The Ellington Century

Starred review from May 28, 2012
Esteemed composer and musician Schiff (George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue) flexes his authorial muscles once again with a self-confessed "bundle of love letters" to the late, great jazz pianist and big band leader Duke Ellington. In true jazz fashion, Schiff exults, "I allowed myself to be disorderly and intuitive, as if I were improvising." But Schiff is nevertheless rather methodical in walking the reader through Ellington's groundbreaking soundâcounting bars, tapping tempos, expounding on transitions, and always reveling in the music. A gifted painter in his youth and an artist in every sense, "Ellington called many of his compositions âtone parallels' or âportraits'; his music linked sounds and images." Schiff compliments this notion with quotations from Copland, Schoenberg, Rilke, Rimbaud, and Zola to contextualize and highlight the "complex web of sensory associations" and ultimately conceive a "jazz panorama" made up of the technical elements of Ellington's unique style. Dissecting the form of perhaps his most famous "mood" composition, "Mood Indigo," Schiff addresses the "syntax" and "imagery" of the piece; evoking "love, tears, the railway." Always musically rather than autobiographically focused (even links to Kandinsky are made on artistic terms, not social), Schiff plainly argues the accessibility of Ellington's "Symbolist aesthetic." Drawing parallels with the sophisticated, calculated compositions of Debussy, while still acknowledging the juxtaposition of improvisation and "Arcane modernism," Schiff's ode to Ellington is a joy.