Jazz and Music Theory

(Page Created - 6 July 2001 - Last Updated - 6 July 2001)

From its earliest inception, Jazz has posed an enigmatic problem for music theory; should it or should it not be analysed and evaluated aesthetically in terms of standard music theory. By standard music theory was meant, the Western theory of harmony and melody, utilising notation and the diatonic scale. That jazz, as it was performed, did not easily fit such theoretical modelling and tutored technique saw it both dismissed as aesthetically unworthy and immoral and praised as aesthetically novel, va;uable and exciting. However, there is a hidden assumption and limitation here, that is that 'standard' music theory is integral and complete. (The assumption and limitation is perhaps most readily expressed, if not completely recognised as such, in Max Weber's essay on The Social and Rational Reconstruction of Music; that Western harmonic theory had reached its perfection in diatonic theory, and that any movement away from this represented a destruction of a phenomenal aesthetic acheivement.)