Composer: Wayne Shorter. Recorded on 6/7/1967 by the Miles Davis Quintet: Miles Davis trumpet, Wayne Shorter tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock piano, Ron Carter bass, Tony Williams drums. Released on the album Nefertiti (Columbia, CS 9594, 1968).

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For the second piece in this series I have deliberately presented myself with a dilemma. When evaluating jazz, what is our subject – the song or the performance, the performers or a particular recording? It’s not a simple question. Examining “Take the A Train” as performed by the Duke Ellington, Glen Miller and Sun Ra orchestras

is quite a different thing than looking at the song as performed over the years by various incarnations of the Ellington orchestra. Which is different than focusing on the piano solos performed over the song’s changes by, say, Duke, Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck.

And of course all of these things are different than a formal study of the melody and harmonic structure of the song itself. Which, in case you’re interested, looks like this.

Of course in any musical form, composition and performance are separate things. But the degree of the gap between them varies. In popular music, there is often very little difference between the recorded version of a song and subsequent performances. If you look at the sheet music to the Eagles song “Take it Easy” you’re going to get a pretty accurate representation of what you hear on the recorded version of the song, which in turn will be pretty close to what you hear when you listen to the song performed in concert.

That is of course why live recordings of popular music are rarely very interesting: the relationship between the song, the performers and the performance is so close that very little new information is conveyed.

In the great majority of classical music, the relationship between the composition and the performer has been severed. The performer interprets the composition. Which is why it’s possible to listen with interest to multiple recordings of the same piece. In this case, a discussion of the composition will most likely be based on the score itself, independent of any particular performance, while a discussion of a particular performance will almost inevitably revolve around the performer’s relationship with, fidelity to and understanding of what is understood to be the composer’s intention.

Where does an improvisatory art form like jazz fit in to this scenario? Let’s start with the question of what constitutes a jazz composition. Here is the “chart” for Wayne Shorter’s composition “Nefertiti,” as performed by Miles Davis’ great mid-Sixties quintet.

(Note: this the transcription of the song that I’ve played off of for years, which incorrectly attributes the composition to Miles. I’ve seen variations of this transcript, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll use the one with which I’m familiar.) As I discussed in a previous post, this is the format in which most jazz compositions are written. It consists essentially of two elements: the melody, and chord symbols which describe the song’s harmonic structure. Obviously there is a great deal of freedom in how the song is interpreted. Typically in a jazz performance, the melody will be performed once or twice, then the individual or members of the ensemble will take turns soloing over the song’s harmonic structure. (For the purposes of simplicity, I’m intentionally setting aside a discussion of those “freer” jazz forms which jettison harmonic structure altogether.)

So: how much of a given performance is truly improvised? Typically (although by no means always), solos take place mostly within the limits of the harmonic structure of the song. The accompaniment (which typically consists, as it does in Nefertiti, of drums, bass and piano) is also usually confined by the chord changes. However, the variation that can occur within these confines is extensive. Listen to the different ways that Jack DeJohnette, Elvin Jones and Buddy Rich handle the task of basic 4/4 drumming, and you can get an idea of how much room there is for improvisation even within the “background” of a performance..

I describe all of this in detail in order to be able to discuss the particular perfection of Nefertiti…which I find that I need to look at from several different angles. First, I’ll look at the composition itself. Then I’ll look at the uniquely powerful interpretation of the song in its original recording.

Composition

Shorter was a prolific composer during this period and there are certain ways in which Nefertiti feels of a piece with his other work at that time. At the same time, there are ways in which it feels utterly distinct. The 16-bar song begins with a simple falling seven-note phrase which initiates the visceral sense of a circular fall which domintates the entire song. The melody, which consists of three simple phrases, creates the illusion that it is perpetually falling. In fact it’s not. While the latter two phrases are simple falling melodies, the first one starts with a falling motion, then contains a slow, stutter-step rise. But these rising notes are gradual and painstakingly paced. They are often placed slightly in advance of the downbeat and the accompanying chord change, which creates a sort of lurching effect. The end result is that rather than feeling the melody rise, you find yourself simply anticipating its inevitable Sisyphean fall. This effect is heightened as the song is repeated. The final phrase leads irresistibly back to the beginning. This circular quality of the melody makes the concept of a “beginning” to the song seem almost irrelevant.

An interesting effect of this unusual musical structure (I really can’t think of another song that I would compare it to) is that as the song is repeated it creates the illusion that the pitch is constantly descending. This is a mirror image of a trick used by innumerable pop songs, which “modulate” the key a song is performed, usually in the final portion of the song, and almost always upward. It’s sometimes called the Truck Driver’s Gear Change.

It’s a cheap trick but it’s an easy way to create the sense of swelling emotion in a song. An extreme version of this effect is used in Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy,” in which the key the song is performed in is constantly modulating upward from the opening moments of the song. This creates a, yes, dizzying effect, but to my ear it’s an absolutely maddening effect.

