[spacer height=”0.1px”]Marcelo Bettoni
October 2025
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From Gregorian Chant to Free Jazz:
A Journey Through the Evolution of Musical Languages
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The history of Western music is not simply a chronological sequence of styles; it is, above all, a journey through sonic systems that have shaped the way composers and musicians conceive order, tension, and repose. From medieval modes to the ruptures of the twentieth century, each language has left traces that jazz—always permeable and transformative—has absorbed and reinterpreted in its own way (Gioia, 2011; Berliner, 1994).
In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great systematized the liturgical chant of the Catholic Church, giving rise to the so-called Gregorian chant. This monophonic repertoire, based on a system of eight modes—authentic and plagal—organized musical discourse around a finalis and a dominant note (Hoppin, 1978). While it emerged as a liturgical instrument its modal structure survived for centuries, filtering into European folk music and reappearing in the works of composers such as Debussy or Bartók (Pasler, 2001).
Jazz would revisit this modal logic at a key moment: the late 1950s. Works such as So What by Miles Davis and Impressions by John Coltrane replaced rapid tonal modulations with a stable tonal center, encouraging timbral and melodic exploration without the constraints of functional harmony (Kernfeld, 1995; Waters, 2011).
Tonality—a system that organizes music around the hierarchy of the tonic and harmonic functions—dominated Western creation from the Baroque to the Romantic period (Christensen, 2002). This same principle structured traditional jazz and swing, with progressions such as II–V–I and cadences that defined its grammar.
Bebop, led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, pushed that grammar to its limits: accelerating tempos, densifying progressions, and multiplying modulations, making harmony a terrain of virtuosity and risk (DeVeaux, 1997). But not everyone followed that path. Thelonious Monk introduced dissonances and strategic silences, while Wayne Shorter blurred tonal boundaries, paving the way for new harmonic ambiguities (Mercer, 2004).
The twentieth century also brought polytonality—the superimposition of different tonalities—as well as experimentation with ostinatos and pedals as rhythmic-harmonic anchors. These innovations, seen in Ravel, Stravinsky, or Milhaud (Griffiths, 2011), found resonance in jazz: from Duke Ellington’s orchestrations to the expansive energy of McCoy Tyner and the harmonic inventiveness of Herbie Hancock (Levine, 1995).
The most radical rupture with tonal order came with Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. His twelve-tone technique placed all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale on equal footing, eliminating hierarchies and forbidding immediate repetition of the same note (Simms, 2000). Although jazz rarely adopted this method in a strict sense, it embraced its spirit of emancipation. The free jazz of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, or Anthony Braxton deliberately abandoned functional tonality, privileging collective interaction and improvisation as engines of creation (Jost, 1974).
At the same time, the microtonal investigations of Julián Carrillo or Alois Hába expanded the sonic spectrum beyond the tempered system (Partch, 1974). In jazz, this pursuit can be heard in the flexible intonation of string instruments, the manipulation of vibrato, and the use of quarter tones by contemporary improvisers such as Matthew Shipp or Julian Lage.
Aleatoric music, driven by John Cage, influenced free improvisation, a territory where the line between jazz and experimental music blurs (Nyman, 1999). Here, structure may emerge in the moment, without a prior score, and interaction among musicians becomes the true compositional core.
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References
Berliner, P. (1994). Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. University of Chicago Press.
Christensen, T. (Ed.). (2002). The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. Cambridge University Press.
DeVeaux, S. (1997). The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. University of California Press.
Gioia, T. (2011). The History of Jazz. Oxford University Press.
Griffiths, P. (2011). Modern Music and After. Oxford University Press.
Hoppin, R. H. (1978). Medieval Music. W. W. Norton.
Jost, E. (1974). Free Jazz. Da Capo Press.
Kernfeld, B. (Ed.). (1995). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Macmillan.
Levine, M. (1995). The Jazz Theory Book. Sher Music Co.
Mercer, M. (2004). Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter. Tarcher/Penguin.
Nyman, M. (1999). Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Cambridge University Press.
Partch, H. (1974). Genesis of a Music. Da Capo Press.
Pasler, J. (2001). “Debussy, (Achille-)Claude” in Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press.
Simms, B. (2000). Music of the Twentieth Century: Style and Structure. Schirmer.
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Buenos Aires guitarist & musicologist Marcelo Luis Bettoni is the author of a number of books including El sonido de los modos (The Sound of Modes, Tinta de Luz, 2021), Rítmicas de guitarra (Guitar Rhythms, Tinta de Luz, 2021), and most recently an exhaustive history of jazz, Las Rutas del Jazz (The Roots of Jazz, Publiquemos, 2024).
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Read Marcelo Luis Bettoni’s essays on Arteidolia
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Schoenberg, Sandole, and Coltrane: An Invisible Thread Between Musical Modernity and Giant Steps →
Algorithmic Canon and Performative Agency in Natural Machines by Dan Tepfer:
A Reading of “All The Things You Are / Canon at the Octave” →
Edgard Varèse and the Jazzmen: The Avant-Garde That Anticipated Free Jazz →
The Jazz Paradox in the Digital Age: Between Immediacy and Authentic Expression →
