OLD MASTERS AND JAZZ.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1928, Page 17

OLD MASTERS AND JAZZ.

OFTEN-USED SYNCOPATION.

*[R THOMAS BE EC HAM'S ANALYSIS

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, February 24,

Sir Thomas Beecham, England's foremost composer-conductor, who has just appeared in the United States as a guest conductor, has no patience with those who condemn so-called jazz music as something new.

''Beethoven, Bach and Handel play (id jazz." he said recently, "although they would not have called it such. And modern music—l question whether there is any such thing. Modern music is but another chapter added on to the music we have had for the last ;500 years. The music we are hearing to-day is not so very different from the music Bach and Beethoven and Mozart played.

"Syncopation is as old as music. Beethoven and Bach have it in their works—yes, even in the symphonies, sonatas and quartets, regarded as their most classical compositions. There is only this difference between Beethoven and Bach and the present-day so-called jazz writers—the popular composers of to-day use more syncopation to the measure than the old composers. "You notice syncopation In Jazz more than in the classics because the jazz writers are simpler. They have 110 skill and cunning. The classical writers used syncopation, but they interwove it subtly with their conventional melodies so that it did not obtrude.

"There is music written during every decade," Sir Thomas continued, "which takes fts place in the grand gallery of masterpieces, as I call it, and there is music which expires. The music which has takpn its place in the grand gallery through 300 years is exactly the same as the music which is taking its place there now.

"Is the clash and dissonance of the modern composers, like Ravel and Debussy, Stravinsky, Scriabine, Honnegger or Kodaly, anything different from passages in the older writers? Mozart's celebrated quartet was criticised at the time he wrote it for being dissonant and disharmonSous. Beethoven wrote dissonant passages for effect in many of his works and foolish people tried to coriect what they thought were his mistakes.

"When, however, their music became general, the clashes of sound were seen to provide welcome elements of change and criticism died away. Modern composers have greater opportunities for study than the great performers of the past, but they are no greater virtuosos."