JAZZ CONDEMNED.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 3 May 1927, Page 2

JAZZ CONDEMNED.

ENGLISH CRITIC’S VIEWS. “TUNE TO TUMULT” Jazz has two aspects. Musical people have mostly ceased to take it seriously a,s music. "Whatever may he tho caso in America, in England the thing, regarded as music is dead. Wo all iouiid it amusing for a little while at first; it was liko a new cocktail. But when the novelty ot' it inn! worn off, musical people became sick and tired of it. 1 doubt whether a single musician of any standing could now be found in my country to say a good word for it. As music the thing lias simply become an .infernal nuisance and an unmitigated bore. It is solely its popularity for dancing jmrposcs that keeps it in the public eye and ear; it is still unequalled as a medium by which fair women may perspuo in the arms of brave men.

My “case against jazz,” then (says an English critic) is purely and simply a musical case. it is as a musician that i object, for one thing, to the ordinary jazzing of the classics. Not that I would ever object to a clever musical parodist exercising his humour at the expense of any master. But to do this acceptably be lias to be a master of liinisell; there is nothing more delicious than first-rate parody, but it takes a first-rate mind to do it. ’.(’he jazzsmiths, however, speaking generally, are not clever enough to make their manipulations of the classics tolerable. They are not artists in the sense that tho great literary parodists have been; they arc merely hearty, grinning, eliav,--bacons. The average jazzsmith, in this would-be humorous treatment of a classic, is merely a street urchin who thinks ho has been smart when ho has sidled up to a poster when no one was looking and added a moustaco to the upper lip of the beautiful lady who figures in it. The negro melody is bettered by Dvorak’s treatment of it; but the cair tihle melody of Chopin s “Fantaisio Impromptu” is' decidedly worsened b;. Harry Carroll's treatment of it in “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” Ho lias simply made the poor tunc commit, so to speak, hari-kari on Chopin’s door- - step. Lot the jajzzsmi tli, if lie can. give a new turn to the smile of Mona Lisa; hut for Heaven’s sake don’t let him sot the lady’s charming mouth moving mechanically to the slow conquest of a piece of chewing gum. But will jazz develop an art of its own that will be able to hear comparison with what wo generally mean when we speak of “music.” 1 take leave to doubt this. 'There is not, and never can he, a specifically jazz technique of music, . apart from orchestration. We might as well suppose there can be such a lliiug as Mohammedan mathematics, or Buddhist biology, or Peruvian psychology, as suppose that there can ue, in the last resort, such a thing as jazz mnsib as distinct from ordinary music. There is only one way of writing music on the largo scale; you must have ideas, and you must know how to develop them logically. Now, in both these respects the jazz composer is seriously hampered. If ho writes too obviously in what we call the jazz stylo lie will not get very far, for the ideas and the devices are too stereotyped. If, on the other hand, he moves very far away from these devices, lie will not be recognised a.s a jazz composer. Tie a composer down to these standardised jazz tricks and lie cannot say much in them that lias not been said already; let him depart from the tricks, and his music will no longer be jazz. It is an instrument on which little men can play a few pleasant little tunes; but if a. composer of any power were to try to play jiis tunes on it, it would soon break in his hands.