After Django : Making Jazz in Postwar France

After Django offers a much-needed English-language study of an area that historical (American) narratives on jazz generally only treat in passing. The second half of the title is a more accurate indicator of the book’s subject; aside from brief attention in the third chapter, Django Rein hardt’s career primarily figures as a point of reference for a general time period, with no particular emphasis on the genre of jazz that arose from his work. Perchard effectively articulates the gap in scholarship that this book is intended to bridge, but the narrative is uneven, juxtaposing straightforlate works. The three final pieces stand apart for various reasons, not the least being the approach to structure. Yet those works also merit attention because of the regard composers of the next generation accorded late works like the Ninth Sym phony, and Monahan’s study opens another door to such inquiries. Well illustrated with music examples and graphic analyses, Oxford University Press had made PDF files of these materials available, along with keyboard reductions of selected movements, at the companion Web site (http://www.oup.com/us /mahlerssymphonicsonatas [accessed 21 March 2016]), which also includes information about the author and a précis of the book. The reductions include commentaries about the music by the author, along with correlations to some of the criticism described in the text. Since the examples download readily, all readers should take the additional step of examining them, and libraries may want to find a way to include printouts with the book, if possible. Regardless, those interested should find ways to bring the online materials into a careful reading of this monograph. As stimulating as it is, the lively and sometimes provocative introduction calls for a complementary conclusion that would summarize the findings explored in this book and suggest directions that should occur as a result of the closer scrutiny Monahan advocates. In lieu of a discrete concluding section, the last paragraphs of the final chapter (pp. 259–61) offer some parting comments that point in this direction. Some of Monahan’s suppositions about explorations of sonata form in Mahler’s music should be considered alongside the literature already published on the topic. Monahan brings a useful focus to sonata form, and deserves credit for introducing innovative perspectives on these familiar works. In this context it is worthwhile to observe the ways that the understanding of the formal and structural dimensions of Mahler’s music has evolved in the critical literature. This book is an example of recent thought on music that has maintained its perennial appeal through its inherent multidimensionality. As the author demonstrates, Mahler’s music benefits from a multiplicity of facets that include the carefully conceived musical structures, extramusical references, self-referential gestures, and other elements. These are part of the complete creative impulse that resulted in the very sonatas the author examines. Mona han eschews absolutes with regard to Mahler’s music, and this begs the question of the ways that studies such as this one reflect the evolving apprehensions of the music—a view that shifts the attention from the music and to the audiences that continue to value it. Mahler’s continuing relevance relies on studies like this, which bring out perspectives that invite discussion of music that engages audiences at various levels. As symphonic sonatas, Mahler’s deftly-crafted music will offer further avenues of inquiry for new audiences in the twenty-first century and, hopefully, beyond.

After Django offers a much-needed English-language study of an area that historical (American) narratives on jazz generally only treat in passing. The second half of the title is a more accurate indicator of the book's subject; aside from brief attention in the third chapter, Django Rein -hardt's career primarily figures as a point of reference for a general time period, with no particular emphasis on the genre of jazz that arose from his work. Perchard effectively articulates the gap in scholarship that this book is intended to bridge, but the narrative is uneven, juxtaposing straightfor-late works. The three final pieces stand apart for various reasons, not the least being the approach to structure. Yet those works also merit attention because of the regard composers of the next generation accorded late works like the Ninth Symphony, and Monahan's study opens another door to such inquiries.
Well illustrated with music examples and graphic analyses, Oxford University Press had made PDF files of these materials available, along with keyboard reductions of selected movements, at the companion Web site (http://www.oup.com/us /mahlerssymphonicsonatas [accessed 21 March 2016]), which also includes information about the author and a précis of the book. The reductions include commentaries about the music by the author, along with correlations to some of the criticism described in the text. Since the examples download readily, all readers should take the additional step of examining them, and libraries may want to find a way to include printouts with the book, if possible. Regardless, those interested should find ways to bring the online materials into a careful reading of this monograph.
