glossary

Style Sheets



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52nd Street

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Parker Quartet

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Thelonious Monk

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Gillespie & Roach

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Ella Fitzgerald

Bebop

Time period: 1940 - 1955
  1. Bebop had the effect of removing jazz from the mainstream of popular music
  2. Art music instead of entertainment
  3. Completely black invention
  4. Music for listening instead of dancing
  5. Centered in New York City
Performance Practice
  1. A small-group music, e.g., quintet of trumpet, saxophone, and rhythm section
  2. A music designed for improvisation
  3. Virtuoso music
  4. Trimmed down music
    1. few introductions, endings, interludes, backgrounds
    2. complex unison melodies
  5. Melodies and improvisations inextricably linked
  6. Use of the contrafact (tunes based on the chord changes to other tunes)
    1. a chance to improvise on familiar changes
    2. obviates the necessity for paying royalties
  7. No duplication in the rhythm section
  8. The music is instrumental in nature: rangy, angular, chromatic, rhythmically complex, virtuosic
  9. Extremely chromatic music
  10. The rhythm section is a modification of the 1938-39 Count Basie rhythm section (Basie, Walter Page, Freddie Green, and Jo Jones)
  11. Tune sources:
    1. blues
    2. I Got Rhythm
    3. standards
    4. contrafacts
    5. originals
  12. Bebop gives jazz its basic musical vocabulary; this style is the common practice period for jazz
  13. The two most important figures in Bebop were Charlie Parker (1920-1955) and Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993)
speakerspacer A Night in Tunisia - Charlie Parker
speakerspacer Blue Monk - Thelonious Monk
speakerspacer How High The Moon - Ella Fitzgerald

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