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I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every
possible musical idea.
These are the words of one of the worlds greatest jazz pianists, Oscar Peterson. From a
young age, Petersons ability at the piano showed no limits. He utilized his talents to carry him
to the top of the jazz world, touring worldwide and receiving critical acclaim. He is known for
his jazz, but what about the classical side of Peterson? Does a classical musician exist inside of
Peterson? Where did his piano playing begin, and what influence did classical music have on his
styles of playing?
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was born on August 15, 1925, in Montral, Quebec. He grew
up next to a church in Saint-Henri, which at the time was a bustling district with a small, but
tight-knit black community. Oscars father, Daniel, was a self taught musician who worked as a
railway porter all of his life. When Oscar was young, his father gathered up enough money to
buy a small piano, even though it was difficult for the family to afford. Daniel taught Oscar
piano, as well as his four other siblings. The beginnings of Oscars piano training found him at
the piano, taught by his sister Daisy, practicing scales and classical tudes daily, for hours on
end. This can be linked to the virtuosity of Oscars skills from a very young age. From the age
of nine, Oscar played the piano with such control that it impressed even professional musicians.
For many of these first years, Oscars piano studies included four to six hours of practice per day.
At age fourteen, Oscar began studying with Paul de Marky, who himself was a student of
Istvn Thomn, a pupil of Franz Liszt. Therefore, Oscars training with de Marky was based on
classical piano, and as one might suspect, Oscar followed the pianistic tradition of Franz Liszt.
Oscar was also influenced by impressionism and late romanticism. The following was written
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about Oscar after a concert he performed in Toronto: His version of Tenderly leans heavily on
Debussy and Ravel in its harmonies, and his Little White Lies had definite echoes of
Rachmaninoff.
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Around this same time, Oscars sister Daisy encouraged him to audition for a national
amateur contest held on a CBC radio station, and Oscar won, bringing him musical recognition
as well as a weekly gig on the Montral radio station CKAK. After this win, Oscar dropped out
of school and became a professional pianist, working at CKAK and also playing at hotels and
music halls. By the time he was seventeen, Oscar had his first experience of playing in a band
when he joined the famous Canadian jazz ensemble, the Johnny Holmes Orchestra. Take note
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that this is only three years after Petersons classical studies began with Paul de Marky.
One night in 1947, Norman Granz, American jazz impresario and producer, was being
taken to the Montral airport by cab, and the radio was broadcasting live a performance of
Petersons first trio at a local night club. Granz was so impressed by what he heard that he had
the driver take him to the night club to meet Oscar. Two years later, Granz introduced Peterson
at a Carnegie Hall Jazz at the Philharmonic show in New York, and this debut led to Oscar being
able to play with many of the major jazz artists of the time. This was a huge step for Oscars
career in the jazz world, as in 1950 Oscar became a full-time touring member of Jazz at the
Philharmonic. Granz became Petersons manager for most of Oscars career, giving him
incredible opportunities due to his connections in the music world, and through Verve records, a
label under which Oscar recorded many of his albums. This was more than just a manager-
Oscar Peterson - The Canadian Encyclopedia. Betty Nygaard King. Last edited 12/15/13.
1
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/oscar-peterson-emc/
Oscar Peterson - Profile of Oscar Peterson
2
http://piano.about.com/od/jazzpiano/p/o_peterson.htm
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musician relationship, however. Oscar gave Granz praise for standing up for him and other black
jazz musicians in the segregationist south of the 1950s and 1960s. In the Canadian
Broadcasting Companys (CBC) two-part documentary video Music in the Key of Oscar, Oscar
tells how Granz stood up to a southern policeman who wanted to stop Oscars trio from using the
white-only taxis. Granz was the type of manager to stick up for his musicians no matter the
circumstances.
Oscar not only brought new meaning to jazz, he also brought new meaning to the jazz
trio. He did so by bringing musicianship of the highest degree to all three members of the trio,
beginning with his first trio with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis. In Oscars own words, this trio was
the most stimulating and productive setting for public performances as well as in studio
recordings. Oscar and his trio would often begin a song together, each taking turns soloing to
show their virtuosity as a whole, instead of only giving Oscar the solos. Oscar demanded
