THE TREATMENT OF THE TRUMPET IN SELECTED JAZZ-INFLUENCED CLASSICAL CHAMBER WORKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author

Kathleen Elizabeth Harrison, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

1-1-2009

Degree Name

Master of Music

Department

Music

First Advisor

Mackey, Melissa

Abstract

The trumpet has always maintained a central role in the jazz genre. However, throughout the history of chamber music the trumpet was overlooked until the mid-twentieth century when brass chamber music and mixed chamber ensembles rose to popularity. An infiltration of the popular American style, jazz, into classical chamber music changed composers' treatment of the trumpet. This thesis focuses on the role and treatment of the trumpet in selected jazz-influenced classical chamber works in order to highlight that the trumpet's prominence in jazz helped to establish its place in twentieth-century chamber music. A brief history of classical brass chamber music and the origins and development of jazz is given. Trumpet performance techniques and compositional practices idiomatic to the different jazz style periods, ranging from ragtime to cool jazz, are given. These techniques are then traced through selected chamber music works of Stravinsky, Martinu, Schuller, Babbitt, and Wilson. Selected works were chosen based on the degree of jazz influence and are representations of the jazz style period they emulate. A comparison of how classical composers in Europe and the United States viewed the trumpet in jazz, in regards to chamber music, is detailed over the course of the twentieth century.