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A.B. Spellman: One other question for Gunther. Gunther, you've done a lot of musicology,
and jazz has needed more musicology. I mean study that is deeper than criticism
but that really goes in and gives a stronger analysis of what the music is made of.
You've done a lot in the early music. I know you can't write it all but
what do you think the biggest holes in jazz musicology are now?
Gunther Schuller: The biggest holes? Gaps?
A.B. Spellman: Gaps, yes.
Gunther Schuller: Well I think as far as jazz, I mean we have
ethnomusicology which is the study of all the world's music that I spoke about.
We have, of course, musicology and jazz now in many of the universities and
conservatories, so this has become serious study. And the magazine...the monthly that comes
out every month from I think it's Pittsburg University Jazz Studies, that's all
scholarly work researching not only the history of jazz but jazz's
relationship to other styles and languages. But I think that there is still
more writing about the history and the sort of anecdotal history of jazz than
there is about the kind of really serious study and analysis of how this
incredible music is put together by these musicians, these composers, these
arrangers, because obviously improvisation is a form of composition. It's
instantaneous composition and that is very hard to study, to see how a person
has such a complete control of his or her instrument and can instantaneously in
less than a split second put what they just thought in their brain or ear, and
put that into that horn instantaneously and it comes out in the hands of the
greatest of them as a great composition. And the other, my final sentence on this
is the other thing that is not, I believe, this may be more a personal point of
view of mine than many other people's, but the idea that composition and
improvisation need to be considered equal in jazz works. That is to say, whereas
the first early 30, 40, 50 years improvisation was really the big thing, and
composition was based, was used only in the sense of playing on show tunes or
popular tunes, which was great. And the improvisations of a Louis Armstrong or
the people in Ellings' orchestra or whatever are fantastic. They can be compared
with anything in classical music, qualitatively. But now recently, composition
has come a little bit more to the fore. Actual sitting down - I mean, I think of
Mingus' master piece "Epitaph" which is 20 movements of the most varied,
incredible jazz music that goes all the way from as we used to say "the
lowdownest blues" to the most advanced Stravinsky and Chambourgian kind
of music. So composition has moved more into the center of jazz activities, and
I think that's a wonderful thing. And I think in that part the musicological
and analytical research hasn't really caught up with that enough. We now have
hundreds of pieces. When I was young there were no pieces except for
Ellington's that were extended form pieces, five movements. Now there's
hundreds, maybe thousands. And for a symphony orchestra and jazz orchestra
bringing everything together including composition and improvisation, that's the
next frontier, really.