THE LYDIAN CHROMATIC CONCEPT OF TONAL ORGANIZATION VOLUME ONE: The Art and Science of Tonal Gravity
by George Russell

Concept Publishing Company 2001
268 pages, hard cover, $125

Over fifty years in the making, this revised edition of the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization has existed since 1953, evolving from what has been described as an elaborate pamphlet in '53 to the 1959 edition (mine has a technical appendix dated 1964), which resembles a thesis paper reproduced at a quick printer. It is now the massive, collegiate textbook reviewed here.

During this time, Russell's Concept, a complete reworking of Western music theory, has met with enthusiasm from the likes of Eric Dolphy, John Lewis and Jan Garberek. And many of the modal concepts found in various jazz methods of today are directly descended from Russell's ground-breaking work. He may have been the first theorist in some four centuries to really think in terms of modes.

The Concept has also met with hostility or indifference by the vast majority of musical academics. (One of its few homes is at the New England Conservatory, through the graces of Gunther Schuller.) Yet Mr. Russell has persisted, making this project his life's work, and remaining convinced that, regardless of the acceptance of his ideas, the validity of those ideas compelled completion of the project.

The foundations of the Lydian Chromatic Concept are not new, and are in fact rooted in Pythagorean overtone series adjusted to equal temperament, and Henricus Glareanus Dodecachordon (published some four centuries before George Russell took up a formal study of harmony). However, not long after Glareanus' work, Gioseffo Zarlino undertook to reprioritize the Church modes, moving the Ionian mode (a major scale in today's terminology) from the eleventh place to the first. Zarlino is believed to be the first to assert the major/minor system most people have studied in music theory ever since.

The major/minor system served the styles of music between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (though Bach, for one, drew heavily upon the Church modes and rejected Zarlino's restrictive view). Different composers made up their own exceptions to the rules, thus defining themselves stylistically. By the time you get to Ravel, Gershwin and Varese, all bets are off. I once had a college theory teacher explain to me that "you learn the rules, then you decide which ones you want to break, and that's your style, the rules you break."

George Russell didn't have the handicap of a college education in music theory, but he did have the advantage of being personally involved with the musicians of early bebop: Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Lewis. In studying the fundamentals of harmony in an environment where the major/minor system was under an all-out assault in both popular and classical music, Russell began to get at the core of a system that explained, in objective terms, not only the comparatively simple music of Mozart or Brahms, but all music in equal temperament, from baroque to bebop, from Wagner to Ornette Coleman.

I've had my copy of the 1959 edition for almost fifteen years. I had read it sporadically, gleaning ideas here and there, skipping on when things got muddy. I had no guide to lead me though it, and it made numerous assertions without rigorously proving them. There is no such weakness in the current edition. A wide variety of music is interpreted through Russell's system, this first volume focusing entirely on vertical (chord/scale unity) thinking, with Bach fugues analyzed alongside Coltrane solos. The logical foundation of the system is laid out, piece by piece.

The first read-through, I kept jotting down notes, "but what about...?" I would put the book down with my mind racing, trying to argue that there was an implication that was left out, or a loose end. Inevitably, later pages, as if telepathically sensing my question, would explain what I hadn't understood. The biggest obstacles for someone with a solid theory background is learning to think of modes and their tonics in a different way, using some terminology unique to Russell and some which is similar or identical to terminology from traditional study (though not always with the same meaning they had in those traditions). It's a lot to take in, a lot to digest.

I'm sure that many potential readers of this book will ask, "What do I get for $125?" The cover price seemed high to me as well, though as I look at my library of music theory and method books acquired over the last twenty years, I can say that I not only have more than $125 tied up in them, but they lack the coherence and thoroughness presented here.

What you get in Volume One: The Art and Science of Tonal Gravity is a remarkably simple explanation of vertical harmonic and melodic relationships, very easy to understand. Comprehending and applying the Concept are different things, however. It will take all the study you could put into it for a lifetime -- no, actually it will take more than that. But at each step, it pays dividends as you start to think in terms of chord modes and see avenues through chord changes you hadn't suspected were there.

Most of all, you don't get a book that's designed to help you sound like its author (I don't know any musicians who don't have a few such methods laying around). It's a cloth-bound hardcover volume printed on acid free paper, clearly written and professionally typeset. All of the rough edges of the 1959 edition are smoothed out and the gaps filled in. You get your money's worth.

