The BIBLE as........JAZZ! A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

by Terry 9 Replies latest watchtower bible

Terry

Let's perform a "thought experiment". Shall we?
Imagine walking in to a series of Jazz nightclubs in the 1950's and hearing various soloists and trios performing their variations on the same tune.
If a famous orchestra, trio or band becomes popular other groups try to emulate them. Musicians at the top try to best one another in a "battle of the bands."
A pianist like Thelonius Monk created awkwardly wonderful chords, accents and improvisations hunched over the keyboard so that other pianists and copyists could not tell what he was doing with his hands. Charlie Parker could string together incredibly intricate improvisations with rapid notes, accents, transpositions and eloquent variations.
Jazz players like to substitute chords and change harmonic structures to create interest. Arrangements often change the temp and alter eighth notes into dotted notes for syncopation.
Many players can work in other snippets of familiar tunes when the mood strikes them. Mix and match, cut and paste, outright invention on top of existing bass notes....the number of ways to change things is vanishingly huge!
The result (the performance) is live and "on the fly". Inspiration is never twice the same.
HERE COMES THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.
What if, instead of Johnny Green's BODY AND SOUL, there was a tune written 300 years in the past found on parchment by a musicologist who showed it to a jazz pianist who played it and it was heard by a sax soloist who played it who was heard by an arranger who wrote it up for his band to play?? The tune gets passed around, changed here and there, reimagined in each performance....
QUESTION:
What relationship exists (if any) between the 1748 composition on parchment (in the mind of the composer) and the various "versions" performed in jazz nightclubs in the 1950's?
What if the original parchment is lost or destroyed? How close would the RECONSTRUCTION be to the original after so many reimaginings and extrapolations?
Could any of the NEWER versions be said to be "more accurate" than the earlier ones? Would the most popular be any better (in terms of accuracy) than the less popular?
____________________________________
I assert that something like our thought experiment is what is going on with Scripture!
Each hand and mind that touches what went before CREATES something anew. The alteration is personal and "meaning" is always in the current idiom and style filtered through a singular mind at work in spontaneity.
IP_SEC

I prefer JIVE to JAZZ.
Sorry Terry, couldnt help it.
That is all.
darth frosty

Kinda like the argument for remake of songs. There really would be no connection. Modern influence and the rule of the day would alter its perception alone. For example as you say the original piece was written in the 1700's. The societal times and climate would dictate how the piece was played and what it meant. Lets say the 1700's were a surreal time of laid back elegance and gentle ease. The piece would would reflect that mood. Someone discovering it now, even if they had the best intention to awaken the artist original vision, could not help but to see and play it through the climate and mood of his current time period.
Thats a good analogy of why the book of revelations is so screwed up. People want to read it with a relevant insight into our current day, when in actuality it was written for the climate or mood of the last part of the 1st century and all of the struggles that the young christian church and changing jewish society were going thru.
Terry

I prefer JIVE to JAZZ.
Sorry Terry, couldnt help it.
That is all.
Umm, yeah, well......kinda destroys my analogy--don't ya think?!!
Blueblades

Even so, the best of the best of them still believe that scripture is not a thought experiment. Just take a look over at channel C and other forums like it. I can't understand how this is possible. There is so much proof that the bible is not inspired of God and that it is a history book written down over the years by men.
When I wrote to Ray Franz and asked him if the bible was inspired of God, his bottom line was "its a leap of faith" I posted that response a couple of years ago. I'll try and search for it and bring it back here.
Blueblades
S3RAPH1M

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers.
Farkel

Well, Terry,
You haven't created a thought experiment in the Einsteinian sense, but I'll play along.
:What relationship exists (if any) between the 1748 composition on parchment (in the mind of the composer) and the various "versions" performed in jazz nightclubs in the 1950's?
When I was studying piano as an adult, I told my mentor how much I admired the Dave Brubeck Quartet. I raved on and on about the polyrhytmns and exotic time signatures, including 5/4 time which Brubeck made famous with "Take Five." Five-four time is now common in both rock and jazz. "Everything's Alright" from Jesus Christ Superstar uses 5/4 time.
Anyway, she said "five-four time has been around for Centuries, and pointed out a B minor Sonata written by Domenico Scarlatti, a contemporary of J.S. Bach, who wrote in the then Italian style. I looked at the music and noted that the time signature was 3/4, not 5/4. She said, "yes, but look at the phrasing, and sure enough it was 5/4 phrasing!" It blew me away.
It has been said many times that Mozart and Beethoven (especially Beethoven) would adapt to quickly and love modern jazz and keyboard controllers!
Have you heard of the Swingle Singers? (No relation to Lyman Swingle, I hope!) They have been around for over 30 years. They sing pure Bach, like fugues and passacaglias and french suites acapella and without changing a single note. All they do is add a snare drum and an accoustic bass. That is the best "jazz" I have ever heard.
Farkel, who once experimented with thought
Awakened07

