Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn
Walter van de Leur
Abstract
This book investigates and analyzes the music of Billy Strayhorn. Over seventy musical examples, drawn from his original autograph scores, provide insight in the development of his style, in his advanced harmonic language and in his orchestral technique. The book traces the origins of Strayhorn’s music, rooted in European and American idioms, and uncovers hitherto unknown works which cast a new light on his development as a jazz composer and orchestrator. It addresses the mythical, thirty-year partnership of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Through research on their autograph scores, it red ... More
This book investigates and analyzes the music of Billy Strayhorn. Over seventy musical examples, drawn from his original autograph scores, provide insight in the development of his style, in his advanced harmonic language and in his orchestral technique. The book traces the origins of Strayhorn’s music, rooted in European and American idioms, and uncovers hitherto unknown works which cast a new light on his development as a jazz composer and orchestrator. It addresses the mythical, thirty-year partnership of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Through research on their autograph scores, it redefines their musical collaboration. The book argues that as opposed to general accepted views, Ellington and Strayhorn were not musical alter-egos, but two distinctively individual composers who worked from different musical perspectives. This book also details how those distinctions stem from the respective musical backgrounds of the two composers, and how that affected their collaboration. The differences between Ellington’s and Strayhorn’s music are clearly audible, yet have eluded most listeners since Ellington — as the main interpreter of his collaborator’s music — played a crucial role in our perception of Strayhorn’s work. The book untangles Strayhorn from Ellington’s shadow, identifies all of his contributions to the Ellington repertory, and points listeners to the most salient features that distinguish Strayhorn’s musical style from Ellington’s.
Keywords:
Duke Ellington,
jazz,
jazz composer,
jazz orchestrator,
musical collaboration,
autograph scores,
arrangements
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2002 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195124484 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2008 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195124484.001.0001 |