-- Rod McBride

Note: The Lydian Chromatic Concept is available from Concept Publishing, 258 Harvard Street #296, Brookline, MA 02446-2904. The price is $125 plus shipping ($7.00 in the contiguous states, $12 to Canada, Alaska and Hawaii, $20 outside the U.S). The second volume, projected for publication later this year, is to deal with areas only touched on in this book: horizontal and supravertical tonal gravity. -- RM


LIVING WITH MUSIC --
Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings
Modern Library Classics, paperback, release date May, 14, 2002, 304 pages, $13.95

Ralph Ellison:
LIVING WITH MUSIC (Various Artists)
Columbia/Legacy audio CD, original release date April 30, 2002, $16.98

In those days,
it was either live with music or die with noise,
and we chose rather desperately to live.

-- Ralph Ellison, "Shadow and Act," 1964

Ralph Ellison's writings about music, literature, art, and themes of identity and American culture are switchblade sharp and brass-knuckle tough.

A 20th century literary giant, Ellison had musical origins playing the trumpet and studying composition as a child in Oklahoma and later at Tuskegee Institute. After an encounter with a T.S. Eliot poem, "The Wasteland," while in college, Ellison veered from a musical path toward a writing career. Yet music continued to follow and influence him every step of the way to Harlem, his base of operations until his death in 1994, and beyond.

Ellison's jazz writings have aired only briefly on JAM's pages over the years. Bill Fogarty's 1997 piece, "Writings About Jazz -- Sometimes Bad, Sometimes Beautiful," mentions two Ellison standards, "Minton's" and "On Bird, Bird-Watching, and Jazz." Don Rose also cites the same essay on Charlie Parker's life and music a couple of years later in "Bird Lives, Year 44."

Now, for the first time, Ellison's best jazz writings are culled into a unique anthology edited by Robert G. O'Meally, a literature professor at Columbia University and head of the Center for Jazz Studies. O'Meally's lead-sheet introduction and tagline interview, "My Strength Comes from Louis Armstrong," serve as bookends. Between them, a couple dozen pieces comprise the collection.

Charlie Christian, Jimmy Rushing, Bird, Duke Ellington, Mahalia Jackson and Vicente Escudero are the subjects of individual essays, as are Minton's and the authors Richard Wright and Amiri Baraka (then Leroi Jones). The title essay, additional interviews, a handful of letters, and a poignant tribute to Ellison's main college professor are intensely personal and reveal key formative and territorial influences.

A riveting trio of excerpts from the novel Invisible Man, another from Juneteenth, plus two short stories, reveal how powerfully Ellison's fiction is formed by jazz. The selections unfold in a series of vamps, riffs, breaks, and choruses. The extent to which American culture is similarly "jazz shaped" may help explain why Invisible Man resonates so strongly with readers, as it has since instant acclaim through classic status half a century later.

O'Meally also produced the companion CD. Redeeming his occasionally self-centered approach as compiler of the book, his album liner notes vividly link all 16 tracks with Ellison pieces in an innovative and succinct fashion. The connections, many uncovered here for the first time, reveal O'Meally's improvisational skill in interpreting literature and music.

In one example, the desperate jazzman in "Cadillac Flambé" drives his car onto the front lawn of a senator who described a Caddy as a "coon cage." The driver ceremoniously sets his car on fire, defiantly crying out, "YOU HAVE TAKEN THE BEST... SO, DAMMIT, TAKE ALL THE REST! Take ALL the rest." He's echoing "All of Me," sung on the album by Billie Holiday.

Jazz Writings will appeal mainly to those with a literary sensibility, intellectual bent, or historical interest in the subjects, the album especially to those who appreciate traditional jazz elements spanning the period from the Great Depression through the 1950s. Most will appreciate the shared sense of sophistication and style between written words and recorded sounds.

In the end, the book -- a chronicle of one author speaking jazz with a singular voice -- and the album -- with various jazz artists using myriad instruments and voices -- signify an enduring Ellisonian message. "In the swift whirl of time music is a constant, reminding us of what we were and of that toward which we aspire. Art thou troubled? Music will not only calm, it will ennoble thee."

These calming, ennobling sounds from the past continue to sustain our identity as Americans in this present noisy hour.

-- Tom Fredrick



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