans breaks up Rodrigo’s original structure and inserts a chorus of his own invention, one that is also repeated on other tracks on the album. Significantly, Evans uses Davis’ trumpet improvisations as an essential element in his arrangement, playing a similar role to the ad lib-sounding – but meticously notated – guitar part of Rodrigo’s original. As Gunther Schuller points out, “even in his most elaborate scores Evans succeeded in preserving the essential spontaneity and improvisatory nature of jazz, achieving a rare symbiosis between composed and improvised elements" (Schuller, 2001).

Evans’ treatments of pieces, thus, brought a classical sensibility and an awareness of sonorities and timbre that he had picked up from French concert music, decreasing the aesthetic differences between jazz and classical that were tangible in earlier periods. Evans’ way of combining musical expressions reflected a new current in musical interests of its time known as Third Stream – a term coined by Schuller in 1957 – devoted to synthesizing jazz and classical music. Besides Evans and Schuller, others associated with the movement were George Russell, Charles Mingus, Milton Babbitt and John Lewis, all appearing as composers on the albums Music for Brass (The Brass Ensemble of the Jazz and Classical Music Society, 1957) and Modern Jazz Concert (Russell et al, 1958).

However, Third Stream wasn’t primarily a movement concerned with adapting classical works to a jazz context. In the following description by Schuller, it's particularly clear that the "swingin'-the-classics" doesn't fit into his conception:

 What Third Stream is not:

1. It is not jazz with strings.

2. It is not jazz played on "classical" instruments.

3. It is not classical music played by jazz players.

4. It is not inserting a bit of Ravel or Schoenberg between be-bop
changes—nor the reverse.

5. It is not jazz in fugal form.

6. It is not a fugue performed by jazz players.

7. It is not designed to do away with jazz or classical music; it is
just another option amongst many for today's creative musicians. (Schuller, 1989, p. 120)

However, Third Stream received a lot of harsh critique at its time – and later – for lacking the swing that listeners would expect from jazz, and for being too serious, with "an unhealthy preoccupation with elaborate writing and formal structures" (Joyner, 2000, p. 81), things that were seen as obstacles for the improvising musicians.

Improvisational freedom and maintenance of the groove are seen to be paramount to the jazz aesthetic; the fear is that these defining features at the heart of jazz are easily undermined by some of the classical tendencies in third stream. (Joyner, 2000, p. 81)

In this light, Davis’s recording comes across as successful, considering its popularity; reaching platinum status in the U.S. sales, Sketches of Spain was listed as no. 358 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Although the interest in Third Stream faded substantially after the 1960s, just as the ‘swinging the classics’ fad died out, the decades from 1960 and onwards saw numerous jazz interpretations of classical music, mainly focusing on the composers Bach, Brahms, Debussy and Tchaikovsky, most notably by artists such as the American pianist John Lewis and the French pianist Jacques Loussier. There was also a turn to more modernist music, in particular Stravinsky’s Rite of the spring, as demonstrated by flutist Hubert Laws' 1971 medley and Alice Coltrane's version of the Rite's "Spring Rounds" movement on the album Eternity (1976). The latter is noteworthy in that it starts off with a ‘faithful’ reading of the music, which eventually moves into an open, collective improvisation that seems not only to channel the energy of Stravinsky’s original, but also exaggerate it through the expression of free improvisation, before returning to the serene character of Stravinsky's closing theme.

The increased interest in more modern composers among jazz musicians continued through the remaining decades of the twentieth century, with the repertoire used for this type of exploration gradually shifting to composers who had previously been neglected; composers such as Bartók, Copland, Milhaud, Enescu, Ives, Ligeti, Nancarrow, Reich, Scriabin, Webern, Satie, Villa-Lobos, and Mahler. This shift, as Cole (2015) suggests, can be attributed to the development of the jazz language and the exposure of jazz musicians to more complex repertoire. In the next section, we’ll take a closer look at some examples of this practice from the 1990s to the 2020s.