Four Studies of Charlie Parker's Compositional Processes

Abstract

Charlie Parker has been much appreciated as an improviser, but he was also an important jazz composer, a topic yet to be studied in depth. Parker’s compositions offer insight into his total musicianship as well as provide a summary of early bebop style. Because he left no working manuscripts, we cannot examine his compositions evolving on paper. We do possess occasional single parts for trumpet or alto saxophone of pieces written for recording sessions and four Library of Congress lead sheets copied in his hand, and, as an introduction, I show examples of such manuscripts. The article continues by exploring what we can infer about Parker’s compositional processes from those instances where he made revisions to improve or create the final product. In particular, there is one instance of Parker revising a work already completed (“Ornithology”), one instance of Parker combining two pieces by another composer into one of his own (“My Little Suede Shoes”), and two instances of Parker composing in the studio where we can hear his revisions immediately (“Red Cross” and “Blues (Fast)”). The middle part of the paper explores Parker in these creative settings. Parker’s methods sometimes differ from traditional composition and suggest that we reconsider the usual distinction between improvisation and composition. I conclude with observations on Parker’s procedures, proposing refinements to ontological models of musical works to account for jazz compositions.