CALLS JAZZ TYPICAL OF AMERICAN MOOD

"Do I like jazz?" repeated Assistant Professor E. B. Hill '94 of the Music Department when that question was put to him recently by a CRIMSON reporter. "That's a ridiculous question. Do I like food? There is good food and bad food. Just so there is good jazz and bad jazz.

"Jazz--good jazz--is America's only original contribution to the music of the world", continued Professor Hill. It reveals a typical American mood and possesses a new and vital-rhythm. How far that mood and rhythm may be applied to what you probably call 'highbrow' music remains to be seen. Some American composer with a proper sense of style who is well grounded in both types of music may embody all the features of jazz in a symphonic composition.

Source of New Movement a Question

"Will some popular jazz composer acquire the technique that is necessary to raise his work out of the jazz class or will some 'highbrow' composer make use of the principles of jazz? I don't know. It may reach out either way. The danger is that in the process the jazz will lose its original flavor. The result would be a hopeless failure. A symphonic composition is not good just because it is a symphonic composition--jazz is not bad just because it is jazz.

Gershwin Has Shown Way

"There have already been some very good attempts at classical jazz. George Gershwin, who wrote the popular jazz piece 'Do It Again' has composed 'Rhapsody in Blue'--probably the best thing of the kind that we have. It is pure jazz, but it shows Mr. Gershwin's knowledge of the principles of 'high-brow' musical composition. We may expect a good deal from him in the future."

Says Jazz Is Hard to Define

As he was leaving, the interviewer asked, "By the way, Professor Hill, how would you define jazz?"

"That's a hard one. The most generally accepted definition is 'an original kind of syncopation'. But they told me at a League of Composers meeting in New York last week that jazz was losing its syncopation. I don't know about that--in fact, I don't know much about jazz at all."

Professor Hill has, however, written a "Jazz Study for Two Pianos" which has been played considerably on the concert stage in the past year.