Critical Listening #9: Blue Rondo a la Turk

Since we're still learning about bebop, I decided to explore some of the less typical bebop. This piece, although more popular than most bebop, stretches the boundaries of what was termed bebop. In some ways it is a cool jazz or West Coast jazz style but it still shares the angular quality of the original bebop. The piece is "Blue Rondo a la Turk" by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

In this piece we hear drums, bass, piano, and alto saxophone. It has a lively beat though not particularly fast. The most interesting feature of this music is its time signature. Most jazz music is in 4/4 and therefore has a steady kind of marching beat. Brubeck experimented with many types of time signatures and this particular song is written in 9/8. Typically, 9/8 is split into (3+3+3)/8 but Brubeck splits his in (2+2+2+3)/8 in the form of a Turkish folk rhythm.

At the beginning of the piece Brubeck introduces the theme. It is 32 bars long with 8 bar sections and seems to have an ABAC form. He is accompanied by Paul Desmond, the sax player, on the B section. After this, the A theme is taken up by the sax player with Brubeck in the background. They improvise over the B and C sections using some difficult rhythmic phrases but always coming back to the A theme at the appropriate times. The continue the end of the second chorus into the large and heavy block chords Brubeck was known for.

From here we have a bridge where the time signature switches between 9/8 to 4/4 with Brubeck playing the 9/8 measures and Desmond playing the 4/4 measures before settling on a lazy 4/4 for the saxophonist solo.

The saxophone solo is played in 4/4 with 12 bar choruses. Four choruses are taken. The style here is very much cool jazz. The eighth notes aren't completely straight but they don't swing like in a typical swing song; they sound very angular. Desmond uses little vibrato except on very long notes. He bends lots of notes which introduces interesting and new pitches into his solo. If you listen closely to the bass, it is easy to hear how the saxophonist is improvising directly from the chords of the walking bass line. Desmond also frequently runs over into the new chorus with his old ideas, even running into Brubeck's solo by a few beats.

Brubeck takes a solo after Desmond which is also in 4/4 and four choruses long. Brubeck's solo is full of the same angular eighth notes but his solo still seems to swing pretty hard. Part of this can be attributed to Brubeck's style of playing. In comparison with Desmond's playing, Brubeck's seems very heavy-handed. He fills his solo with lots of triplet grace notes and simple ostinato which evolve into his signature block chords before receding to his previous ideas.

After Brubeck's solo, we find ourselves in the bridge again with Desmond playing the 4/4 measures and Brubeck playing the 9/8 measures except this time we transition back into 9/8 and the main theme. The ideas we saw at the beginning of the piece are repeated but we build up to the climax of the block chords more quickly and stay there, ending on on a very solid major chord following by a drum hit.

The rhythm section on this piece is easily ignored but fundamentally important. The bass and drums keep the tempo from dragging or speeding up even with the time signature changes. Though we may not consciously appreciate the drummer's accents, the solo section would seem very empty without them.

This piece is a great example of how jazz can split into many different genres, but still be intrinsically related.