Part 1 - The Octet - Raymond Horricks - Dave Brubeck: A Formula and A Dilemma

A Rare Essay, Not Readily Available to the General Reader

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“A critic has two functions: (1) to spread knowledge and appreciation of his subject among those who don't know but might learn about it; (2) to encourage those who are doing the work and tell them how it is "coming over," with as little bias and as much understanding as possible. And that is quite a task, requiring a constant and humble passion to know everything of what is being done and how everything is being done; and just as steady a passion for learning how to explain this so that it will somehow mean something to the performer and his audience alike. The best people I have discovered to learn about music from are the musicians, who would not be found dead in the kind of talk generally used to describe their work. The task of describing and estimating their work is not impossible. The main trouble is, it isn't even being attempted.”

• Otis Ferguson

"As regards music, both as a producer and a writer, I have been determined to stick to a nonsectarian approach. I work with material on and write about Johann Sebastian Bach, Sir Thomas Beecham, and Paul Tortelier on the one hand, and Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington and the giants of modern jazz on the other. Moreover, I have tried to work for the prosperity of music. I can only write with enthusiasm. If I don't like it, I won't knock it; I just leave it alone. In my magazine articles, I insist on being called a writer about music, never a critic.”

• Raymond Horricks

As you read the following essay on Brubeck by Raymond Horricks which is contained in These Jazzmen of Our Times [1959], a publication for which he also served as editor, you may be tempted to ask if he’s “telling those who are doing the work how it’s coming over” or if he is indicating that “I don’t like it, I won’t knock it; I just leave it alone?”

The author of a number of major works on Jazz and its makers including detailed studies on Count Basie, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Gil Evans, Eric Dolphy and Gerry Mulligan, among many others, one gets the impression from his arguments that Mr. Horricks is trying to have it both ways. Perhaps, he gets at the source for this dichotomy in the subtitle - “A Formula and A Dilemma.”

In any case, I am a great fan of strong opinions, especially when they are clearly and cogently argued and there is much merit in Horricks’ essay as whatever the motivation, it is a studied piece of analysis on Dave and his music focusing primarily on the first decade of his career. 

In the original this is a long essay, so I have divided it into two parts: [1] The Octet and [2] The Quartet.

Interestingly, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Horricks’ extended treatment of the music of Brubeck’s Octet and its comparison with the 1949 Miles Davis Birth of the Cool Nonet may have been the first analysis of its kind.

Based in the UK, Mr. Horricks used English spelling.