The André Hodeir Jazz Reader

by André Hodeir (Editor), Jean-Louis Pautrot (Editor)

First trained as a violinist, then as a composer, André Hodeir began writing about jazz in the 1940s. As editor-in-chief of the French magazine Jazz Hot , he was an early proponent of bebop and its practitioners, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

Downbeat called Hodeir's first compilation of jazz writings, Its Evolution and Essence , "the best analytical book on jazz ever written," and Martin Williams named it and Hodeir's second book, Toward Jazz , "two of the most important critical works ever written on the subject." While Hodeir's ideas sparked widespread debate, his study of jazz improvisation and his use of music theory shed new light on the intricacies of jazz composition and arrangement and helped launch a new era of jazz criticism.

This new volume, which collects pieces from Hodeir's three books of jazz writings-and one new essay never before published in English-will introduce Hodeir to a new generation of jazz enthusiasts and scholars alike, and prove his work to be as relevant today as when he wrote it. Jean-Louis Pautrot's introduction to the book, and his preface to each piece, helps put Hodeir's work in its proper context.

André Hodeir, born in Paris in 1921, is a musical composer, critic, and novelist. He is best known for his studies of jazz, which influenced jazz criticism on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world. A native of France, Jean-Louis J. Pautrot teaches contemporary French literature, film, and culture at Saint Louis University, where he also directs the film studies program. He is the author of La Musique Oubliée , a psychoanalytical approach to music in the novels of Sartre, Vian, Proust, and Duras.

Genres: Music

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 2006

About the author

André Hodeir (22 January 1921 – 1 November 2011) was a French violinist, composer, arranger and musicologist.

Hodeir was born in Paris. His initial training was as a classical violinist and composer. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he took Olivier Messiaen's analysis class, and won first prizes in fugue, harmony, and music history. While pursuing these studies, he discovered jazz, and embarked on an exploration of all music forms, jazz as well as classical. Initially, he recorded on violin under the pseudonym of Claude Laurence (see Tom Lord's "Jazz Discography"). Subsequently as a critic he expressed vigorous disgust with nearly all early jazz (Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence; 1957).

Hodeir was a founder, in 1954, and director of Jazz Groupe de Paris, made up of nine musicians, including Bobby Jaspar, Pierre Michelot and Nat Peck. In 1957, at the invitation of Ozzie Cadena of Savoy Records, he recorded an album of his own compositions with a group of American musicians which included, among others, Donald Byrd, Idrees Sulieman, Frank Rehak, Hal McKusick, Eddie Costa and George Duvivier and, on one track, the singer Annie Ross. He was the author of two books of Essais (1954 and 1956), of numerous film scores, including Le Palais Idéal by Ado Kyrou, the Jazz Cantata for the film Chutes de pierres, danger de mort by Michel Fano, and Brigitte Bardot's Une Parisienne. Hodeir was the founder of his own orchestra during the Sixties (Catalyse, Arte della commedia dell', Transplantation, Crepuscule with Nelly, etc., available in an album by Martial Solal, in 1984). He wrote several works based on James Joyce, including the 1966 jazz cantata Anna Livia Plurabelle,[2] and the 1972 work Bitter Ending, featuring The Swingle Singers and a jazz quintet, on the final monologue of Finnegans Wake.