As stimulating as it is, the lively and sometimes provocative introduction calls for a complementary conclusion that would summarize the findings explored in this book and suggest directions that should occur as a result of the closer scrutiny Monahan advocates. In lieu of a discrete concluding section, the last paragraphs of the final chapter (pp. 259-61) offer some parting comments that point in this direction. Some of Monahan's suppositions about explorations of sonata form in Mahler's music should be considered alongside the literature already published on the topic.
Monahan brings a useful focus to sonata form, and deserves credit for introducing innovative perspectives on these familiar works. In this context it is worthwhile to observe the ways that the understanding of the formal and structural dimensions of Mahler's music has evolved in the critical literature. This book is an example of recent thought on music that has maintained its perennial appeal through its inherent multidimensionality. As the author demonstrates, Mahler's music benefits from a multiplicity of facets that include the carefully conceived musical structures, extramusical references, self-referential gestures, and other elements. These are part of the complete creative impulse that resulted in the very sonatas the author examines. Monahan eschews absolutes with regard to Mahler's music, and this begs the question of the ways that studies such as this one reflect the evolving apprehensions of the music-a view that shifts the attention from the music and to the audiences that continue to value it. Mahler's continuing relevance relies on studies like this, which bring out perspectives that invite discussion of music that engages audiences at various levels. As symphonic sonatas, Mahler's deftly-crafted music will offer further avenues of inquiry for new audiences in the twenty-first century and, hopefully, beyond.

James L. Zychowicz
Madison, WI ward, easily-readable sections with complex passages and run-on sentences that require two or three rereadings to make sense of them. Continuity is sometimes lacking between chapters: one chapter can feel as if it were in a different book from another. Perchard tends to build to a conclusion, laying out several threads and pulling them together rather than stating an argument and supporting it-a rhetorical approach that may lend itself more to a talk given in person than to the printed page. The consistent use of contractions (especially "it's"), dangling participles, and colloquialisms ("churchly," "composerly") also gives a feeling of spoken discourse, but the alternation between written and spoken conventions interrupts the flow of the text at times. Perchard's command of relevant literature is laudable, though readers without some background in critical theory and Marxism may find the extensive discourses based on them bewildering; those matters are presented with the assumption that the reader is conversant with them. The text is organized into four major subject areas: Hugues Panassié and the history of jazz criticism in France; André Hodeir and Thelonious Monk; Miles Davis and French film music that employed jazz; and saxophonist Barney Wilen, with two chapters of summation and discussion at the end. One deliberate omission with which readers may take issue is Perchard's decision not to address women in jazz in France, except for glossing over the subject in the introduction with statements such as "women players were kept back by the macho culture of jazz performance" (p. 15). One might argue that his stated scope of discussion duplicates the prejudices of prior eras, implying simply that no women measured up to being "identified and celebrated as leaders of the various French jazz schools" (p. 16).
While the desire to provide thorough background information is admirable, the book feels as though it begins in the third chapter, with the first given to preliminaries, and the second devoted to a lengthy and problematic discussion of Hugues Panassié. One of the text's observations is, indeed, that absolute objectivity is humanly impossible; however, Perchard's own bias is, in places, scarcely nuanced. One such moment arrives in his characterization of the basis for Panassié's worldview as "right-wing Catholicism." This reviewer (a Catholic) must ask: What, precisely, constituted the "right wing" of the global Catholic Church in the early twentieth century? Or did Perchard mean instead that a self-identifying Catholic such as Panassié had views that were informed by contemporary political currents in Europe? So much rests on the characterization of Panassié as "right wing"-not a monolithic term, but relative to time, place, and ideology-that it bears more detailed definition than a nebulous sense of general conservatism. The "Catholic" influences Perchard cites as the reasons for the spiritual component to Panassié's embarrassing, primitivist views were quite local, and quite French (Léon Bloy, Jacques Maritain, Charles Pegúy), along with the decidedly un-Catholic René Guénon. Meanwhile, the papacy of Pius XI saw the issuance of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which repudiated the racism and nationalist elitism (that was often laced with metaphysical undertones) on the European continent at that time-most notoriously, but not only, in Nazi Germany.
