miles davis' bitches brew: overview and analysis
TRANSCRIPT
Indiana University Bloomington Fall 2015 Mathilde Handelsman
Mathilde Handelsman Jacobs School of Music Professor P. Harbison Jazz History 2 : 1950-69
Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew: overview and analysis
"This music came at the end of the 1960s... after all the chaos.”
—Quincy Troupe
One of the best-selling albums of all times, Miles Davis' Bitches Brew marks a decisive
moment in the history of jazz. Widely acknowledged as the beginning of fusion, or jazz-
rock, it was recorded in August 1969 over the course of three days in New York City, and
released in 1970 for Columbia Records. With its psychedelic tones, the use of electric
instruments such as keyboard and guitar, and its numerous technological innovations,
in collaboration with album producer Teo Macero, Bitches Brew comes as a logical
continuation of Miles Davis' previous experimentations in his record of February 1969,
In a silent way. But it also goes much further: through different textures, influences, and
the radically new sound it brings, Bitches Brew is Miles Davis' electric period at its peak,
and a true revolution.
David Baker writes that there are only a few musicians in the history of jazz who
succeeded, or even felt the need to renew their style as often and as brilliantly as Miles
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Davis. — and, indeed, Bitches Brew came out ten years after 1959, or after Kind of Blue, 1
which itself forms the essence of "modal jazz”. Between the two, the evolution is
striking, in that both are just as equally groundbreaking, though in completely different
ways. With Bitches Brew, Miles Davis' eternal, mythical restlessness is expressed once
again, at a peculiar time in history, for jazz and music in general.
The jazz audiences of 1969 are no longer what they used to be. Culturally, it is the
year of Woodstock, of the summer of love, and for the new generations of the sixties—
black or white—, jazz has become music from the past: the trend now favors rock and
Motown. In 1969, Miles Davis, now in his forties, has just married twenty-four year old
Betty Mabry. For an artist who, all his life, will insatiably try to keep up with the trends
and create music "of his time”—succeeding, for the most part, in making it timeless—
the challenge now is to reach out to young, new generations. Betty's influence here is
undeniable: through her, Davis is introduced to the club and art scene of New York, and
meets young musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, whom he has been listening
to with great interest. For Miles Davis, in his own words, it becomes evident that this is 2
the new direction to take:
"[...] once a style, whether original or copied, has been arrived at, in the majority of cases, it is impossi1 -ble to set it aside for a newer, more revolutionary one. The number of musicians [...] who have been able to generate more than a single innovation, or even modify their mature style, is, as we would anticipate, truly insignificant : Miles Davis, John Coltrane and perhaps Coleman Hawkins [...] are the only ones whose name come to mind." David Baker, The jazz style of Miles Davis : a historical perspective. Alfred Mu-sic Publishing, 1980.
"The music I was really listening to in 1968 was Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, and Sly Stone." Miles Davis, 2
Miles : The Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1990, p. 473.
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"What they [Columbia] didn't understand was that I wasn't prepared to be a
memory yet, wasn't prepared to be listed only on Columbia's so-called classi-
cal list. I had seen the way to the future with my music, and I was going for it
like I had always done. Not for Columbia and their record sales, and not for
trying to get some young, white record buyers. I was going for it for myself,
for what I wanted and needed in my own music. I wanted to change course,
had to change course for me to believe in and love what I was playing.” 3
Politically, the closing of the 1960s are a turbulent time for America: Vietnam war,
Civil Rights movements, the Kennedy assassinations, followed by Martin Luther King's,
but also the growth of radical feminism—all of which give way to more and more
groups of activists, massive demonstrations and militancy. This context of division and
disillusion among people has strong repercussions on the music being made. In fact,
the sixties are hard to define musically and stylistically precisely because so much is
going on at the same time. However, if there is a general attribute for the epoch, it
would be the word "freedom", which seems to embody the ideology of all the musical
styles from the sixties, on various levels: from free jazz to the lyrics of folk and/or
protest songs, from the avant-garde and experimental composers' desire to break free
from structures to the strong, assertive beat of rock music,... In this context, Miles
Davis holds an unusual place, as we will observe in this essay, for while he does not
adhere to any of those movements, he is undeniably and strongly influenced by all of
them.
idem, p. 298.3
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After a certain amount of preparation throughout July 1969, Miles Davis finally 4
books the Columbia studios on 52nd Street in New York City, from August 19 to 21,
bringing together, in this venture, no less than fifteen musicians—many of whom will
go on to leading their own bands and having high-profile careers, such as Joe Zawinul
and Wayne Shorter with Weather Report in the 1970s —toward the making of an album 5
which will eventually sell a half-million copies: Bitches Brew.