Well, in this case, there are thousands of jazz clubs around the world, and they're all playing various improvisations of this tune.
But - they all claim exclusivity to the one proper way to improvise(!) over it. Not only that, but if you insist on playing the tune another way, they say that one day, the will and testament of the author of the tune will be opened, clarifying exactly which improvisation is the only correct one, and you and all other jazz club members (and pop, rock and classical club members for that matter) will be visited by the author's mob gang, who will kill you. Kinda harsh, when all we really can do is improvise.
Terry

There is so much proof that the bible is not inspired of God and that it is a history book written down over the years by men.
When I wrote to Ray Franz and asked him if the bible was inspired of God, his bottom line was "its a leap of faith" I posted that response a couple of years ago. I'll try and search for it and bring it back here.
No Bible; no game!
Simple as that.
Unless you play to WIN it is barely a form of interest or entertainment.
Meaning what?
The giant, head-busting HIGH of religious thought, pursuit and argument comes from the sense of ABSOLUTE CONVICTION that you are right!!
Let me repeat: being ABSOLUTELY convinced you have the truth is better than any drug you can inject, snort or otherwise administer by sugar cube, bong or inhalation!!!
That HIGH is the high of all highs!
Take the "inspiration" out of scripture, remove the Divine Authority from those nitpicky verses and what do you have? Instead of a whiskey sour you have a Shirley Temple. You are snorting baby laxative. You are puffing cabbage leaves instead of nicotine. It's not intercourse, it's masturbation!
Get it?
Just think of which Christian denominations insist on the INERRANCY of scripture and look at their measure of control.
You can run the game if you have an absolute and divine authority to back up your silliest notion or most spine-tingling assertion.
Terry

When I was studying piano as an adult, I told my mentor how much I admired the Dave Brubeck Quartet. I raved on and on about the polyrhytmns and exotic time signatures, including 5/4 time which Brubeck made famous with "Take Five." Five-four time is now common in both rock and jazz. "Everything's Alright" from Jesus Christ Superstar uses 5/4 time.
Anyway, she said "five-four time has been around for Centuries, and pointed out a B minor Sonata written by Domenico Scarlatti, a contemporary of J.S. Bach, who wrote in the then Italian style. I looked at the music and noted that the time signature was 3/4, not 5/4. She said, "yes, but look at the phrasing, and sure enough it was 5/4 phrasing!" It blew me away.
It has been said many times that Mozart and Beethoven (especially Beethoven) would adapt to quickly and love modern jazz and keyboard controllers!
Have you heard of the Swingle Singers? (No relation to Lyman Swingle, I hope!) They have been around for over 30 years. They sing pure Bach, like fugues and passacaglias and french suites acapella and without changing a single note. All they do is add a snare drum and an accoustic bass. That is the best "jazz" I have ever heard.
Farkel, who once experimented with thought
Well, Farkie....you've turned out to be a kindred spirit! Musicology is one of my passions.
I think Classical and Jazz are not separate entities at all. I think distinctions between musical styles is an artificial conceptual gimmick convenient for music labels.
There is a sort of chain of custody for musical styles in the form of what teacher was taught by what master. Beethoven taught so-and-so, who then, taught so-and-so up to today. This is almost nonsensical in part---but--the idiom and the conception are embraced none-the-less.
Time signatures, phrasing, harmonic invention and conception are---in the hands of genius---merely dough to bake bread.
My Topic is meant to suggest that what is constant in music (CHANGE and DEVELOPMENT) is inherent in scripture (as well as anything transmitted which engages intellect, style and content.)
The Swingle Singers were started, I believe, by the sister of Michel Legrand. Legrand was HUGE in popular music (and movie scoring) for awhile in the sixties. He was a fully functioning genius who possessed the complete panoply of talents: composing, pianistic virtuosity, arranging, orchestrating, jazz improvisation---YOU NAME IT!
Frank Zappa was waaaaay ahead of his time in changing time signatures too.
Jerry Goldsmith (film composer) loved crazy time signatures to pull film musica away from the boxy 4/4 feeling.
Ahhhhh....good times!

The BIBLE as........JAZZ! A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

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