#blackarts

Born October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina to Thelsious and Barbra Monk, Thelonious S. Monk (1917-1982) composed music, which pushed the limits of musical geometry. According to Monk’s son, Thelonious Jr., his father’s original Christian name included Sphere, which came from Monk’s maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts. “Many authors have chosen to see the musical development of Thelonious Sphere Monk providentially prefigured in the conjunction of his middle and last name: “‘The lonely monk in his own sphere.’” (Fitterling 19-20)

Some authors have discussed the musical complexity, which formed the surface of Monk’s sphere. Mark C. Gridley of Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio mentions in his text, Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, that Monk’s compositions possessed unorthodox melodies with complex chord progressions. In succession with a list of Monk’s highly influential compositions, which became jazz standards (“Straight, No Chaser” and “Well, You Needn’t”), Gridley said:

Monk’s tunes have a logic and symmetry all their own. Unlike the turned of many composers, his [Monk’s compositions] are so perfectly structured and concise that they cannot withstand tampering. Monk was expert at placing accents in irregular order -his “Rhythm-n-ing” is exceedingly difficult to play properly because of its [the song’s] odd accents. He was especially skilled in ending phrases on the least expected notes, yet making the piece sound as though those phrase endings had been expected all along -his “Off Minor,” for instance. (Gridley 147)

The innovation behind such pieces as “Off minor” and “Straight, No Chaser” placed T. S. Monk as the firs bebop composer. Bebop was a variant of jazz prevalent during the early 1940s to the middle 1950s, which characterized by small bands, rich chords, a plethora of chord changes, fast playing, surprises and dry, biting tone qualities. Although music of the “swing” era exhibited some of these characteristics, the distinction of bebop came through an intensification of said properties, plus an emphasis on artistic license (improvisation) above popularity. (Gridley 169) Bebop artists were concerned about making music to please themselves as well as for those who appreciated the intricacies of jazz music. Monk’s accentuation of improvisation and other aspects of the music, which only the practitioner could appreciate, caused a new development of the “sphere.”

Monk’s “sphere” developed into two concentric spheres; the larger sphere was a glass bubble consisting of Monk’s musically influential peers, and the smaller marbled sphere was Monk’s private life and creative entity. In the book, Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music, Thomas Fitterling implicated the formation of Monk’s spheres in his [Fitterling’s] illustration of Monk’s career beginnings and household. Fitterling stated:

At the beginning of his career there was also an enforced inner exile from the business end of jazz. That the Monk household stood open to the restlessly searching young musicians [,] who were prepared to keep the master company on his endless piano excursions, is no contradiction. He did not conform to the world, but he did admit a few people into his own who were willing to adopt it in their turn. (Fitterling 7)

As a distinguished student of both mathematics and physics during his years in high school, there was a method to the randomness felt in Monk’s pieces. Monk’s unorthodox chord progressions were eminent in his AABA form compositions. Monk makes it immediately clear that the B-section of these compositions was a dominant element in each theme. (Fitterling 115) An example of Monk’s employment of the B-section as the dominant element in the theme of a piece was given in “Criss Cross.” In his description of the musical mathematics of the B-section of “Criss Cross,” Thomas Fitterling gives another model for Monk’s concentric spheres with the words:

Three against four was a key term. In the B-section we have a different grouping in three. The main motif, derived from the main thematic material of bar five of the A-section, extends over three bars, and this group of three is repeated once. The first interval of this main thematic material, however, is modulated to a sixth, and the movement of the motif steers toward a halt on the fifth step. This fifth step naturally demands repetition of the whole three-bar-grouping, and the demand is met, as we saw. Yet the equally classical song form requires two more bars. Monk comes up with a crazy but ingenious solution: a tonality blurring [hyphen has been extracted between tonality and blurring] run downwards to the flattened sixth, creating a false relation, after which the return to the A-section brings a welcome release. In later recordings Monk dropped these two bars. This yields a more coherent tune, underlying the importance Monk attached to a song’s B-section. On the CBS Criss Cross record Monk abridges the intro to two bars, and his Black Lion recording has bars five and following of the A-section as an intro. Both procedures highlight in their way the importance of the ‘inside of the composition.’ (Fitterling 117-8)

This passage exemplifies the ability of Monk at applying mathematical skill to manipulating sounds of the blue note scale. Monk achieved these things without formal training.

Monk employed simple compositional devices with very original results. His ‘Straight, No Chaser’ involves basically only one idea played again and again, each time in a different part of the measure and with a different ending. The shifting accents reflect a craft which can produce depth in simplicity. The melody is an ingenious invention set atop the twelve-bar blues chord progression. (Gridley 147)

Monk’s concentric spheres (the outer sphere being the A-sections and the inner sphere being the B-section) were given volume through the scientific formulas written on his scores. The unorthodox melodies and complex chord progressions reflected Monk’s tendency to go against the social norm, and to present perspectives that beforehand had not been real, or relative, to the public.

The concentric spheres displayed Monk’s proficiency as a mathematical physicist in the field of jazz music, with the understanding of the relativity special to every individual. Upon researching certain documents, some believe that Monk did not learn of his middle name until the forties; at which time, he employed the names as an accessory to assert his “hippness” among his peers. Monk commented that by his middle name being Sphere, he could never be square. Monk humorously made this statement, knowing that a three-dimensional object could never be two-dimensional. As a pioneer in the genre called Bebop, Monk added a unique dimension to jazz music and invited the careful listener into his inner Sphere.

Works Cited

Fitterling, Thomas. Robert Dobbin, trans. Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music. Berkeley Hills, 1997.

Mark Gridley. Jazz Styles: History and Analysis, 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1987.

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