The original LP contains six tracks : Pharaoh's dance (on an original idea by Joe
Zawinul), Bitches Brew, Spanish Key, John McLaughlin, Miles runs the voodoo down
(homage to Jimi Hendrix' Voodoo Chile), and Sanctuary (composed by Wayne Shorter).
Everything, from the music to the album cover, the expressionistic painting by Abdul
Mati Klarwein, and the title of the album itself are provocative. The title, especially, is
very controversial for the time, as stated by Teo Macero :
"The word ‘bitches’, you know, probably that was the first time a title like that was
ever used. The title fit the music, the cover fit the music.” 6
Very much the result of a close collaboration between Miles Davis and producer Teo
Macero, the tracks also contain several edits and effects, with the use of new studio
technology.
Although Miles Davis, in his autobiography, makes no mention of it, and insists that the material 4
brought to the studio for recording had never been seen by any of the musicians, Joe Zawinul, as reported by Paul Tingen in his article for Jazztimes, reports that there were actually several rehearsals beforehand, and choice of material to be recorded.
Tingen, Paul. "Miles Davis and the making of Bitches Brew : Sorcerer's brew". Jazz Times, 2001. 5
idem.6
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I will first take a look at the unusual choice and number of instruments present on
Bitches Brew; I will then proceed to talking about the compositions themselves—from a
rhythmic, harmonic and structural point of view; lastly, structures will lead me to
comment on the inherent link between studio recording and composition on this
album, as well as the several possible influences of Miles Davis in regard to
experimentations in form, technological effects, aesthetics and philosophies, all of
which constitute Bitches Brew.
Analysis
1. Instruments: roles and interaction
The album presents a total of fifteen musicians, as listed below :
• Miles Davis - trumpet
• Wayne Shorter - Soprano sax
• Bennie Maupin - bass clarinet
• Chick Corea - electric piano
• Larry Young - electric piano
• Joe Zawinul - electric piano
• John McLaughlin - guitar
• Dave Holland - double bass
• Harvey Brooks - electric bass
• Lenny White - drums
• Jack DeJohnette - drums
• Billy Cobham - drums
• Don Alias - congas and drums
• Juma Santos - shaker, congas and percussion
• Airto Moreira - percussion
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The above list presents a very distinctive and original format, not only in terms of
number of musicians in the band, but in the choice of instruments and musicians
themselves. The triple pianos and drums, as well as the two basses, make for an
extremely dense texture; the electric guitar is definitely a new sound for jazz, and one
Miles Davis is keen on exploring in his new style; as for the bass clarinet, played by
Bernie Maupin, it adds an unusual, contrasting and rich color to the general texture—at
times, it can almost be heard as another bass line, because of the register.
There are many layers on each track of this album. The roles of each instrument are
therefore very different from the ones constituting the sound of the 1950s, in which we
find a hierarchy between the timbres—here, there is none. On that subject, George
Grella, in his work on Bitches Brew, says the following :
"Bitches Brew places everything on the same sonic level, and Western music
of almost every kind, especially popular music, is made almost entirely with
a hierarchy of values between soloist (or lead voice of some kind) and en-
semble that came to be seen as a de facto requirement." 7
Not only are each instrument indeed "on the same sonic level", but the roles that they
play are also similar and less defined than in "traditional" jazz that came before. In this
context, it becomes more and more difficult to talk about a "rhythm section", since
every instrument seems to be a part of it, including the bass clarinet.
Grella, George, Jr. Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. New York : Bloomsbury, 2015. 7
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This full, ambient sound that these textures generate is very similar to that of
psychedelic rock albums of the exact same time, particularly Pink Floyd's The Piper at
the gates of dawn (1967) and Jimi Hendrix' Electric Ladyland (1968), which is certainly no
coincidence. This full texture also creates the impression that there are no real solos in
any of the pieces, whereas in fact each one is a combination of solos put together. Davis'
trumpet-playing is the only instrument that is put forward in the sound mix, so that we
hear a sort of dialogue, an interplay between him and the mass of instruments.