nothing less than near perfection from all of his members, and this is one of many reasons his
music was so unsurpassably coherent and highly virtuosic.
During Oscars touring years in the early 1960s, he founded a jazz school in Toronto
called the Advanced School of Contemporary Music. This attracted students from all over the
world, and for a few months each year Oscar and his trio, along with Phil Nimmons, a clarinetist
from Toronto, would conduct classes at the school. However, the demands of Oscars touring
schedule forced closure after a few years.
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Oscar began composing his own original works while he was a member of the Johnny
Holmes Orchestra, and as time went on he devoted more and more of his own free time to
Oscar Peterson: Biography The Official Website of Oscar Peterson
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http://www.oscarpeterson.com/bio/
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composition, while of course still maintaining a vigorous performance schedule. Oscars Hymn
to Freedom became one of the crusade songs of the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. He also composed The Canadiana Suite, a salute to Canada, in the early
1960s. Oscar has also composed music for movies, including the Canadian film Big North,
made for Ontario Place in Toronto, and the feature film The Silent Partner, for which he won
the Genie Award for best original film score in 1978. Oscar composed work for the National
Film Board of Canada, and his collaboration with filmmaker Norman McLaren on the film
Begone Dull Care won awards all over the world. He composed the soundtrack for the film
Fields of Endless Day, about U.S. slaves using the Underground Railroad to escape to Canada.
On the classical side of the spectrum, Oscar composed A Salute to Bach to commemorate the
composers 300th birthday, which was premiered with trio and orchestra at Torontos Roy
Thomson Hall in 1985.
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Throughout Oscars lifetime, he also made many television appearances. He hosted five
different talk show series, and his widespread appeal led to his interviewing a wide variety of
guests. He also appeared on television commercials, including Tears Are Not Enough, a
musical fundraiser for African famine relief. Not only did Oscars musical talent bring him
worldwide fame, it also led him to receiving many awards and honors, including the Praemium
Imperiale (the Arts equivalent of the Nobel Prize), the UNESCO International Music Prize, eight
Grammy Awards, the 1993 Glenn Gould Prize, just to name a few.
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Oscar Peterson: Biography The Official Website of Oscar Peterson
4
http://www.oscarpeterson.com/bio/
Oscar Peterson: Biography The Official Website of Oscar Peterson
5
http://www.oscarpeterson.com/bio/
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During the later years of Oscars life he was still touring year-round, but while he was
playing Blues Etude, Oscar noticed something odd happening with his left hand. It was the
first show of the night at New York Citys Blue Note club, May 1993. Oscar Peterson, then 67
and one of the greatest jazz pianists ever, found his left hand flubbing the boogie-woogie
passages that climax the arrangement. He brushed the difficulty off, completed the set and went
backstage with the rest of the trio.
The bassist, Ray Brown, whod been playing with Peterson off and on for four decades,
took him aside and asked if something was wrong. Peterson said it was nothing. Still, he felt
dizzy, and he found his dressing room going in and out of focus. The second set was worse. He
fumbled again, his left hand stiff and tingling, and now he couldnt play the notes hed managed
just an hour before. For the first time in an international career that had begun with a surprise
debut at Carnegie Hall at age 24, Petersonknown for such spectacular shows of keyboard
mastery that Duke Ellington called him the maharajah of the pianostruggled to play. After
Peterson had returned to his home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Ontario, he saw a
doctor and learned that he had suffered a stroke, which had rendered his left side nearly
immobile. It seemed that he would never perform again, and he says he soon became depressed.
His ailment was all the more poignant given that his greatest asset, in addition to his astonishing
dexterity, was his ability to do things with his left hand that most pianists could only dream of.
However, within two years he had fully recovered, and in that time he said himself he came back
with his left hand strong, and his right hand more versatile than ever due to all of the practice
recovering his abilities. Once, while performing, he reportedly leaned over and lit a cigarette for
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a woman in the front row with his right hand while his left scampered up and down the ivories
without missing a beat.
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Now that we have covered the highlights of Oscars life, let us now go back and take a
