What Can Jazz Musicians Learn from Baroque Music?

It might seem at first that Jazz composition would have little to learn from Baroque Music. In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR here), mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato helped clarify the issue for me.

NPR was interviewing Ms. DiDonato about her new album In War and Peace: Harmony Through Music. The album is a collection of baroque arias from the 17th and 18th centuries. It is divided into two sections, the first addressing war, the second addressing peace. Two comments DiDonato made in the interview caught my attention.

First, somewhat later in the interview, she said:

There is a purity to the music of the Baroque world. We haven't hit dense harmonies yet. It's not overly complex orchestrations. It's really a chance where the text and the voice get to be center stage. And I think that's a chance for more raw emotion to emerge, because there's so much space for the listener to enter into this music.

DiDonato finds that returning to the earlier, less complex form of classical music allows more raw emotion to emerge and also allows the listener to enter more easily into the music. The same can be said for the transition to modal compositions in Jazz. A great example is Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album, one of the most successful jazz albums ever released. The compositions are modal, meaning very simple chord progressions with improvisations drawn from the actual notes in the melodies (rather than from scales and chord substitutions).

Second, was the process DiDonato used to select the arias for her album.

I was sitting at my piano going through a stack of arias, trying to find repertoire for this, and the Paris attacks had just happened. And I thought, I have to address what's happening today, because these composers from years and centuries ago have already been talking about war and peace.

There is a largely unexplored area of jazz composition where choices of songs on an album are designed to address "what's happening today".  Jazz is one of the least popular form of music in the US accounting for just 1.4% of total music consumption (tied, interestingly, with classical music). Joyce DiDonato has revived interest in baroque music by, first, linking it to "what's happening today" and second, by throwing off the stuffy, fat-lady-sings image of opera singers. Jazz musicians take note!

Here is the entire NPR inter interview:

EXERCISES

1. Pick a current "what's happening today" topic that interests you and that you care deeply about (forget about your love life or the typical topics that are the basis for Rock, R&B and Blues songs). If you don't have any concern about "what's happening today," get concerned!
2. Go through your jazz collection, the Great American Song Book and the Real Book (your stack of arias) looking for songs that speak to your  "what's happening today" concern. It helps if the songs have lyrics and if you know the lyrics. Maybe the song title is corny or dated, but there might be a lyric that speaks to your issue.
3. Now comes the fun part! Rewrite the song. Change the title: uses some lyrics you like or some phrase that's appropriate to your concern. Simplify the chord progression by looking for the few chords that capture the feeling you are after. Simplify or entirely change the melody so that it fits a modal scale you find particularly interesting and appropriate to the new song. For the solo, improvised sections of the song, pick one or two chords and use the modal scale (not the original chord changes) for improvisation. Next, change the rhythm of the song: turn a swing song into a ballad; turn a ballad into a Bossa Nova; turn a rock song into Latin Beat; turn a blues song into a Hip Hop beat. Pick some rhythm from modern dance music.  Forget standard jazz rhythms.
4. EXTRA CREDIT: Go right to the source. Take the Handel aria Joyce DiDonato sings in the video above (guitar score here, entire aria here, chord progression and melody here) and rewrite it as a modal jazz head (see the figured bass line below).

Why should you bother doing any of this? Here's another quote from Joyce DiDonato:

Music can be a real guiding light towards empathy, and I can't think of any better prescription. Let's put it to the United States of America right now, a country divided. If we had more empathy, that's a healing thing. And music, because it goes to the heart and bypasses the brain, can put people in a position to hear another point of view, to be less afraid of it. I believe a thousand percent that music can do that and this album can help that. I would love for that to be true.

FIGURE BASS

Lascia ch'io pianga An interesting aspect of this Handel aria is that it was used in a number of operas under different names and slight rearrangements. 

(F) || I | II |V | Ix I | IV | V I | IV V | I ||

(G) ||  I | V I | II  (F) I | (C) V | I (I) | I ||

Notice the key changes (in parentheses) and the six measure bridge. Use the lyrics to name the new song:

Lascia ch'io pianga mia cruda sorte, e che sospiri la libertà. Il duolo infranga queste ritorte de' miei martiri sol per pietà.

Allow that I weep over my cruel fate, and that I may sigh for the freedom Let my sadness shatter these chains of my suffering, if only out of pity.