Dave Brubeck
Years ago, living briefly in Tokyo, & wandering through the Nakano campus of “Todai,” hungry in mid-afternoon, we discovered an immense cafeteria. It consisted of long, very narrow benches — hundreds of them. Not one had a person sitting at it. The cafeteria line was open, however, & the myriad serving stations staffed. By our customary barbarous method of pointing & grunting, we selected a meal, & took a seat half way down this rink of benches, over by a wall where a juke box had started playing — by a kind of spontaneous combustion — Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk.” This was followed by the rest of the Time Out album.
A young lady, spied in the distance, became the cafeteria’s second customer. We were chuffed to see her approaching our section, given the choice of so many others; then startled when she set down her tray brazenly opposite our own.
“Do you like hot jazz, or cold?” she asked.
We had already discovered, in bookstores, how forward Japanese girls could be. This, anyway, after several years on the Asian mainland, where no respectable woman, married or unmarried, would be caught dead alone in the company of a “European” male. But Japan was rich, like Europe. This seems to do things to people. And a Japanese girl who wants to practise her English, knows no shame.
This was precisely what the young lady intended. Having answered her question with a question of our own (“What do you mean?”), we found that her English did perhaps need some practice; but her knowledge of jazz was encyclopaedic. Too, that her preference was for “cold jazz,” of just the kind that was playing.
A very pretty girl, as we recall. … And, since gentle reader may be wondering: “Warm jazz plays red notes, cool jazz plays blue notes, & cold jazz plays purple notes with white edges.” Brubeck, we were given to understand, plays all the notes; but yes, purple, edging sharply to a very pale blue.
*
We knew then, as we know today, nothing about music. But let us add, we know what we like. For as long as we can remember we have been attracted to Brubeck (our papa had his records), through all his phases to his latest choral odes (“Christmas Hymn” & “The Peace of Wild Things”). For he was one of those glorious artists who go on working to the end, in Brubeck’s case composing into his nineties & no doubt up to the moment when “his number was called” — in 9/8 signature, if we know anything about God.
That was yesterday morning. David Warren Brubeck, to give his full name, was not nearly finished as a composer. His later work, “progressively” (hate that word) more orchestral & choral & explicitly religious, seems as all his previous work to be leading somewhere, to something even better. As the later Bach, he is as much exploring as composing. He has discovered some sublime things no one ever heard before, because they are not of this world.
For reasons of pure sentiment we are playing “Brandenburg Gate Revisited” just now, past midnight up here in the High Doganate. It is the version he scored for the full London Symphony; a live recording from a decade ago, led by Brubeck himself on piano, with a couple of his six talented sons also in the foreground (Matthew on cello & Dan on percussion we think; no album notes). Curiously, it is rather warm. There are pink notes in it, & violet, & some yellow-orange at the end. There is a passage on this track, where string replies exquisitely to keyboard, that required the whole preceding nine minutes to set up. And it is utterly timeless, beyond era or style. Brubeck is full of moments like that, in the course of something between storytelling & a lively sermon, expressed in pure musical phrase; & presented entirely without presumption.
The man was, rather as other jazz greats yet more so, free of posturing. That is, he was not full of himself; he was only full of music. There is the modest serenity of a man about his job. In Brubeck, in Duke Ellington, in the voice of Ella Fitzgerald or the fingers of Art Tatum, we have to our mind audible “glimpses” of what our civilization might have been: of a music that is at once in thick with tradition, & shock new; of high classical precision, yet accessible to all.
In Brubeck particularly, we hear a mind consciously returning upon that euphonic order, in which large, even prophetic things can be said — whether by the cantor of a single melodic line, or polyphonically, & even polyrhythmically. And not for passive entertainment, for as the Psalmist we must dance. Not “easy listening” but the full reply. (The Mass was never confined to words & music, incidentally; being in its nature, too, a solemn dance at the meeting of worlds.)
He was born on a California ranch, of an English mother herself a concert pianist, so that he started piano before he was born. He followed his elder brothers into music, & his sons followed him. In this broad world he was assimilating influences all his life, & through his travels everywhere; but assimilating always to some ineffaceable core. His sound is never mistakable, & like Bach’s, unified beginning to end. (He was often in conversation with Bach.)
