Form and Character in Duke Ellington's and Billy Strayhorn's Such Sweet Thunder

Abstract

Form and Character work not separately, but together, in the jazz suite entitled Such Sweet Thunder, and their interaction suggests ways in which we who study and teach Shakespeare might be influenced by Ellington's and Strayhorn's compositional practices. The suite consists of twelve instrumentals of various lengths, each linked by its title and by programmatic commentary to various Shakespearean characters and works. When Such Sweet Thunder has received critical notice, the focus has been on the success or failure of the individual songs' evocation either of character or of Shakespearean verse itself. Ellington, however, asserts a more complex objective, claiming that he and Strayhorn had endeavored to "parallel the vignettes of some of the Shakespearean characters": that is, they tried to present, in musical terms, the characters in scenes, in dramatic context. They succeed in conveying a sense of selected characters by crafting analogues both to specific elements of Shakespeare's stagecraft and to formal structures in his works.