English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
The three ages of jazz, swing, and Duke Ellington 0:01 Even in universal history, there are only three things to remember: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. Antiquity the oldest, modern times the most recent, and everything in between gets stuffed into the Middle Ages, which means what's in the middle. Very handy. In jazz there's New Orleans, it starts like that.
0:41 And then Middle Jazz, likewise, as if it were in the middle. And finally modern jazz, which starts with bebop, and then there's cool, then hard bop, then free.
1:33 New Orleans, Middle Jazz, modern jazz — if that's not simple, frankly. You can have simple landmarks first and complicated ones afterward, within these basic divisions. Swing is fairly late. It only appears with Middle Jazz in the thirties, when African Americans moved up from the cotton plantations of the South to the factories of the North. And when the rhythm of the big cities, Chicago and New York, overtook the rhythm of the cotton planter. That's swing. That is, the alternation of the beat and the off-beat.
2:07 Classical musicians argue among themselves. I like Beethoven, I don't like Beethoven, I like Wagner, I like Schoenberg, I like... They're all unanimous about one thing. You must never say a word against Mozart. There must be reasons for that. Whatever their taste, whether they're modernists, traditionalists, or lovers of baroque, you don't say a word against Mozart. In jazz, there's the equivalent with Duke Ellington. The old-timers, the moderns, those in between — you never say a word against Duke Ellington. Above all, he remains immortalized in history less as a soloist than as a catalyst for other people's talent.
2:38 With a glance, a gesture, he directs a large band that suddenly unleashes a storm or murmurs at the edge of audibility. And above all, something is always happening with Duke Ellington. There are always musical events, a new sonority. You're never on autopilot. You have to understand why African American musicians hold Duke in such reverence.
The range of saxophones, from baritone to soprano 4:12 When I talk within the great saxophone family — soprano sax, tenor, and so on — these divisions are divisions in the sense of pitch, for the ear. There's a technical term for the divisions in pitch from lowest to highest: it's called the range, or tessitura, of an instrument or a voice. All these divisions originally come from the human voice. Baritone — that applies to all instrumental groups — so you have the baritone sax.
4:49 Above that, the tenor sax, the instrument of John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz. You see, that produces very different sonorities from one individual to another. You can get three different sound worlds just through timbre. The vaporous, smooth sonority of a Stan Getz.
5:22 The quiet, almost nonchalant strength of a Rollins. Or the cutting sonority of a Coltrane. And yet all of that is the same instrument, the tenor sax.
6:13 Still higher, the alto sax. That's the instrument of Charlie Parker, no one else, of Bird.
6:49 I'm an alto sax — we look higher still, but this is the first time it's a saxophone that isn't curved but straight up. You know that the longer the tube, the lower the sound — it's that simple. The shorter it is, the less need there is to curve it back. And that's the soprano sax.
7:21 There, now we've reached the highest register. Notice that we've reached the equivalent of the highest female voice, the soprano. It's the voice that gave the direction by which instrumental groups are divided. In the Baroque era, opera characters symbolizing strength, the most terrifying, most powerful gods, are played by the highest male voices. That's interesting — you might think they'd be booming voices. Among the basses, not at all. They were often castrato voices — Hercules is an almost feminine voice in Baroque opera.
Gerry Mulligan and the big band, a concerto structure 8:03 Why am I dwelling on this? Because the piece through which I'm opening the next door is a piece featuring the lowest of the saxophones, the baritone sax, played by Gerry Mulligan. Descending somewhere into a range that, among strings, would fall between the cello and the double bass. A wonderful instrument, heard a bit more rarely than the others because you have to lug it around — a baritone is bulky. He has his own orchestra, but here it's a big band, that's why I chose this.
8:36 We're dealing with what jazz musicians call a big band, a large orchestra, once you go beyond ten instrumentalists. What matters is that the structure is the same as a concerto: a soloist set against a mass, a figure standing out against a background. That's what's common to both. It's a magnificent school of what's called "mise en place" in jazz. It's a form of honesty toward the audience — that everything be flawless. The more musicians there are, the more order there has to be, all of that. And all of it in the service of an astounding swing. In fact, the swing era in the history of jazz coincides with the appearance of big bands.
Analysis of and listening to My Funny Valentine 9:46 You'd expect this Mulligan story to blow your hair back. But no, it's a ballad, already turned inward. It's My Funny Valentine — a sentimental song, a bit tender too. My Funny Valentine is about someone looking at a girl who isn't drop-dead gorgeous. He says it plainly — with your weak face, with your funny smile that's a bit odd. "My funny Valentine" doesn't mean "my gorgeous" — that's interesting. Very inward, very tender. It almost begins in half-light. But not half-light to say just anything, to blur things and muddy the waters.
10:21 A kind of half-light emerges with him — with admirable clarity, the low, slow sonority of Gerry Mulligan. Every note is weighed, articulated, murmured, and at the same time clear. That's a feat. Especially with an instrument like the baritone, to draw out a note from that kind of monster, if only given its size within the saxophone family.
11:06 And after a few notes of the first completed phrase, the orchestra answers like an echo, as if moved, touched by this beginning of a solo — answering the way a choir answers the preacher in church.
11:41 All these wind instruments, which ought to be thunderous and blow your hair back — which they often do — come here like a breeze descending through the branches and foliage of the trees on a beautiful autumn evening over Central Park. It's this richness that suddenly unfolds just as nothingness, darkness, winter, are about to arrive — there's suddenly this blaze of golden light. Gold, free gold for everyone.
12:19 My Funny Valentine, Gerry Mulligan, solo against a big band.
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