![\"Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-2005-0119,_Kurt_Weill\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-2005-0119_Kurt_Weill.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn Berlin 1929 Kurt Weil wrote a \u201cNote Concerning Jazz\u201d which today reads as both a prediction and a warning.<\/p>\n
Weill wrote in part:<\/p>\n
\u201cToday it appears to me that the manner of performance of jazz is finally breaking through the rigid system of musical practice in our concerts and theaters and that this is more important than its influence on musical composition. Anyone who has ever worked with a good jazz band has been pleasantly surprised by an eagerness, a devotion, a desire for work that one seeks in vain in many concert and theater orchestras.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eighty-seven years later, amen to that. Weill continues:<\/p>\n
\u201cA good jazz musician completely masters three or four instruments; he plays from memory; he is accustomed to the art of ensemble playing. But above all, he can improvise; he cultivates a free, unrestrained style of playing in which the interpreter achieves to the highest degree a productive performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I was recently on the West Coast, I had occasion to rent a car for two weeks \u2013 and therefore to listen to \u201cclassical radio.\u201d Every day I was subjected to recent recordings of familiar music. I quickly discovered a basic similarity in performance style. Never was it \u201cunrestrained.\u201d Never did it achieve \u201cto the highest degree a productive performance.\u201d One rare occasions I encountered a degree of individuality \u2013 as in a fresh recording of Beethoven\u2019s E major Sonata, Op. 14, No. 1, rendered by a young pianist of some reputation. But even here there was not a whiff of spontaneity.<\/p>\n
Anyone familiar with how recordings are made the studio should be unsurprised. That note-perfect Beethoven E major Sonata had doubtless been spliced. And you can\u2019t splice a performance credibly unless it\u2019s rendered with some regularity, both internally and sequentially via multiple takes.<\/p>\n