Evolutionary Perspectives

Abstract

The chapter supplies three areas for further inquiry into postbop composition: tonal vestiges that connect to earlier tonal jazz practices (through bass motion by descending fifth and descending half step); double axis progressions; and contrapuntal organization. It then describes the evolution of postbop jazz through the notion of schema—a prototype, exemplar, or conventional grammatical pattern. For example, the major third axis schema originally appeared within the constraints of tonal jazz conventions (“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “Have You Met Miss Jones”), but once it penetrated to deeper levels of structure (John Coltrane, “Giant Steps”) it became an agent of syntactic change, giving postbop composers a potent point of departure to bypass tonal jazz frameworks.