Similarly to the role Davis opted for in other of his albums, such as Kind of Blue or
Sketches of Spain, once again, he acts here as a "guiding voice", without which this music
could easily become static. 8
Sometimes, an instrument will be brought out distinctively, and gradually fold back
into the general texture: the bass clarinet at the beginning of "Bitches Brew", for
instance, is suddenly brought out by itself, before its motif is looped and therefore
turned into an ostinato, which then becomes a bass line over which layers of
instruments build up, and progressively fades out. Such instrumental interventions
have a quasi illusory aspect to them: they come and go so briefly, and do not linger in
our ears very long, so that one almost wonders if they actually took place.
As for the drumming styles of Lenny White, Billy Cobham and Jack DeJohnette (whom
Davis chose for "his deep groove" ), they sound closer to funk and rock rather than the 9
cf. Paul Tingen.8
Miles Davis, Autobiography, p. 312. 9
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ones that come from traditional jazz. The groove installed reminds us at times of
Ginger Baker's on Cream's 1967 Disraeli Gears , and other times of the funk rhythms of 10
James Brown.
One can also add that, for the first time, Miles Davis chooses to record with
musicians who aren't necessarily jazz musicians, such as bassist Harvey Brooks, from
Jefferson Starship.
2. Rhythm, harmony and form
The rhythms are often said to stem clearly from African music, "with the rhythms
built by adding beats on top of each other rather than subdividing in the Western
manner." The beginning of "Pharaoh's dance", for example, is clearly non-Western in 11
its rhythmic approach, from how the drums and percussions interact with the rest of
the instruments.
As stated above, the influence of rock and funk are obvious, but there are also several
passages on this album where time is suspended, and where drums and percussions are
coloring freely, within the flow of textures, rather than laying down any kind of groove.
In general, the harmony is minimalistic, based on just a few chords. It mixes
different modes and tonal centers, with an emphasis in the solos on whole-tone and
octotonic scales. The improvisations on the three keyboards are very chromatic, with
n.b : in regard to this particular album, one could even wonder if there is any relation between Miles 10
Davis' choice of name, "Bitches Brew" and Cream's song "Strange Brew", from Disraeli Gears, as this pre-cedes it of two years.
cf. George Grella. 11
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step / half-step ambiguity revolving around one note—such processes that one
frequently finds in Bartok and Messiaen, as well as atonal and/or modal composers of
the time, such as Maurice Ohana. Some moments are in fact atonal (for example,
approximately one minute of "Bitches Brew", between 16'00" and 17'00"), but as usual, it
shifts very fast and, in the same way as what we described earlier with instruments
appearing and disappearing, the moment is brief. On his compositional process
concerning harmony, Miles Davis recalls :
"I had been experimenting with writing a few simple chord changes for three
pianos. [...] So I had been writing these things down, like one beat chord and a
bass line, and I found out that the more we played it, the more it just kept get-
ting different.[…]This started happening in 1968, when I had Chick, Joe and
Herbie for those studio dates. It went on into the sessions we had for In a Silent
Way. Then I started thinking about something larger, a skeleton of a piece. I
would write a chord on two beats and they'd have two beats out. So they would
do one, two, three, da-dum, right? Then I put the accent on the fourth beat.
Maybe I had three chords on the first bar. Anyway, I told the musicians that
they could do anything they wanted, play anything they heard but I had to have
this, what they did, as a chord. Then they knew what they could do, so that's
what they did. Played off that chord, and it made it sound like a whole lot of
stuff." 12
"Pharaoh's dance" opens with a melodic pattern in E dorian, which is the piece's
signature motivic element, around which the improvisations revolve; even if, through
the use of various modes in the solos, the piece seems to leave its original harmonic
context, the E dorian is always in the background, if only in the auditor's memory.
Miles Davis, Autobiography, p. 299. 12
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Noticeably, Wayne Shorter's solo around 11'48", using the whole-tone scale, shares
many similarities with patterns often found in Messiaen's works.
"Spanish key", set on a deep, funk groove, and based on several scales, appears as a
reminiscence of Davis' previous explorations on Sketches of Spain, opening with the
phrygian scale, which comes back regularly throughout the piece, as a structural
element.
