Requiescat in pace: Dave Brubeck, jazz giant and convert to Catholicism from "nothing"

Dave Brubeck, legendary jazz pianist and pioneer, died earlier today on the cusp of his 92nd birthday. From the Chicago Tribune:

Dave Brubeck, a jazz musician who attained pop-star acclaim with recordings such as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo a la Turk," died Wednesday morning at Norwalk Hospital, in Norwalk, Conn., said his longtime manager-producer-conductor Russell Gloyd.

Brubeck was one day short of his 92nd birthday. He died of heart failure, en route to "a regular treatment with his cardiologist,” said Gloyd.

Throughout his career, Brubeck defied conventions long imposed on jazz musicians. The tricky meters he played in “Take Five” and other works transcended standard conceptions of swing rhythm.


The extended choral/symphonic works he penned and performed around the world took him well outside the accepted boundaries of jazz. And the concerts he brought to colleges across the country in the 1950s shattered the then-long-held notion that jazz had no place in academia.

As a pianist, he applied the classical influences of his teacher, the French master Darius Milhaud, to jazz, playing with an elegance of tone and phrase that supposedly were the antithesis of the American sound.

The New York Times has a lengthy obituary that highlights Brubeck's long, active, and prolific life as musician and composer:

In 1954 Mr. Brubeck was the first jazz musician to be featured on the
cover of Time magazine. That same year he signed with Columbia Records,
promising to deliver two albums a year, and built a house in Oakland.

For all his conceptualizing, Mr. Brubeck often seemed more guileless and
stubborn country boy than intellectual. It is often noted that his
piece “The Duke” — famously recorded by Miles Davis and Gil Evans in
1959 on their collaborative album “Miles Ahead” — runs through all 12
keys in the first eight bars. But Mr. Brubeck contended that he never
realized that until a music professor told him.

Mr. Brubeck’s very personal musical language situated him far from the
Bud Powell school of bebop rhythm and harmony; he relied much more on
chords, lots and lots of them, than on sizzling, hornlike right-hand
lines. (He may have come by this outsiderness naturally, as a function
of his background: jazz by way of rural isolation and modernist
academia. He was, Ted Gioia wrote in his book “West Coast Jazz,”
“inspired by the process of improvisation rather than by its history.”)

It took a little while for Mr. Brubeck to capitalize on the greater
visibility his deal with Columbia gave him, and as he accommodated
success a certain segment of the jazz audience began to turn against
him. (The 1957 album “Dave Digs Disney,” on which he played songs from
Walt Disney movies, didn’t help his credibility among critics and
connoisseurs.) Still, by the end of the decade he had broken through
with mainstream audiences in a bigger way than almost any jazz musician
since World War II.

In 1958, as part of a State Department program that brought jazz as an
offer of good will during the cold war, his quartet traveled in the
Middle East and India, and Mr. Brubeck became intrigued by musical
languages that didn’t stick to 4/4 time — what he called “march-style
jazz,” the meter that had been the music’s bedrock. The result was the
album “Time Out,” recorded in 1959. With the hits “Take Five” (composed
by Mr. Desmond in 5/4 meter and prominently featuring the quartet’s
gifted drummer, Joe Morello) and “Blue Rondo à la Turk” (composed by Mr.
Brubeck in 9/8), the album propelled Mr. Brubeck onto the pop charts. ...

As a composer, Mr. Brubeck used jazz to address religious themes and to
bridge social and political divides. His cantata “The Gates of Justice,”
from 1969, dealt with blacks and Jews in America; another cantata,
“Truth Is Fallen” (1972), lamented the killing of student protesters at
Kent State University in 1970, with a score including orchestra,
electric guitars and police sirens. He played during the
Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting in 1988; he composed entrance music for
Pope John Paul II’s visit to Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1987;
he performed for eight presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton.

