Dave Brubeck on polytonality

SS: Throughout your career, you\u27ve been well known for experimentation with different musical techniques, in particular polytonality and polyrhythms. Can you give us a brief explanation about what polytonality means, and maybe give us a demonstration of polytonality? DB: Yeah. It\u27s using three key centers, or two at the same time. [PLAYS PIANO] That\u27s in F. [PLAYS PIANO] Now we\u27re in A flat and F at the same time. Now we add the E flat. [PLAYS PIANO] Now a choir learning that, you just tell them the melody in each different key rather than being stuck to try and reading it the first time through, just sing this melody. But, you started on A flat, and somebody else starts on G or something, and stay with it. [PLAYS PIANO] Now I\u27m in B flat in this hand, and I\u27m in G in this hand. And later [PLAYS PIANO] now I\u27m in D flat, still in G here. That\u27s polytonality. SS: So, in this case you were staying in one key with your left hand, and changing different keys with your right hand. Is that correct? DB: Yeah. One of the early pieces I wrote in 1946 as a student with Darius Milhaud, I had three different clefs instead of two clefs -- treble clef, bass clef -- treble, treble, bass. And, I [PLAYS PIANO] -- I\u27d be playing a swing bass in this hand in one key, and then adding on these other things. One time, a guy came to a concert I was playing. He had a tape recorder. And, he taped seven of my choruses. That\u27s the length of the tune, where I\u27m in C in the left hand and E flat in the right hand, which I couldn\u27t believe I did. See, I forget a lot of this stuff. It\u27s gone right after I play it, never to be heard again. When somebody\u27s out there in the audience taping it, and then shows it to me later, I\u27ll say, How? How could I do that? That is weird because it\u27s beyond me. SS: So, your use of multiple keys and polytonality, was that something that was unusual in jazz at the time? DB: I thought that my first feeling that there was polytonality in jazz, naturally Milhaud was the expert in classical music, was [PLAYS PIANO] Cottontail of Duke Ellington because he\u27s in B flat in this hand [PLAYS PIANO] and he\u27s in C in this hand. And that really shook me up. I was so thrilled to hear something like that. But, I can\u27t think of anybody that was pushing that except maybe Art Tatum way before everybody else