Duke Ellington Tells What Makes Creative People Happy

(Responding to Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn by David Hajdu, and a CD, Such Sweet Thunder, a jazz suite suggested by Shakespeare, composed by Strayhorn and Duke Ellington for the Ellington orchestra)

I once tried to read Duke Ellington's memoir Music is My Mistress and really couldn't make much sense of it. He was an incoherent and idiosyncratic writer. But in his eulogy for his longtime friend and collaborator Billy Strayhorn, Ellington says in one line something I've been trying to say for years: "Billy Strayhorn successfully married melody, words, and harmony, equating the fitting with happiness" [emphasis added].

As this biography makes abundantly clear, Strayhorn was not made happy by the successes of his hit songs and arrangements, nor by the acclaim that came to him when Ellington belatedly made a concerted effort to bring Strayhorn out of the Duke's shadow, nor by several "relationships," nor by the several martinis that Strayhorn imbibed before and after dinner each day. The one thing that energized him was the prospect of creating something new in which everything fit.

Case in point was the commission to produce a musical suite for a Shakespeare celebration. Strayhorn knew his music, knew his Shakespeare, and knew the talents of Ellington's band. He found satisfaction in creating (with Ellington) music (Such Sweet Thunder) that accomplished many things at once, fitting the form of the sonnet, suggesting characters by musical analogies, and making arrangements tailored to the talents of soloists in Ellington's band.

It's like the satisfaction I imagine one feels playing chess on a five-tiered board, moving the piece into exactly the place that achieves "check" in three dimensions. It "fits," or it "clicks." That happens in song, and it happens in theatre (see my review of Bus Stop in May 2006), but it's most miraculous in musical theatre where story, character, melody, harmony, rhyme, an overall theme, stage movement, and the visual design of the show can all fall into alignment. That's why many people find themselves weeping at the end of act one of Sondheim's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE: it's just so perfect.

Duke Ellington Tells What Makes Creative People Happy | Category: Music, Drama