On the Origin of Classical Forms

Jazz is a form of entertainment. The best classical music is a form of intellectual communication.
Blacks do not use classical forms. Whites do. What is the reason for this?

Consider how classical ideas come about. They develop through active problem solving. This is
to say they are not the consequence of passive inaction, consisting of thought alone. They come
about through subjective realizations of ways in which material reality can be made to function.

Example: If you want to remove a tree, can you pull it up by the roots? Yes. Is it possible to express
this audibly in grunts and wheezes? Yes. Can music be made that has similar characteristics? Yes.

If you hit the roots of the tree with an axe, how would that sound? Can you express that idea musically?
Absolutely.

What if, in your experiences of hitting the roots with an axe, you eventually realize that you can
identify the event aspects in the order in which they occur? Pick up the ace. Walk over to the tree.
Look at it. Decide where you are going to hit it and how hard. Then do it. Can these elements of
action be written on paper using words? Of course. Why not in music?

Here's how. Briefly play the note A quietly. Then play the note G a little louder and hold it a little longer.
Then play the note D very suddenly and very loudly and don't hold it, let it go. What does this mean? It
means start quietly, or calmly, then increase noticeably, then suddenly do something in a very decisive
way and don't commiserate about it, be done with it. Would you get this kind of idea by hearing the notes
described above? Just try NOT getting that idea by hearing the notes above.

So what is Haydn doing when he's writing a symphony? He is putting down on paper, to be performed by
an orchestra, a long series of patterns of sound, some which are related and some which are not, with
different sorts of variation and/or development, with contrasts and similarities, that seem to him to be the
right ones for some reason. For what reasons? Because this one sounds like it would be something Prince
Esterhazy would like to hear. And this next one sounds like something he might like to hear after that. Or
for some other reason. Like, if I were out on the battlefield getting ready to fire a rifle, how might I do it?
Here's how: Stand steady. Don't move. Aim carefully. When your aim is correct don't waste time pull the
trigger: Bang. Please see previous paragraph for a description, written as verbal notation, of this process.

Could that serve also as a musical description of someone deciding to spray water on a squirrel? Yes.
How about a man who is going to stab someone in the back? Of course. Or a sales clerk deciding whether
to say yes or no to a customer's question? Certainly. It can do all of these. Where else do we see these
kinds of things, where one idea can apply to many different things all at once. We experience them in our
dreams. Climbing a mountain can mean you're improving, falling into a ditch can mean you're failing,
and with that same meaning for numerous different things you're involved in during you wakeful hours,
expressed in one single form that applies to all of them. That is how our subconscious mind is capable
of functioning.

Patterns of behavior, patterns of thought, classical music, patterns of classical architecture, all derive
from such considerations. Doric columns are shaped in a way which came from some type of action or
description of reality at some point previously recognized by the men of those times who developed
cognitive patterns based on them. And their children grew up surrounded by their expressions of those
forms and accepted them for what they were: patterns that consist of certain types of logical process,
and they grew up more easily capable of adopting and developing further those ideas, which in fact
they did. If you chose to shoot birds with a slingshot your ideas about weapons and how to use them
will effect such things as how you raise your fork to your mouth when eating dinner, how you pull the
next square of toilet paper from the roll with your hand, which words you will speak to your girlfriend
when you're trying to tell her what you want.

There are people who are malicious who use these patterns of thinking to get you to do what they want
you to do. They determine what music you can listen to by determining what music is available. They
tell you the news they want you to have access to so you will let them send your son to be killed. They
will determine how you can spend your money by hurting you if you don't do it their way. They do these
things in order that they might thereby delete you and prevent your descendants from being conceived or
born. They intend to drive you to extinction.

Yes, Jazz communicates too, but the information is different, and its purpose is adapted to fit within our
classical languages. 

What I'm trying to say is, if Jazz were food, believe me, you wouldn't eat it.


by Robert Hampton Burt

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