The Poetic Mingus and the Politics of Genre in String Quartet No. 1. Issue 1 (4th February 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: AASLID, VILDE
• Is Part Of: Journal of the Society for American Music. Volume 9:Issue 1(2015)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 25
• Publication Date: 2015-02-04
• Subjects: Music -- United States -- Periodicals; Music -- Periodicals; 780.973
• DOI: 10.1017/S1752196314000522
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1752-1963

Abstract

Abstract: In 1972, the Whitney Museum of American Art commissioned new musical settings of poems by Frank O'Hara for a concert honoring the late poet. Among pieces by Virgil Thomson and Ned Rorem, the program featured a new work by Charles Mingus: his String Quartet No. 1. Mingus's piece was performed only once, at that concert, and was never recorded. It survives only in manuscript form. String Quartet No. 1 thwarts nearly all expectations of a piece by Mingus. Scored for strings and voice, the work's modernist approach to rhythm and pitch is unprecedented for the composer. Mingus chafed at being categorized as a "jazz" composer, and String Quartet No. 1's style is both a bid for and an undermining of the prestige of the high art world. Faced with primitivist discourses that characterized jazz musicians as unschooled and nonverbal, Mingus deployed poetry as a mode of resistance. He worked with poetic texts throughout his life, often writing the poetry himself. Mingus's sensitive setting of O'Hara's text in String Quartet No. 1 points to the centrality of poetry to Mingus's artistic and political project, and suggests that the piece's anomalous style can be partially understood as his response to O'Hara's text.