more in-depth look at Oscars classical influence in his playing style, beginning by looking at
how his jazz icon Art Tatum influenced him classically. One of Oscars first exposures to Tatum
was in his early teen years, when his father Daniel played Tatums Tiger Rag on the family piano.
Oscar was so intimidated by this piece that he became doubtful of his own piano skill, and
refused to practice or play at all for several weeks. Tatum was a model for Oscar during the
1940s and 1950s, and this led to Oscar learning Tatums works. By playing his works, Oscar
became influenced by Tatums own musical influences, notably the piano concertos by Sergei
Rachmaninoff. Some of Rachmaninoffs harmonizations, as well as direct quotations from his
second piano concerto, are found off and on throughout many recordings by Peterson, including
those recordings of the Oscar Peterson Trio, featuring bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Oscar made many trio recordings that highlighted his piano
performances, revealing his style that absorbed influences from genres of jazz, popular, and
classical music. In Oscars Toronto jazz school, he often asked his students to study the works of
Bach, especially The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, and The Art of Fugue.
Oscar considered these pieces essential for any serious pianist.
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In a 1979 interview featuring Oscar on the Dick Cavett Show, one of the first questions
Cavett asks Oscar is as follows: Cavett- Whats your formal musical education? Peterson- A
Return of a Virtuoso. Marya Hornbacher. Last edited 01/2005
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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/return-of-a-virtuoso-105883629/?page=1
Oscar Peterson Bio
7
http://www.answers.com/topic/oscar-peterson
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classical background. Even Oscar himself readily acknowledges that he began with classical
music, and the interview continues on to talk about his jazz styles as well as Cavett asking about
various jazz techniques and Oscar plays them with ease.
I will now take an analytical approach to Oscars music, looking at it from an outside
perspective and comparing his music techniques to those of the classical artists Franz Liszt,
Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and so forth. The pieces I will analyze are Tenderly, Little
White Lies, and How Long Has This Been Going On?, crediting the original artist followed by
the analysis that expands on Oscars style. For purpose of clarity, none of these three recordings
by Oscar Peterson feature lyrics, although all three original versions do feature lyrics.
First I will analyze Tenderly, a song published in 1946 originally by Walter Gross and
lyrics by Jack Lawrence. It was originally written in the key of E-flat Major, with a 3/4 time
signature as a waltz, and in Oscars case, was translated into 4/4 time as a jazz standard. Oscar
played Tenderly a little differently each time, but I have found a particular recording which is
useful for comparison to the stylistic piano of Claude Debussy, on the album Perfect Peterson:
The Best of the Pablo and Telarc Recordings. This recording features use of the pentatonic
scale, as well as many, many jazz licks, starting from the upper octaves and often ending up in
the low bass register of the piano. Oscar also features the use of rich chords, chromaticism,
ambiguous harmonies, seventh and ninth chords, the main melody in fragmentation, and features
the melody at both beginning and end, giving it more of an importance than the rich harmonies
found in the middle of the piece where Oscar expands on the original melody. Many of these
same characteristics were exemplified in the style of Debussy, notably the use of seventh and
ninth chords (many times their use was nonfunctional), free chromaticism, rich chords, melodic
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fragmentation, the importance of melody over harmonic progression and rhythm, and so on. I
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will also take the opportunity to briefly relate this to Liszts Liebestraume No. 3, specifically the
first cadenza featured in this piece. It can be very much related to Oscars final jazz lick in this
specific recording of Tenderly, in which he climbs up the keys of the piano in what sounds like
fourths, much as Liszts Liebestraume No. 3 does. One would have to hear it for their own sake
for a more compelling comparison, and then the similarities would most certainly be clear.
The next piece I will analyze is Little White Lies, written in 1930 by Walter Donaldson. I
would like to compare Oscars playing style in this piece to that of Sergei Rachmaninoff, a great
Russian pianist and composer. Like Rachmaninoff, Oscar had hands that could easily encompass
intervals such as tenths, elevenths, sometimes even up to twelfths without effort at all. Oscar
often expands on harmony under the main melody of Little White Lies, but all the while he keeps
the focus on the melody and it can be clearly heard no matter how complex the harmony
