Smithsonian Associates: Jazzing the Classics – The Enduring Influence of American Jazz on Classical Music, Lecture 4 – Concert Halls and Controversy in the US

Beginning in the earliest part of the 20th century, European “art” or “classical” music enjoyed a brief but intense romance with American jazz. If its perceptions of this unique American artform were sometimes distinctly misguided, its enthusiasm made up for it. For some it was a charming caprice, for others a raucous symbol of democracy.

In a 4-session course, popular speaker and concert pianist Rachel Franklin uses her unique live piano demonstrations and historic and contemporary film clips to explore early jazz origins and how American ragtime and jazz conquered Parisian nightclubs in the feverish pre- and post-World War I era, powerfully influencing composers from Ravel to Milhaud and Stravinsky. She traces the role of jazz in the ‘20s and ‘30s as a symbol of political freedom and cultural modernity for artists such as Shostakovich, Krenek, and Walton in capitals including Moscow, Berlin, and London. She concludes in the U.S., where many composers including Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and John Alden Carpenter used jazz as a deep source of inspiration while struggling to come to terms with its identity as a highly complex, home-grown African American artform.

British-born Franklin has been a featured speaker for organizations including the Library of Congress and NPR, exploring intersections among classical and jazz music, film scores, and the fine arts.

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While jazz was exploding in popularity throughout the United States and the great jazz masters were beginning to emerge, the classical music community harbored a profound ambivalence about this home-grown phenomenon and its roots in the cultures of African and enslaved people. Composers with an eye to the future had to decide whether to embrace it as a valid music of the time or condemn it as a cheap passing phase. Franklin examines the ballet Skyscrapers by Carpenter, Copland’s Piano Concerto, and the ever-changing perspective of George Gershwin’s greatest works. Inevitably, the greatest jazz composers such as Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis pronounce the not-so-final word on how jazz has found its way permanently into modern concert halls.