Structurally, the pieces on Bitches Brew redefine the concept of the jazz tune
completely, starting with their extended duration. The longest pieces, "Pharaoh's dance"
and "Bitches Brew" respectively last 20 and 27 minutes! But even the shorter ones are
by no means "short", by comparison with the standards of jazz albums until then. Beside
the limitations brought by technological factors pre-1960, with restrained recording
space, the idea of form for a 20 minute piece doesn't match well with the usual, formal
criteria of blues and jazz. In that respect, the pieces on Bitches Brew are not tunes at all:
they are recorded, almost free improvisations, or, to quote Paul Tingen, "a jungle
environmnent that one can enter and roam". 13
The 1960s coincide musically with a period when the concept of tune itself, or "theme",
tends to disappear. This is particularly the case in classical music, for instance, with the
post-serialists, but also the electro-acoustic, minimalist, and even musical theater
movements in Europe, not to mention musique concrète, in which there is no concept 14
Article for JazzTimes, 2001. 13
e.g. George Aperghis. 14
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of melody whatsoever. It appears that, in every kind of music being created in the
Western world in the sixties, whether it's funk, pop or rock, the concept of "tune" has
become somewhat archaic (even if it expresses itself on different levels for each type of
music); the theme is no longer predominant in the music, but blends more and more
with its accompaniment, in favor of the general atmosphere. This is illustrated by our
ear being naturally drawn to the arrangement, or elements thereof, in a piece, rather
than the actual theme: horn lines of a James Brown song, the guitar ostinato of Jimi
Hendrix' 1983, a merman I shall turn to be, etc.
However, the pieces on Bitches Brew are not free, and they do contain an internal,
functional structure of their own. In his autobiography, Miles Davis says, about the
recording sessions of Bitches Brew: "I brought in these musical sketches that nobody
had seen, just like I did on Kind of Blue and In a Silent Way.” — yet several of the 15
musicians on Bitches Brew, including Joe Zawinul and Lenny White, refuted this fact
later on, by acknowledging that there were, in fact, some rehearsals beforehand, to
prepare the sessions. This seems logical for Miles Davis, who did not adhere to free jazz
at all, and preferred to work "freely" within an established frame: what he referred to as
controlled freedom. 16
This only partly explains why the pieces on Bitches Brew feel structured. One of the
most important aspects of this album, as we shall examine in the next part, lies in the
Miles Davis, Autobiography, p. 299.15
"Look, you don't need to think to play weird. That ain't no freedom. You need controlled freedom." 16
Miles Davis, reported in Berendt and Huesmann's The Jazz Book, p. 126.
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many technological edits made by Teo Macero, especially on the first two tracks; these
edits are, in fact, crucial factors in the structuring of the pieces on the album.
3. Recording innovations: an integral part of the composition
What Miles doesn't actually say in his autobiography is, probably, how important Teo
Macero's role was in the making of the album. Today, it is generally admitted that the
record is a direct result of their strong collaboration. Miles Davis gave 'carte blanche' to
Macero in regard to the post-production edits, which are considerable. The title track
itself contains fifteen edits , with the use of effects including tape editing, loops, delay, 17
echo, reverb and phase shifting. These effects, however, aren't simply there for the sake
of effects — they actually contribute to the structure of the piece as a whole. Some of
the loop effects, for instance, isolate certain phrases from free improvisations and, by
repetition, turn them into thematic elements. This process of composition is very
similar to the explorations of Steve Reich taking place at the same time, with works
such as Come out (1966), Violin phase (1967), or, later on, Different Trains (1988).
"Half a year later a record came out that was totally different, because
they’d taken the front end of one tune and put that in the middle and so
on. Basically Teo Macero had made a whole other thing out of it. I suspect
that Miles said to Teo: ‘Go ahead and do what you think best,’ and that
Miles then approved or disapproved what had been done."
Paul B. Cherlin and Guerino Mazzola. Flow, gesture, and spaces in free jazz : towards a Theory of Collabo17 -ration. Springer, 2008, p. 105.
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Lenny White 18
Therefore, in editing and rearranging, using new studio technology, Macero played an
integral part in creating the structure of the pieces and had a tremendous importance
in the compositional process.
A Juilliard graduate, Macero was a composer and arranger himself, and contributor
to the 3rd Stream movement. According to Paul Tingen, Macero's classical music
influences can be found in the sonata-like structures he gave to the pieces on Bitches
Brew, notably "Pharaoh's dance" and "Bitches Brew" :
"In “Pharaoh’s Dance” the section 00:00 to 02:32 can be called the
exposition, since it contains two basic themes, with theme number one first
played between 00:00 and 00:15 and theme number two at 00:46. Starting at
02:32 is a solo section, or “development,” containing references to the
material of the “exposition” at 02:54 and 07:55. A dramatic section is edited
in between 08:29 and 08:42, with tape delay added to Miles’ horn, then
repeated at 08:44 to 08:53, and followed by a one-second tape loop that
repeats five times between 8:53 and 9:00. When Miles at long last plays
Zawinul’s stirring main theme (referred to earlier in the track, but never
actually played), at 16:38, it can be considered the coda."