Much more about Brubeck's life and discography can be found on the All Music Guide site. As Deacon Greg Kandra points out (and I noted in this May 2011 post), Brubeck was also a convert, in 1980, to the Catholic Church. This 2009 article in St. Anthony Messenger states:

To Hope! A Celebration was Brubeck’s
first encounter with the Roman
Catholic Mass, written at a time when
he belonged to no denomination or
faith community. It was commissioned
by Our Sunday Visitor editor Ed Murray,
who wanted a serious piece on the
revised Roman ritual, not a pop or jazz
Mass, but one that reflected the American
Catholic experience.

The writing was to have a profound
effect on Brubeck’s life. A short time
before its premiere in 1980 a priest
asked why there was no Our Father
section of the Mass. Brubeck recalls
first inquiring, “What’s the Our Father?”
(he knew it as The Lord’s Prayer) and
saying, “They didn’t ask me to do that.”

He resolved not to make the addition
that, in his mind, would wreak havoc
with the composition as he had created
it. He told the priest, “No, I’m going on
vacation and I’ve taken a lot of time
from my wife and family. I want to be
with them and not worry about music.”

“So the first night we were in the
Caribbean, I dreamt the Our Father,”
Brubeck says, recalling that he hopped
out of bed to write down as much as he
could remember from his dream state.
At that moment he decided to add that
piece to the Mass and to become a
Catholic.

He has adamantly asserted for years
that he is not a convert, saying to be a
convert you needed to be something
first. He continues to define himself as
being “nothing” before being welcomed
into the Church.

His Mass has been performed
throughout the world, including in the
former Soviet Union in 1997 (when
Russia was considering adopting a state
religion) and for Pope John Paul II in
San Francisco during the pontiff’s 1987
pilgrimage to the United States. At the
latter celebration, Brubeck was asked to
write an additional processional piece
for the pope’s entrance into Candlestick
Park.

Again, it was a dream that led him to
accept a sacred music project that he
initially refused as not workable. The
dream “was more of a realizing that I
could write what I wanted for the
music,” Brubeck says.

“They needed nine minutes and they
gave me a sentence, ‘Upon this rock I
will build my Church and the jaws of
hell cannot prevail against it.’ So rather
than dream musically, I dreamed practically
that Bach would have taken one
sentence in a chorale and fugue, as he
often did, and that was the answer,” he
says. “So I decided that I would do that
piece for the pope,” which is known as
“Upon This Rock.”

If I might, here are some thoughts from a post I wrote last year on the "catholicity of jazz", with a reference to Brubeck:

Brubeck composed a piece, "To Hope! A Celebration Mass" in 1996 that seems to have a much more classical/European sound
to it. Regardless, I've long said that I never want to hear jazz at
Mass, now matter how well it is played or composed, for while jazz is
very beautiful, powerful, and even spiritual (in the best sense of that
word), it's very nature—improvisational, largely profane (in the correct
sense of that word)—is not well-suited, in my judgment, to liturgical
settings.

But I would also insist that outside of liturgical settings, good
jazz is good music, which means it is an artistic expression in keeping
with Catholicism, which prizes and recognizes all that is good, true,
and beautiful. Personal tastes differ, it goes without saying, and I can
only take a little bit of Ornette Coleman or Cecil Taylor before I turn
to the Blue Note albums of the 1950s and '60s, or the trio albums of
Keith Jarrett, or the recent works of Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Roy
Hargrove, and so forth. Great jazz, to my mind and ear, is a marvelous
combination of structure and improvisation, where intelligent musical
conversation takes place upon a chosen, mutual theme, revealing both the
individual thoughts/voices of those participating, as well as the
deeper meaning and heart of the piece they are playing. It is a music
that recognizes and honors and draws upon tradition while speaking about
and within that tradition in the here and now. In my mind, jazz bears a
certain analogy to the human condition: we are creatures endowed with
great freedom, but freedom is to be exercised in pursuing the good,
recognizing and respecting the limits and boundaries of our nature and
of creation as established by God the Creator.

May God grant him eternal rest!