Harmonically, Nefertiti doesn’t resemble any other song that I can think of. It starts with what seems to be a pretty standard I-IV progression (A flat to D flat), although both of these chords are altered major sevenths (with an added sharp fourth tone). I understand that this terminology may not make sense to non-musicians – I would subjectively describe these chords as having an open, soft, “shiny” quality. The next two bars shift down a half step to play the same I-IV progression on G and C. This time the chords are dominant sevenths with alterations, which to my ear this gives them a harder-edged sound. The piece then does an interesting thing, moving downward chromatically from C to C flat, B flat and A before landing on an E flat dominant seventh. This fall in the tonal center of the song is set against the melody’s struggle to rise. I believe that it’s this tension between rising and falling elements of the song which give it it’s peculiar energy. The song embodies a conflict which it never lets resolve. The second eight bars begin with another I-IV progression, starting a half step down from the previous  chord.  This progression (E major to A minor), then moves up a half step to B flat minor and from there to E major – a sequence that logically seems almost random, but which is absolutely beautiful. Starting from that E major chord the song then makes another chromatic fall to E minor, E flat, then to D major. From D major the piece ends with another I-IV progression to A. The song ends a half step below the A flat on which it began. And it’s that unexpected half step rise at the beginning of each new verse which is largely responsible for the hypnotic effect of the song.

Performance

My chart for Nefertiti comes with an instruction that I have never seen in another jazz piece: no solos. I don’t know whether this instruction was included in the original composition – whether it was intended as the way the piece should be performed, or whether that was just something that naturally evolved as the quintet played it. Either way, it’s highly unusual. The performer is meant simply to repeat the melody, an instruction which seemingly violates the very nature of the medium. Personally (although my knowledge is far from exhaustive), aside from jazz vocal performances (which for this very reason I have a hard time even considering as truly jazz…but that’s another subject), I can only think of one similar jazz recording, and that is Bill Evans performance of “Danny Boy.”

Evans has described (if I remember correctly, this was on Marian McPartland’s piano jazz), being so completely compelled by the melody and structure of that song that he found himself simply playing the melody over and over again. That’s a fascinating performance in its own right. Evans does a little soloing on the piece, but the melody just seems to keep pulling him back. Then he almost ends the piece and once again he’s drawn back into another few cycles through the melody.

But how do we make sense of the quintets solo-less performance of Nefertiti? More specifically, how is it that as the group cycles through the song 14 times, it remains compelling?

As the song opens it’s just Shorter’s plaintive tenor saxophone playing the melody.  From the first notes his performance embodies two defining qualities of the piece. First, he’s not playing precisely on the beat. His timing is slippery, sometimes landing on a note a fraction of a second before the beat, sometimes a little late – never consistently one way or the other. Second, his notes lack a solid tonal center. They rise and fall slightly above and below the pitch, not in a way that sounds out of tune, but in a way that creates a slippery, perpetually slurred quality to the melody – as if gravity itself was rising and falling in intensity, pulling him with it.

Shorter plays the melody through once. Then, mid-way through the second time through Miles joins in unison. And for my money that first phrase on which they play together is one of the most beautiful moments in jazz. The note is a dotted half note, held for a long three beats, and Miles swells into it bringing an element of heightened dynamic complexity to the overall tension between rising and falling elements in the song. The two horns blend beautifully. At times the line between them is imperceptible, then they will shift out of phase (in terms of timing, tuning or volume) and the distinction re-emerges.

The rich variability within the melody is set against the backdrop of the rhythm section, which evolves throughout the piece, sometimes acting as more or less traditional backing group, sometimes rising into storms of rhythmic activity that contrast sharply with the cool, steady pulse of the melody. Ron Carter alternates between a standard walking bass line and subtle, lovely melodic fills, sometimes bending his notes to match the slippery tonality of the melody.

The interplay between Herbie Hancock’s piano (who often plays uses rising phrases against the constant fall of the melodic line) and Tony Williams occasionally frenetic drumming is especially complex and gratifying. We tend to think of improvisation as being equivalent to soloing, but what we hear here are a series of bass, drum and piano “solos” which are embedded into the fabric of the piece so that they simultaneously fill the role of accompaniment. It’s a fascinating glimpse into what lay ahead in freer forms of jazz. When background and foreground come to have an equivalent weight and the very definition of the form shifts.

So, there are a set of factors then which give the cyclic repetition of the melody a quality of constant improvisatory change: the structure of the song itself, the subtle shifts in the performers in terms of tone, volume and timing, and then the degree of alignment between the two lead instruments. For the first five or so times through the melody, the degree of alignment between tenor and trumpet is mostly subtle. Then the melody line starts to get smeared and blurry, as both players start extending notes and letting the tone of a given note vary more widely. Then they start shifting even further against one another, as if one is on a half second delay from the other. The effect is haunting and strange, more so as the distance of the delay increases. On the eleventh time through the melody they’re playing so far apart that the melody seems about to break down. The next time through the changes the horns drop out and the rhythm section plays a rather odd, solo-less and melody-less version of the changes. When the horns come back in for the final cycle through the melody, they are aligned again. The song ends in such an odd manner, almost haphazardly, with the rhythm section playing the first few bars of the song, fading away until we’re left with a few drum beats, then silence. The end, in other words, is no ending at all. As it couldn’t be with a song of this nature, so circular and organic in structure. It’s not unlike a Steve Reich piece in this regard, at least in the way that Tim Page described Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians”  (to my mind, another perfect piece of music): “imagine…trying to impose a frame on a running river—making it a finite, enclosed work of art yet leaving its kinetic quality unsullied, leaving it flowing freely on all sides.” In such a piece, the beginning and the end, the “frames,” become arbitrary, both powerfully meaningful and utterly meaningless at once. It’s a rarely-achieved effect, but Nefertiti captures it fully and beautifully. And the result is profoundly moving.