Whether one adheres to this idea or not, it is clear that the role of the recording studio
here is not only that of "an instrument alongside the others" , but also an indissociable 19
aspect of the musical conception and composition of the album.
quoted in JazzTimes, 2009. 18
Berendt and Huesmann, The Jazz Book, p. 128. 19
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Lastly, this also points toward similar innovations made during the same time by The
Beatles—who, by now, had more or less stopped performing and become "studio
artists”—with the Double White album, and, later on, Abbey Road: the progress in studio
techniques created a revolution of their own.
4. Music of chance
"As the music was being played, as it was developing,
Miles would get new ideas. This was the beautiful thing about it"
Jack DeJohnette
With the concept of music being composed as it is being played, Miles points toward
yet another musical movement of the same epoch: indeterminacy. Lead principally by
John Cage in the sixties, the movement of indeterminacy in music relies solely on
hazard and chance in regard to forms and structures of a piece. In that respect, it is also
close to the ideas put forth by the free jazz courant, also taking place at the same time.
Although Miles Davis is known to have severely criticized both Ornette Coleman and
Cecil Taylor, often in scathing words , it is no coincidence that his music cohabited in 20
the same era as that of his two colleagues, and of the avant-garde music movement of
the sixties in general. As often it happens, musicians belonging to a same epoch find
themselves connected, driven by more or less unconscious acts in their creative
process.
idem. p. 126.20
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"So I would direct, like a conductor, once we started to play, and I would
either write down some music for somebody or I would tell him to play
different things I was hearing, as the music was growing, coming together. It
was loose and tight at the same time. It was casual but alert, everybody was
alert to different possibilities that were coming up in the music. While the
music was developing I would hear something that I thought could be
extended or cut back. So that recording was a development of the creative
process, a living composition." 21
Lastly, we will add that, although Davis was certainly not a partisan of free jazz, the
musicians he collaborated with (Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Wayne
Shorter) all played "free" on their own records. 22
5. Non-Western conception of time
One other major trend pervading the 1960s is the general enthusiasm for Asian, and
particularly Indian, philosophies, spirituality and art. The hippie culture, especially,
rediscovers classical Indian art and music; travels to Asia become, at the time, more
frequent among the new generations, along with the practice of meditation, attendance
of spiritual meetings with gurus, etc. In music, the sound of the sitar finds its way more
and more (The Beatles, for instance, as early as 1966, with Revolver), as well as tablas.
Classical Indian music is very much a reflection of the Eastern philosophy in regard
to time, duration and continuation. Where the Occidental vision tends to perceive the
Miles Davis, Autobiography, p. 299. 21
idem.22
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notion of time as a progression toward a finality, containing a beginning and an end,
the Eastern world thinks of it in terms, rather, of renewal and circularity. Musically, 23
this expresses itself through repetition and reiteration of patterns (ostinatos, drones,
etc.), such as one finds in the various layers of Balinese gamelan, for instance. The
music oscillates around one or several poles, and stays there, in a state of, so to speak,
meditative contemplation. There is no perspective of "achievement" whatsoever —
whereas all traditional forms of Western music, from the sonata to the blues, stem from
the idea of constant going back and forth between tension and resolve. The Western
harmonic expectations are therefore not the same as Oriental ones.
In Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, with the absence of chord progressions also comes the
disappearance of the Western ear's expectations regarding harmony, beginnings and
endings, as well as the changes that occur in between. The pieces on this album exist
solely for themselves, there is no progression: they flow freely from one point to the
other, with brief moments that come and go, without the aesthetic satisfaction of
cadences and resolutions one finds in Western music. In spite of all the structural
aspects one can identify in the pieces, as described in the previous chapter about Teo
Macero, this is, at least, how it primarily comes across to our ears. In regard to this,
George Grella says the following :
"Listening to the album creates expectations that are never fulfilled, because
underneath what it seems to sound like, and how many units it moved,
cf. George Grella : "Outside of the West, a circular view of time is more common and prominent, even 23
in societies that have undergone Western-style industrialization – there is no assumption of linear progress. Time does not fly off into the future : it marks cyclical events."
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there's so much more. The album regards the idea of musical resolution —
reaching a final point — as irrelevant. [...] What is more subtle, but profound,
is that by using rhythm, pulse, and harmonies — and tape composition —
that by design did not resolve, Miles was organizing time: and both form and
time are conjoined in the music. Miles' push to move form away from the
demands of resolution and finality was a push into a different, and, for
American listeners, unfamiliar concept about time." 24
Whether Miles Davis was doing this consciously, in direct reference to the Eastern
world, or not, is unclear; but the influence, if only semi-conscious, is there: it is simply
part of the cultural environment Miles Davis finds himself in at the time of the record.
