Third-Stream Music

Abstract

The term ‘third-stream music’, coined by the American composer Gunther Schuller in the 1960s, has by now been largely accepted by the musical world as a useful and valid description of a style which is a fusion between jazz and serious music. Admittedly, ‘serious’ is an unsatisfactory word to apply to music, carrying as it does the implication that jazz may not be serious, or that certain pieces by Haydn, Satie or Poulenc, for example, may not be worthy of the label; but within broad limits what is meant by ‘serious’ music will be readily understood. Even the term ‘jazz’, apparently self-explanatory, is not without a certain latitude of meaning: some will maintain that true jazz is negroid in conception, and will discount the contribution made by many white performers and composers. The limits of third-stream music, then, are ill-defined and open to contention: it can mean music played by a symphony orchestra with jazz soloists, or music played solely by a group of jazz musicians. Usually the basic requirement is that it will include musicians capable of interpreting and playing jazz.