For more than forty years, Duke Ellington has been unchallenged as the paramount orchestral figure in jazz. Thelonious Monk, among others, has written melodies more substantial than Ellington’s many delightful but Tin Pan Alleyish creations. Even on the plane of orchestration the earlier Jelly Roll Morton, operating admittedly on a smaller and less-ambitious scale, showed at least a comparable mastery. Ellington’s genius lies in the way he used the distinctive sounds of his musicians as the framework of each composition. The Ellington style is a concatenation of sounds, launched by the end of the 1920s and refined throughout the following decade to reach a sudden plateau of magnificence in the early forties. Throughout this period he produced works comparable to, but quite separate from, the achievements of contemporary straight music.
Given his exalted, and deserved reputation among lovers of all types of music it was no surprise that Ellington concluded his recent tour of Britain with two concerts far removed from the typical jazz fare. Last Sunday at the Royal Albert Hall, three extended compositions were performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra; next evening, at Great St Mary’s Church in Cambridge, he gave what was described as a “Concert of Sacred Music.”
Neither event was outstanding, understandably enough, for Ellington was not on home ground. Apart from ties with specific musicians – and the symphony concert proved beyond doubt that he needs his band as much as it needs him – Ellington’s artistic development was conditioned by certain functional limitations: the necessity to provide background music for dancers and cabaret, and the restrictions imposed by the 78 r.p.m. record. The first meant that descriptive and impressionist elements would precede formal design; the second that his strength as a composer would be that of a miniaturist.
Even after Ellington’s modest disclaimer that he was competing with the classicists, the first two pieces with the LPO, “New world a ‘coming” and “The golden broom and the green apple” were almost embarrassing to hear. The orchestrations were trite and colourless and the slight themes were stretched beyond endurance. For the “Harlem suite,” the LPO was supplemented by Ellington’s men and the improvement was immediate. Written in 1950 the “Tone, parallel to Harlem,” its full title, is his most successful longer work; not merely evocative but, more important, musically rewarding. Ellington’s craftsmanship, conspicuously absent until then, was revealed in the controlled melodic profusion throughout the kaleidoscopic first half. Significantly, though, the performance was carried almost entirely by his own orchestra and soloists, with the LPO supplying the odd touch and filling out the final crescendo.
The evening at Cambridge was more satisfying if not noticeably uplifting. Ellington’s sacred music package, heard last year at Coventry, is a strange amalgam of Ellingtonia, gospel music and show business. Among the items was the Lord’s Prayer, swung at a steady clip, a tap-dancing routine and a choir that intoned like an augmented version of the Merry Macs. The programme revolved round a suite entitled in the beginning God,” and the “Come Sunday” theme from the 1943 “Black, brown, and beige.”
The suite opened impressively, even if Ellington was only rehashing his proven successes, but, as the chorus belted out he chapter-headings from the Old Testament over a fast blues, it became apparent that the composer had not set his sights very high. As a warm and unpretentious religious spectacular it was very well received.
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