Approaching jazz composition through the music of Billy Strayhorn

Leonie Freudenberger

Name: Leonie Freudenberger Main Subject: Jazz Saxophone Research Coach: Karst de Jong Title of Research: Approaching jazz composition through the music of Billy Strayhorn Research Question: What are the most important elements of Billy Strayhorn's compositions? How can I incorporate his compositional approach in my own writing? Billy Strayhorn (1915–1976) was a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, orchestrator and lyricist whose works have influenced the genre of jazz music until today. The research contains two phases: First, the analysis of his compositions. Second, the attempt to compose originals using the detected stylistic, harmonic, melodic and conceptional tools. Considering the enormous oeuvre that Strayhorn produced, it is inevitable to make a selection of songs to analyze. My criteria for this selection are the following: Which songs have become part of the standard repertoire in jazz, performed by various artists throughout the 20th (and 21st) century? Where can I find aural trademarks, which I recognize both as a listener and as a player and which contribute to my personal perception of the “Strayhorn sound”? Can the compositions be reduced to a lead sheet and performed by a small jazz combo without losing their essence? My final intention is not only to compose using Strayhorn-typical elements and tools, but also to write music for myself as a performer and for my group to play it. On longer terms, I hope that I can abstract this method further on and profit from it beyond the results of this research. Biography: Leonie Freudenberger, born 1988 in Baden-Baden (D), has played the alto saxophone since her childhood. She started her professional jazz education at the University of Music in Mannheim in 2008 and came to Den Haag in 2011, where she finished her Bachelor's degree. Apart from her Master studies, she writes music and performs with her own group and takes part in various projects, playing alto and baritone saxophone.

Isfahan

Isfahan was first released in the late days of Strayhorn’s life and career. He had written it years before and entitled it Elf, but the piece was reused for Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite. The orchestra had toured through the Near and Middle East in 1963, came back to the states with many impressions and decided to use this inspiration by recording this suite. The music of the Far East Suite is clearly programmatic; nevertheless, it does without stereotypes. The writers succeeded in translating Eastern sounds into Western idiom. “The Far East Suite is generally seen as one of the highlights of the Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration, and rightfully so” (van de Leur, p.167).

Strayhorn’s already existing tune was renamed Isfahan after the Persian capital and added to the program: an alto feature tailored for Johnny Hodges with his expressive, absorbing sound. The alto saxophonist leads the orchestra through this walking ballad in Db (the form is AB, 32 bars). He begins with a pickup, a descending Db^maj7 arpeggio, starting and ending on the major seventh D^bb. Then the melody jumps up to an A, the suspended tonic of the following Bb⁷chord, resolves to Bb, and ends in an Eb⁷chord in bar 3. The harmonic progression is Db–Bb⁷–Eb⁷. This 4-bar motif comes again, sequenced: starting with an arpeggio in A^maj7, which is a tritone-substitute of the preceding secondary dominant Eb⁷, going to the dominant Ab⁷ and back to Db. Walter van de Leur describes the theme development in these words: “The central melodic idea of Isfahan is the downward unfolding major seventh chord in the alto. Strayhorn intelligently exploits the enharmonic duality of the line. Starting an interval lower in measure 4, the a^b-f-d^b retrospectively sounds as the upper part of the B^bbmaj7 that appears in bar 5” (van de Leur, p.170).

In the second half of “A”, we find a 3-bar motif that will be repeated and sequenced two times, so it makes a musical sentence. The harmonic progression is IIm^7b5-V⁷-Im in Fm, then the same in Gm, then the phrase is augmented and goes to F^maj. To modulate back to the key of Db for the second part of the song, Strayhorn choses chromatically descending major chords.

The “B” section begins just like “A”, with the same first 8 bars, except for a Db⁷ in bar 7 and 8 with a #11 in the melody. The subdominant Gb follows, then over C^7#9, F^7#9 and Bb⁷ we come back to the original opening phrase, this time underlaid with a II⁷-V⁷-I back “home”.

In the original arrangement for the Ellington orchestra, the backgrounds play in important role. Especially the reed section has some very elaborate lines, which support the harmony through a counterpoint structure, but also add to the principal melody as embellishments.

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