The South‐Grappelli Recordings of the Bach Double Violin Concerto

Abstract

Among the earliest known jazz interpretations of Bach's music are two 1937 recordings of the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor featuring the American Eddie South and the Frenchman Stéphane Grappelli as soloists. Recorded in Paris with an accompaniment by guitarist Django Reinhardt, the discs represent not only an intersection of musical genres, but furthermore an encounter between performers of diverse nationalities and ethnicities.

A classically trained African American artist who turned to jazz out of economic necessity, South continued occasionally to perform classical works, often presenting them while adopting a consciously exoticized “gypsy” persona. Reinhardt's cultural trajectory was in some respects the reverse of South's: the guitarist was a Manouche gypsy who gravitated toward American jazz, only rarely acknowledging his own ethnic identity explicitly, though it was reflected in his musical language.

The Bach recordings were planned and overseen by the record producer and jazz critic Charles Delaunay, son of the post‐cubist painter Robert Delaunay and raised among France's elite high‐art community during the inter‐war period. In this intellectual milieu, Bach's music was the focus of two distinct aesthetic ideologies (Taruskin “Back”), both of which, I argue, are manifested by the South‐Grappelli recordings. At one level, the recordings present an artisanal Bach whose music can readily be assimilated into vernacular musical idioms like jazz or European gypsy music. But, at the same time, they reflect a conception of Bach's art as a transcendent, universal site where disparate other musical traditions could be engaged on neutral terms.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Miami, Florida. I would like to thank Charles M. Joseph for his helpful comments.

Notes

1. Jacques Loussier, Play Bach, Vols. 1 & 2 (Decca 157561 & 157562); The Modern Jazz Quartet, Blues on Bach (Atlantic 1652‐2); Warne Marsh, “Bach 2 Part Invention No. 13,” Ne Plus Ultra (Hat Hut); Peter, Paul, and Mary with Dave Brubeck, “Because All Men Are Brothers,” Carry It On (Warner Bros.); Kenny Barron with Stefon Harris, Ron Carter, and Lewis Nash, The Classical Jazz Quartet Plays Bach (Vertical Jazz). See Hunkemöller.

2. The recordings have been reissued on various CD compilations. Currently available versions include Django with His American Friends (DRG 8493), Eddie South 1923–37 (Classics 707), and Eddie South 1937–41 (Classics 737).

3. William Howland Kenney has proposed a definition of jazz based on the “specific social, economic, and racial experiences among those who performed it and those who eagerly listened to it” (“Historical” 112).

4. On the exclusionary effects of rigid racial and musical categories, see Waterman, also Tomlinson. For a historical analysis of how the concept of black music emerged as an American racial ideology, see Radano.

5. For a critique of traditional jazz historiography's over‐reliance on black/white racial binarisms, see Ake.

6. South was not the first African American violinist to study in Europe—Will Marion Cook studied with Josef Joachim in Berlin during the 1880s. See Southern (268).

7. A meeting in Paris between South and Russian gypsy violin players is related in Crowther (12).

8. Another prominent jazz musician active during the 1920s whose repertoire extended beyond today's prevalent definitions of jazz was the composer and bandleader Fletcher Henderson. See Magee (27–38).

9. South recorded “Rhapsody in Blue” in the 1940s.

10. Milt Hinton, “Jazzspeak #2,” recorded reminiscence on the CD Old Man Time (Chiaroscuro, CR(D) 310). On the equation of “Hungarian” and “Gypsy” music by 19th‐century nationalist composers like Franz Liszt, see Malvinni (8–12 and passim).

11. South's sheet music for “Black Gypsy” is reproduced in Barnett (107–08).

12. South's adoption of a Gypsy persona was echoed several decades later by another African American musician, Jimi Hendrix (discussed in Gopnik (108)).

13. The records are: “Liebestraum No. 3,” by Franz Liszt (26 April 1937; matrix OLA 1714–1); “Danse Norvégienne,” by Edvard Grieg (six different recordings, the earliest dated 13 December 1940; matrix OSW 148–1); “Improvisation on Tchaikowsky's Starry Night,” based on the final movement of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 (January–February 1949; matrix CW 57); and “Liebesfreud,” by Fritz Kreisler (13 December 1930; matrix OSW 150–1). Reinhardt's own composition, “Bolero,” was recorded on 14 December 1937 (matrices X2LA 1996–1 (master take) and X2LA 1996–2 (alternate take)). Its public performance is noted in Delaunay (Django 25).

14. Contradicting Delaunay's account, Grappelli remembered that it was Panassié, not Delaunay, who insisted that the musicians re‐record the concerto and then compelled them to improvise by removing the sheet music during the session. See Balmer (108).

15. Contrary to this quotation, Smith refers to an uncited 1975 interview in which Grappelli claims to have been “very pleased when somebody had the idea” to record Bach's concerto (84).

16. Interestingly, Grappelli's manager and companion Joseph Oldenhove claimed that at the time of the violinist's death in 1997, “he wanted to record the Bach Double Concerto as a sort of last testament. He would play on his own, all four parts. I copied the parts for him but sadly he never had time to complete this ambition. This was his way of making amends for the 1937 Double Concerto with Eddie South, which he was never happy with” (quoted in Balmer 365–66).

17. Afro‐American 26 Aug. 1933, quoted in Jackson 126.

18. Kenney briefly discusses the Bach Double Concerto recordings (22–23).

19. Richard Taruskin argues that Pulcinella manifests imaginary Russian (“Turanian”) aesthetic principles of drobnost' (a sum‐of‐parts), nepodvizhnost' (immobility), and uproshcheniye (simplification of means) (Stravinsky 1449–56).

20. If, as I suggest here, Charles Delaunay did not share his father's philosophical aversion to neoclassicism, it would not be the only artistic matter upon which the two disagreed. Robert Delaunay also argued for the primacy of visual aesthetic experience, declaring “I am horrified by music and noise” (“Letter,” quoted in Kahn 53).

21. Christoph Wolff dates the Double Violin Concerto to around 1730 (“Introduction” 4). For more on the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, see Wolff (Johann Sebastian Bach 351–72).

22. For a brief summary of Cocteau's program, see Morgan (159). For a more extensive discussion, see Messing (77–85).