Analysis of Jazz: A Comprehensive Approach by Laurent Cugny (review)

Laurent Cugny is a French musician and musicologist who collaborated with Gil Evans in the late 1980s. His previous books on jazz include Las Vegas tango: Une vie de Gil Evans (Paris: P.O.L, 1989), Électrique Miles Davis, 1968–1975 (Marseille: A. Dimanche, 1993), Une histoire du jazz en France (Paris: Outre mesure, 2014), and Hugues Panassié: L'œuvre panassiéenne et sa réception (Paris: Outre mesure, 2017), none of which is available in English translation. This volume, a translation of his Analyser le jazz (Paris: Outre mesure, 2009), is an ambitious venture to create a comprehensive system of analysis by encompassing a wide range of subjects that the author considers relevant in jazz analysis, many of which are not usually found in the standard literature on jazz theory and analysis. Comprehensiveness is reflected in its three-part structure: the first part engages in conceptual explorations, including the definition of a "work of jazz" and related concepts; the second part focuses on musical elements, such as harmony, rhythm, form, sound, and melody; and the third part discusses various subjects, including the history of jazz analysis, transcription, and an overview of analytical approaches.

In the first part, Cugny takes pains at defining various concepts and terms, devoting the first two chapters, for example, to the idea of a "work of jazz." He explains that "a work of jazz could only be a performance" (pp. 36–37) and distinguishes it from a composition, whether written by jazz musicians or not: "a composition remains a work in general and becomes a work for jazz in the moment that a jazz performance uses it as a starting point" (p. 37). He also distinguishes a "work of jazz" from Western classical music, which he calls "art music": "A jazz performance is an object that conceals a composition as it creates a new version of it, whereas a performance of art music reveals the written work" (p. 36). Interestingly, he often uses the term object in his discussion: "[A composition] cannot manifest itself in a (jazz) sound object outside of a performance, which, as it is being carried out, becomes a real object in its own right. This real object is different from the composition, which remains an unexpressed 'ideal' object" (p. 36).

It is certainly important to emphasize the performance aspect of jazz, especially involving improvisation, but it is not clear why he focuses so much on what a "work of jazz" is. Although he sometimes uses examples (like Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight") to make his point, his discussions often become as vague as some of his terms. For example, he defines the term moments as "segments in the continuous sound that are characterized according to factors that the analyst decides on (amount of improvisation, parameters, etc.)" (p. 52).

Intent on establishing a comprehensive system, Cugny also heavily engages in classification systems that divide things into categories and subcategories and then further subdivide them into more subcategories. Although it is important to demonstrate the relationships between various concepts and elements, this endeavor often results in a series of catalogs that seem excessive. In distinguishing between "what is composed and what is improvised," for example, he suggests that it "is possible to create a more precise tool with six notions articulated in two categories: the modes of elaboration on the one hand (fixing process, codes of play, improvisation) and the modes of exchange (instruction, cue, interplay) on the other hand" (pp. 55–56). He then divides one of the six notions, the "fixing process," into two categories, a "fixed text" and a "written text"; the former is then further "classified in three types of elements: the composition, the fixed fragment, and the harmonic changes" (p. 56). This type of multilevel categorization, combined with vague terms, often...