ABSTRACT
Duke Ellington, described as being the first, and perhaps the only great, creative composer of jazz, was repeatedly acclaimed as one of the giants of music. As Lawrence (1987) points out, composers Igor Stravinsky, Aram Khachaturian, Percy Grainger, and Leonard Bernstein publicly affirmed Ellington's genius, as did conductors Arturo Toscanini, Paul Whiteman, André Previn, Leopold Stokowski, Arthur Fiedler, and Sir Thomas Beecham. In 1932, the European public was comparing Ellington's compositions with Bach, Debussy, and Delius. In 1934, the English composer Constant Lambert compared Ellington's work to that of Franz Liszt. In 1987, Lawrence said:
The real interest of Ellington's records lies not so much in their color, brilliant though it may be, as in the amazingly skillful proportions in which the color is used. I do not only mean skillful as compared with other jazz composers, but as compared with so-called highbrow composers. I know of nothing in Ravel so dexterous in treatment as in the varied solos in the middle of the ebullient “Hot and Bothered'” and nothing in Stravinsky more dynamic than the final section. The combination of themes at this moment is one of the most ingenious pieces of writing in modern music.