Raised as a “nothing” in denominational terms, in 1980 he walked into a Catholic church and simply “signed up.” He denied having converted, for he hadn’t converted from anything. Decades before he had been assembling oratorios & cantatas on frankly Biblical themes, & when he tried to explain his religious position it was too simple for anyone to understand. He’d been in the war — World War II — & he’d seen things there that were “against the Ten Commandments.” You can’t get simpler than that. He didn’t judge people, & so hung out with a wild variety; surely bringing out the best in each.
And he was so American. One wants to weep sometimes at how great Americans can be.
It strikes us one may use “Comments” as footnotes. To our memoir of forward Japanese girls, above, we should like to add the most memorable query from a fellow customer in a “Todai” (University of Tokyo) bookstore. It was:
“Excuse me please. Can you recommend which book of Marcel Proust is most important to read?”
Yes, Dave Brubeck was a kindly fine fellow who produced some very memorable and unique music.
The odd thing with musicians is that it doesn’t seem to matter at all if they are “free of posturing.” The seemingly ever-posturing Miles Davis for example was the complete opposite personality-wise of Brubek, as was the great Louis Armstrong. Still, Davis’ music endures now and will for many years to come. “Bitches Brew” is a masterwork I never get weary listening to.
As for Proust, I think it’s best never to recommend to any earnest potential reader a tome like “Remembrance of Things Past”. Spending five years reading one book is no way for a person to have to live. (Proust is the only author I can think of who should perhaps be published only in severely abridged editions. Scholars, of course, would need to acquire the full edition.)
Asking about Proust – truly a gob stopping moment.
As for Mr Brubeck you must MUST get his oratorio Classical Brubeck (2 cds) Based around texts from the New Testament. Brilliant (terrible word I know) and beautiful.
To put Mr Sparrow’s mind at ease, we have them up here in the High Doganate. We have every Brubeck CD that ever fell in reach of our greedy twitching little paws; which means a lot of repetition; but Brubeck was wonderful at repeating himself.
(We checked back to a much earlier version of “Brandenburg Gate.” The passage we mentioned was not even in the earlier version; it seems to have replaced a much longer, almost repetitious sequence with horn instead of string instrumentation. To our ear it said exactly the same thing — an echoing angelic reply, now from the cello, to an earnest appeal from the piano — condensed, yet with meaning actually enhanced, from a long paragraph to a single gentle circulating phrase.)
The good Viscount may be appalled to learn the reply we recall giving to the Proust inquirer. We told her Swann’s Way was the most important. That after she had read that, Within a Budding Grove was the second most important, so should be read next, &c. That, Time Regained was the least important, & should therefore be read last.
We cannot, alas, agree that five years reading Proust would be a waste of time. We would give alternative examples of a waste of time, but have noticed that the MT/LC are encroaching on loading times again, so we must go deal with that.
Much appreciation for your words on Dave Brubeck. A life changer for this person has been and still is Don Pullen. Try his Ode to Life….draws tears here every note.
Thank you for such a beautiful summary of the colors that Dave Brubeck has brought into this world. Ritz Crackers used his 7/4 piece Unsquare Dance for a TV commercial and Mr. Brubeck also composed a bouncy score for a Charlie Brown special. Some personal favorites of mine in his inspiring repertoire: Far More Blue and Strange Meadow Lark. Always a joy to the ears!
I was struck by your words “glimpses of what our civilization might have been”. As a young man (and an American) who has already traveled widely in the West – I long to go to the East – I wonder at your phrase because it leads to the obvious questions: where should we be as a civilization? And when specifically did we go off course? Can we tack against the wind and find the true course?
As per Proust above, I must confess that I really don’t like prose by the dump truck much.
On the other hand, one always knows for an absolute certainty that poets aren’t rolling out words for the money. I’d rather spend six months reading Hart Crane’s great “failure” The Bridge, Garcia Lorca’s and Wallace Stevens’ Complete Works, than all the fiction Chapters coupons can buy. (Who really cares to overhear the conversations of suburban slatterns or smelly weasel Irish apostates?)
In homage to all Buddy Bolden’s diverse jazz children let us not forget either the now 82-year-old Ornette Coleman. Shove him into the CD player and watch all the white noise skanks and tattooed bungee-bumpers dissolve like December’s turds in April’s rains.