The Ellington Effect workshops take place once a month, and David picks a different Ellington composition to analyze for each one.  In about two hours, he talks through the piece note by note, line by line, analyzing the piece at both macro and micro levels.

David Berger has studied the music of Duke Ellington for over 50 years, and has transcribed over 500 Ellington and Strayhorn arrangements and compositions.  Because of this, he is able to make connections to Ellington's other pieces, talk about trends and eras in Ellington's writing, and discuss the influences of changing personnel on the music over time.

At the end of each workshop, David answers questions for a half hour or so.  These are always lively and fascinating, as workshop attendees tend to include some highly knowledgable Ellingtonians as well as plenty of intelligent musicians who ask insightful questions.

Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue

 

By 1937, Duke Ellington had proved over and over to be the undefeated champ of the short form with The Mooche, Black And Tan Fantasy, It Don’t Mean A Thing, Daybreak Express, Solitude, and dozens of other 3-minute masterpieces. His three previous attempts at long forms (Creole Rhapsody, Symphony In Black, and Reminiscing In Tempo), although rich in melody and harmony, had formal problems—specifically continuity and pacing. 

 

The first version of Creole Rhapsody suffered from discontinuity. The second version went to the other extreme of too much sameness. Symphony In Black was composed for an interesting film with its time limits both on screen and in the preparation (Ellington threw in previously written and recorded pieces in order to make the deadline). Each independent piece is excellent, but there is little, if anything, to connect them. Reminiscing In Tempo suffers from the obsessive sameness of tempo and mood. 

 

Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue was composed in 1937 as two separate charts to be recorded on two sides of a 78 rpm record. The concept, while obvious (especially if you know the titles) hadn’t been attempted in jazz. Diminuendo starts loud and busy. As the piece progresses, the orchestration thins out while the volume decreases. 

 

Crescendo begins softly and gradually increases in volume, complexity, and intensity. Although not a popular hit at the time, it was a major artistic triumph and remained in the band’s book from 1945 until 1973. The performance at the Newport Jazz Festival and its Columbia recording made it Ellington’s best known and most requested of his extended works.  

 

What began as a brilliant formal concept described in the titles became problematic in live performance. Both Diminuendo and Crescendo are performed at the same driving tempo. As Jimmy Hamilton once told me when I counted it off a bit too fast in rehearsal, “It’s not a racehorse.” True, but it’s fast enough to sustain the intensity for more than fourteen minutes. 

 

For live performances, Ellington provided a piano solo interlude to link the two parts. In the 1946 Carnegie Hall performance, he inserted Transblucency between the two parts. When Paul Gonsalves joined the band in 1950, the transition, now labeled The Wailing Interval, was extended to as many as 26 ever-building choruses becoming Gonsalves’ trademark. 

 

Herein lies the problem with Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue. Gonsalves takes over from Ellington’s soft piano solo and gradually builds to a peak in volume and intensity. After he stops playing, Ellington takes over at a lower volume and intensity setting up Crescendo. So, what we now have is Diminuendo And Crescendo And Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue—not what Duke had in mind in 1937, and for all its excitement, not as effective as the clearer, original form. 

 

In an attempt to solve this problem, in 1962, Ellington replaced Crescendo In Blue with Blow By Blow, which is a mere series of simple, swinging background figures behind Gonsalves’ solo. This dealt with the formal issue but deprives us of the amazing composition of Crescendo In Blue. 

 

For the purposes of this presentation, I will deal with the 1937 version of Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue and point out the changes made in the 1956 Newport performance. Where the original recording went over the heads of the 1937 public, nineteen years later, the music world had caught up and greeted this complex piece of jazz with open arms. 

 

 

In 1935 Freddie Jenkins, otherwise known as Posey, left the band due to medical problems and was replaced by Rex Stewart. Two years later Jenkins returned for a few dates—enlarging the trumpet section to four. Duke specifically wrote Diminuendo and Crescendo for the September 20, 1937 date, which explains why there are four trumpet parts, and why he didn’t continue to play it until 1945. He did add Shorty Baker in 1942, but Duke and Strayhorn were producing so much new material in addition to Shorty’s wife, Marylou Williams contributing new charts, that there was no room on the programs.

 

In 1946, Duke’s recording contract with RCA was over. He didn’t sign with Columbia until a year later. During that gap, he and the band recorded for a number of small labels, most notably, Musicraft. Most of the sides recorded for that label are adventurous pieces like Jam-A-Ditty, The Beautiful Indians, Happy Go-Lucky Local and Strayhorn’s Overture To A Jam Session. Curiously, he also recorded Diminuendo In Blue for Musicraft. It’s odd that he didn’t include Crescendo In Blue.