underneath may be, much as Rachmaninoff did in many of his pieces, such as Prelude in C sharp
minor, Opus 3 No. 2., in which Rachmaninoff features the use of the sostenuto pedal to keep the
harmony reverberating underneath the striking melody he presents. Also in this piece by
Rachmaninoff, the melody is repeated and expanded on in various ways, which can be compared
to Oscars expansion of the melody of Little White Lies. For the last point of this specific
comparison, I will draw attention to one of Rachmaninoffs philosophies: Every piece has one
culminating point towards which the rest of the piece prepares for, and the pianist should strive
for that point. In my opinion, many of Oscars pieces have multiple climatic points, or at least
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Claude Debussys Musical Style
8
http://www.lcsproductions.net/MusicHistory/MusHistRev/Articles/DebussyStyle.html
Rachmaninoff the Pianist- The Ampico piano rolls 1919-1929. Written by Soo Kian Hing.
9
http://inkpot.com/classical/rachampico.html
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it feels to me personally that they do, because of Oscars style of playing. However, Oscars
rendition of Little White Lies seems to follow this Rachmaninoff philosophy, and it can be clearly
heard that it builds up to one climatic point, then relaxes gradually to the end of the piece.
The last piece to be analyzed is How Long Has This Been Going On?, composed by
George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Near the very beginning (the first page of music
in the transcription), Oscar features an arpeggiation of no particular chord, but rather of a scale in
a mode, much as Ravel did, often featuring the Mixolydian scale. It is important to note that
many of these jazz licks Oscar featured would be considered cadenzas by the likes of Liszt and
his contemporaries, and printed in fine print, but not to Oscar. For him, they were only
expansions on the main melody and a more complex way of reaching the next chord, with
progression and resolution out into the next part of the harmony by the licks. This piece also
features three or four notes repeated over an extended period of time, giving it a sound
comparable to Chopins Ballade No. 1 as far as the melodic sound and underlying harmony is
concerned. Oscars interpretation of this jazz standard also features a rainfall of notes at the
final few bars of the piece, hinting at the style and sound of Ravels Jeux deau. Overall, Oscar
may have borrowed his playing styles from different composers due to his love of music and
early training as a classical musician, but he expanded on them at his own will, giving him
outstanding stylistic technique which can be easily related to the listed artists above, as well as
many others. After all, Oscar refers to himself as a player, not an interpreter.
There is something nearly life-altering about listening to Oscar Peterson. If you truly sit
down and take the time to listen to his piece, do not expect to be able to quickly analyze
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it. Just sit there and listen for the enjoyment of the music, for there is much to enjoy. Perhaps
you have heard the original version of the song before, for example I Cant Get Started, in the
key of C Major, famously sung by Ella Fitzgerald and others. But this is no simple song, you are
now listening to the Oscar Peterson solo version. One is presented with a beautiful yet strikingly
simple melody, no doubt underlined by a harmonic progression only the mind of such a genius as
Oscar could create. Before your eyes, the melody is transformed and you are taken on a journey
of harmonic and melodic changes, unpredictable and unforeseen, and not only that, but also
bounced around from different playing styles, stride to ragtime then back to a jazz ballad style
and once again into a stride for five seconds, followed by a return to the main melody, continuing
in the next direction Oscar decides to take it, until an eventual return to the original melody,
followed by a truly magical finale of the solo. Oscar is regarded as one of the greatest jazz
pianists of all time for a reason, and he most definitely lives up to all of the acclaim he has
received and will continue to receive for many years to come.







Bibliography

Oscar Peterson - The Canadian Encyclopedia. Betty Nygaard King. Last edited 12/15/13.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/oscar-peterson-emc/

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Oscar Peterson - Profile of Oscar Peterson
http://piano.about.com/od/jazzpiano/p/o_peterson.htm

Oscar Peterson: Biography The Official Website of Oscar Peterson
http://www.oscarpeterson.com/bio/

Return of a Virtuoso. Marya Hornbacher. Last edited 01/2005
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/return-of-a-virtuoso-105883629/?page=1

Oscar Peterson Bio
http://www.answers.com/topic/oscar-peterson

Claude Debussys Musical Style
http://www.lcsproductions.net/MusicHistory/MusHistRev/Articles/DebussyStyle.html

Rachmaninoff the Pianist- The Ampico piano rolls 1919-1929. Written by Soo Kian Hing.
http://inkpot.com/classical/rachampico.html