All the Things Tunes Are: <i>Avant-Textes</i> and Referents in Jazz Improvisation

Smither, Sean R.

doi:10.1080/17494060.2021.1924227

Jazz Perspectives

2021

DOI: 10.1080/17494060.2021.1924227

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All the Things Tunes Are: Avant-Textes and Referents in Jazz Improvisation

Sean R. Smither

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2024

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Referents in the Palimpsests of Jazz

Smither

2024

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Jazz analysts have long struggled with the ways in which tunes can be accounted for in analyses of musical structure. When analyzing the utterances jazz musicians make in an improvised performance, it is difficult to disentangle the musical elements related to what Jeff Pressing termed the “referent”—the improviser’s conceptualization of the tune—from those more freely improvised in the moment. Complicating this problem is the fact that standard jazz tunes themselves are not fixed structures with essential, immutable musical components; no definitive version exists of any given tune. Instead, tunes are flexible and malleable, permitting infinite variations. In this article, I develop a methodology that provisionally disentangles jazz improvisations from the tunes on which they are based. I begin by theorizing the structure and function of various tune-referents before outlining a theory of referent defaults. I then present two case studies, one on melody and one on harmony, that examine the relations between different performances in order to arrive at a postulated referent for use in further analysis. Finally, I draw on anthropologist Timothy Ingold’s concept of textility to illuminate the nuanced ways that jazz improvisers engage with referents.

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Referents in the Palimpsests of Jazz

Smither

2024

MTO

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All the Things Tunes Are: Avant-Textes and Referents in Jazz Improvisation

Cited by 1 publication

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Referents in the Palimpsests of Jazz

Referents in the Palimpsests of Jazz

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