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Duke Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder |
Excerpted from Douglas M. Lanier, "Jazzing Up Shakespeare," Shakespeare in American Life exhibition catalog. Folger Shakespeare Library, 2007.
(Page 2 of 6) In his program notes for the first performance of Such Sweet Thunder, Ellington worries that, as classics, he and Shakespeare labor under the misperception that their arts are for the cultural elite, making some reluctant "to expose themselves and join the audience." In the 1930s and 1940s, swing had been seen as the very voice of popularization, reaching (problematically) across racial divides and rendering whatever it touched modern, American, and immediately appealing, but in 1957 the "classicizing" of Ellington's music by linking it to Shakespeare risked making jazz a coterie form, the property of connoisseurs. In his program notes Ellington seeks to navigate these concerns.
On the one hand, he stresses that "whether it be Shakespeare or jazz, the only thing that counts is the emotional effect on the listener"—no special knowledge is required. The power of the performance's "immediate impact on the human ear" aligns both Ellington and Shakespeare with popular culture and potentially democratizes their respective audiences. On the other hand, Ellington claims that his art and Shakespeare's are sufficiently sophisticated to reward repeated encounters, an assertion which differentiates their arts from mere pop ephemera. Here Ellington articulates the musical ambitions of his later career—to create a music with the prestige and virtuosity of other classics and the inclusive immediacy of popular culture.
© Don Hunstein