As it was already discussed in Chapter IX, lighter music is always based on the musical patterns and inventions of the previous era of serious music. This is true not only for harmonization, formal and melodic usage, instrumentation and arranging techniques but also for the genres employed. The achievements of romanticism include programmatic music and its most expressive form is the symphonic poem (the orchestral tone poem). And, undoubtedly, its greatest master was Liszt. It is obvious then that the symphonic poems of Liszt (or at least the genre ‘founded’ by Liszt) influenced American jazz composers.

If we put ourselves in the position of jazz composers seeking musical equality and recognition it is clear that it was necessary to create something greater so that it could be appreciated by serious musicians as well. As Joplin wanted to write American (and not ragtime) opera, so did swing musicians write jazz suites that had much more in common with multi-movement romantic symphonic poems than baroque-type strings of dances or orchestral suites. These jazz suites were programme music which fit the 19th-20th-century usage of the word ’suite’ only because they contain several movements.

Besides the suites of Will Marion Cook and others, the works of Duke Ellington are best known therefore I will only touch on his activity in this field. Ellington arrived at that ‘serious’ point only after the end of the swing era and wrote his suites and greater works after World War II, mostly jointly with Billy Strayhorn (Perfume Suite, 1944, The Deep South Suite, 1946, The Newport Jazz Festival Suite, 1956, Toot Suite, 1958, The Concert of Sacred Music, 1965, The Far East Suite, 1964-65 and The Virgin Island Suite, 1965). Ellington wrote many works which were treated as serious music. Among these, Harlem, a concerto grosso written in 1950 for his own orchestra and the NBC orchestra led by Toscanini and The Golden Broom and the Green Apple composed in 1965 for the New York Philharmonic are worth mentioning. The latter was defined by Ellington as ’modern allegory in three strophes’.

Ellington composed most of his suites as simple programme music either under the influence of particular experiences (The River, 1970), as a travel report (The Latin American Suite, 1968), as a musical protest against worldwide uniformization (The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, 1970), or inspired by history (The New Orleans Suite, 1970), as a historical, social statement (Black, Brown and Beige, 1943). While most shorter (and early) jazz compositions are dance music, when composing longer works composers were generally inspired by a deeper spiritual message. This corresponds with improvisation gaining ground since jazz musicians mostly played ‘applied music’ (i.e. dance music) earlier thus they improvised within narrower frames both timewise and musically. The greatest musicians, partly because of spiritual and gospel, have always had religious, spiritual content in their playing. These musicians saw improvisational skill and ability as a gift of God and, for them, improvising was praying through their instruments.

Ellington writes about the creation of his The Concert of Sacred Music with deep religiousness. The work was composed for the consecration of the Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco in 1965. Parallelism is almost trivial with Liszt’s ‘Esztergom’ (‘Gran’) Mass of which he wrote to Wagner in 1855: ‘I can truly say that my mass has been more prayed than composed.’ Of course, religious works have been composed since the very beginning of music history, and cannot be mentioned as exclusive features of Liszt and Ellington. I feel, however, that their activity stands out during the secularization that could be experienced in music, too. Even though many, including Antonio Vivaldi (The Four Seasons), Claudio Monteverdi (The Combat of Tancred and Clorinda), Ferdinand Kuhnau (The Combat of David and Goliat), Ignaz Biber (The Battle) and others, composed programmatic music already from the Baroque era, for other than musically effective imitation of word-painting things, there was literally no example for such perfect musical expression of emotions, thoughts and philosophy as in the oeuvre of Liszt and then Richard Strauss.