Musicosophy 6. The Jazz Variation... by Beethoven

What distinguishes genre from form in music, and why is the so-called "jazz variation" of Beethoven's opus 111 not jazz?

Dominique Pagani starts from a listener's message struck by the so-called "jazz" variation of Beethoven's last sonata. He first distinguishes genre, defined by the external destination of music (circumstance, addressee, instrument), from form, which organizes musical discourse from within, and separates the genre of the sonata from the form of the sonata. He then portrays jazz as a genre "always already complex," born from the tragic collision of the slave trade: African rhythm, Protestant chorale, work songs, musical comedy standards, polka. He shows that jazz's specificity lies as much in its harmonic invention (major and minor simultaneously) as in its rhythm, and that bop musicians hard-won conquered a learned music. He arrives at forms: counterpoint, sonata form tied to the new conflictual sensibility, Schubertian lied, theme and variation, the form favored by jazz as by late Beethoven, and concludes on the Wagnerian leitmotif, synthesis of the lyrical and the dramatic.

Conceptsgenreformsonata formsyncopationrhythmalways already complexrecognitionharmonymodecounterpointvariationleitmotiflearned musicimprovisationliberation