We will also note that the unusual length of the pieces on this album are quite
representative of this new way of conceiving time. It is closely related to the hippie
generation, of course, and the use of hallucinogenic drugs, which were a somewhat
indissociable part of the epoch, and which had a tremendous influence on the arts.
However, the enthusiasm of Western artists toward the Oriental esoteric, hermetic and
Buddhist philosophies started much earlier in the history of music, and was one of the
major influences on music making in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of
the 20th centuries. Claude Debussy, for one, was greatly influenced by the Oriental
conception of time, which is reflected in his music post-1900. He was one of the first 25
to use processes of spatial and temporal organization in his music which were
influenced by the Oriental philosophy, or the idea of an eternal starting over of time—
Grella, George. Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. New York : Bloomsbury, 2015. 24
Or, after the two Expositions universelles in Paris, where he was able to hear Catalan music, as 25
well as Balinese gamelan.
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using, among other things, drones and repetitions—which in turn influenced
generations of composers to follow. Below are four examples of 20th century pieces
(openings), which were written using these concepts of repetition and oscillation,
influenced by the Asian philosophy of time, and which reveal how it is a recurring
source of inspiration throughout the 20th century :
Example 1 : Debussy - Masques (1904)
Example 2 : Messiaen - Reflets dans le vent (1928)
Example 3 : Ligeti - Der Zauberlehrling (1990)
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Example 1 : Debussy - Masques (1904)
Example 2 : Messiaen - Reflets dans le vent (1928)
Example 3 : Ligeti - Der Zauberlehrling (1990)
Example 4 : Berio - Feuerklavier, from the 6 Encores (1989)
14
Example 1 : Debussy - Masques (1904)
Example 2 : Messiaen - Reflets dans le vent (1928)
Example 3 : Ligeti - Der Zauberlehrling (1990)
Example 4 : Berio - Feuerklavier, from the 6 Encores (1989)
14
Example 1 : Debussy - Masques (1904)
Example 2 : Messiaen - Reflets dans le vent (1928)
Example 3 : Ligeti - Der Zauberlehrling (1990)
Example 4 : Berio - Feuerklavier, from the 6 Encores (1989)
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Example 4 : Berio - Feuerklavier, from the 6 Encores (1989)
Conclusion
In the late 1960s, as socio-political upheavals are shaking up the country, musicians,
parallel to the Civil Rights movement, are also searching for freedom. Whether it is
sung by Aretha Franklin (Think, 1968) or expressed through John Cage's open forms and
abolition of traditional structural systems, the idea of freedom is more present than
ever in artistic creation.
Bitches Brew is generally acknowledged as the "birth of fusion"; but if that term,
"fusion", is relevant to this album, in a way it is also limited, and constricting, for music
that, in fact, finds its sources of inspiration in several other stylistic and/or aesthetic
areas—as shown in previous parts of this essay. Miles Davis even mentions Stravinsky,
when talking about his first harmonic explorations leading to In a Silent Way. It is 26
"It was funny because I used to think when I was doing them [simple chord changes] how 26
Stravinsky went back to simple forms.", p. 299.
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Example 1 : Debussy - Masques (1904)
Example 2 : Messiaen - Reflets dans le vent (1928)
Example 3 : Ligeti - Der Zauberlehrling (1990)
Example 4 : Berio - Feuerklavier, from the 6 Encores (1989)
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striking to remark, however, that, with all the similarities we can find between Bitches
Brew and its contemporaries, this record brings a unique and truly innovative sound for
the time, placing Miles Davis, once again, as one of the major music makers of the 20th
century.
Furthermore, whether one talks about fusion or Third Stream, or other terms yet, the
idea at the core which binds them remains the same: genres coming together in one.
This defined not only most of what was being created during the late sixties, but
practically everything that is being done today. With this in mind, one could say that
the album Bitches Brew is not only an example of fusion, but is essentially
representative of the epoch it was created in.
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Bibliography
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◆ Grella, George, Jr. Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. New York: Bloomsbury,
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◆ Southall, Nick. "Miles Davis - In a Silent Way". Stylus, September 2003.
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◆ Thibault, Matthieu. Bitches Brew: ou, le jazz psychédélique. Marseille:
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◆ Tingen, Paul. "Miles Davis and the making of Bitches Brew: Sorcerer's
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