I recently read an except from the book A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody by David Liebman, and wanted to share this with you:

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“Like all forms of communication, music consists of the interplay of patterns and violations of the pattern. Without order, sound is noise. But perfect order conveys no message, either. The C major scale carries little musical information because everyone knows exactly where it leads. It is the unexpected that sings to us, the note out of the blue, F sharp as the fourth of the C. But the unexpected cannot exist independently of the expectations it frustrates. Freedom needs an underlying order for it to sing.

The clearest example of transcendence and the given is the tension between the diatonic harmonies that form the basis of all Western art music through the nineteenth century and the chromatic elements that slowly encroached. In the early days it was termed the conflict between harmonies and invention.

Harmony binds the notes that follow; chromatic invention is the liberating knife. But the knife cuts keeply. There is no stopping point in the logic of the blade as it drives towards the absolute, which is entropy’s mortal chill – the incommunicate, random whiteness of noise.

Looked at another way, harmony is reason, dissonance the spirit of passion. Diatonic structure sustains a person’s sanity against the awful, chromatic knowledge of mortality. But only the chromatic can touch the unconscious and set loose its shattering forces.”

~ From The Best of Jackson Payne by Jack Fuller (A. Knopf, used by permission)