Texts: Listen and watch the video below. Choose one and make some comments on the relationship between the score and the music. For example, Gershwin's music, heavily influenced by jazz, was composed in the Western art music tradition (similarly to how Beethoven would have composed; idea --> working out concepts on staff paper). Mehldau is taking a song that was originally written by a band for an ensemble (Radiohead), then doing his version (cover) of it. Is improvisation just spontaneous composition? What is the spirit in which composers write music, and what attitude is adopted by performers who approach it?
(1) Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (around 1901) is a classic of ragtime, one of the first styles of syncopated dance music (what you're hearing is a recording that Joplin did on what was called a piano roll; a precursor to modern recording technologies). Note how it swings and how the left-hand accompaniment plays more or less straight rhythms while the right-hand melody is incredibly active. The technique of playing a mid-range chord (or note) in the left hand, quickly followed by a very low note, all to create a steady rhythmic and harmonic foundation for syncopated melodies in the right hand, was called the stride technique. It was used by many later jazz pianists.