The third chapter proceeds much more briskly, focusing more on narrative and less on theory. Its discussion of André Hodeir flows well out of the preceding discussion of Panassié, examining the problems of the various competing stakeholders in the postwar jazz scene. Those stakeholders included cultural critics who armchairquarterbacked artistic activity in light of ideological expectations, American expat musicians who worked in Europe for a variety of reasons, and European jazz musicians and composers who attempted to carve out a secure place for their music amid predictable accusations of inauthenticity and appropriation in the lingering shadow of the essentialism that pervaded early European discourses on jazz.
Perchard observes that, "Across French cultural discourses, all serious creative forms were periodically beset by what were usually called 'crises'. . . " (p. 83) and jazz was equally susceptible as it became regarded as a "serious" music: effective countercultural artistic movements risk being ironic victims of their own successinstitutionalized and commodified. Amid that awkward transition, "an art form was not vital-was not really an art form-if it was not in a state of uproar" (p. 83). Such a climate elevated the critics in power over the musicians, who were damned if they did and damned if they didn't, leading to a potentially toxic and counterproductive creative environment wherein critics set boundaries based on their own agendas, and for which their own judgment was the gatekeeper. Perchard's account of the rise and fall of Thelonious Monk's reception in Europe is an instructive object lesson. Perhaps, if this story has a moral, it is to ignore the critics, or take their pontifications with a hefty grain of salt.
Chapter 3 also serves as a useful listening guide, thanks to numerous citations to recordings as well as a few notated examples. Perchard's punishing evaluation of some artists and recordings should prompt readers to listen for themselves and decide if a selection truly features "thin-toned prattle" (p. 60) or is "Ellingtonian, if clad in lead boots" (p. 61). Chapter 4 continues as both an effective listening and film-viewing guide, as it traces the rise of jazz in French film music and the persistence of primitivist undertones, noting that in all but one of a long list of films, "jazz is associated with transgression, hedonism and moral ambivalence, these associations borrowed wholesale from American film (and television) convention" (p. 116). Perchard examines Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'échafaud and its soundtrack by Miles Davis in detail.
Chapter 4, however, does not maintain much continuity with the preceding chapters, and bypasses some opportunities to link back to the chapters leading up to it. Chapter 5 continues that pattern, whereby chapters are linked like self-contained rail cars, awaiting a large-scale summation on page 191, except for a passing mention of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. The fifth chapter's story of Barney Wilen is a sad one; Perchard frames Wilen's career, like Hodeir's, as one of the artist who could never quite get "with it" in the right place at the right time. Perchard transitions smoothly to a discussion of the politics of free jazz from his account of Barney Wilen's efforts in that genre, again providing a very useful survey of literature. This is especially valuable for non-French speakers who cannot readily navigate Franco phone jazz and literary magazines, which chronicled and evaluated developments within the country, creating new crises and uproars as they went.
Along with the crises generated by the critical elite, the political upheaval of the late 1960s and the disintegration of the French empire in Africa and Southeast Asia added an intensified, local consciousness about matters of ethnicity, identity, and cultural appropriation to debates in the arts, in contrast with previous years when French critics could observe the American condition from afar. In addition, the rise of rock accelerated the erosion of jazz as the dominant music of youth and counterculture. For the jazz musician, the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario of balancing personal fulfillment against demands for originality and the perpetually moving target of critical acceptability persisted. The same questions that had arisen decades earlier remained through the 1970s: Can there be a French jazz that is legitimately French, and legitimately jazz, and by whose measure? By their nature, these questions only invite further questions rather than answers, but Perchard's After Django goes a long way toward chronicling how the history of jazz unfolded in France, in recent decades, in spite of the various issues enumerated above. Why philosophize about musical groove, a phenomenon whose importance to so many African diasporic musics appears selfevident? Why philosophize as opposed to, for example, specifying with greater precision the qualities of grooves from traditional music-analytical perspectives, or seeking to understand ethnographically groove's verbal discourses and cultures? In Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance, Tiger C. Roholt intervenes in a contentious