Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Clark, Maribeth

Area of Concentration

Music

Abstract

An overview of the historical relationship between two distinct genres of music, Living Arrangements discusses the ways in which European art music has informed and precipitated jazz. The way in which these genres have interacted is under-studied, contested, and fraught with extra-musical connotations, to which end the document collects relevant materials with a unifying argument in mind. While there are clear differences between jazz music as we know it and music in the late-romantic repertoire, the latter is a direct antecedent to the jazz that was created in the 1910s-1950s. The process of arrangement— first popularized in the domain of art music— allows pieces of music to be re-contextualized in a way that encourages a change in genre or instrumentation. The ease with which one can arrange late-romantic music for a jazz ensemble is indicative of the similarity between the two styles, as is shown by the accompanying music. Though the two styles of music in question were not often composed or performed by the same groups, the arrangements which comprise the accompanying album are far more recognizable as jazz music than romantic music, and the instrumentation of these pieces caters to performance by musicians from a jazz background. In using arrangement as a tool with which to study the relationship between the two genres, it is argued that jazz could not exist without the influence of European art music.

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