NEAR THE BEGINNING of his landmark study Early Jazz (1968), Gunther Schuller describes a chord pattern called “fours” that jazz musicians sometimes introduce into the conventional thirty-two bar song form. After noting that the pattern can give rise to intriguing sounds when the improvisers play different parts of the whole structure as the piece progresses, he remarks, “The ‘bridge’ produces especially interesting combinations.” It is tempting to apply Schuller's characterization of a musical device to the man himself. In the course of the career that this rich memoir documents, Schuller bridged Europe and the United States, whites and African- Americans, classical and popular musical traditions, professionals and the general public; his account of his emotional life reveals a simultaneous attraction to the physical and the spiritual, the natural environment and the urban scene. With particular reference to his efforts as a composer and critic, the bridges amount to what cultural historians characterize as acts of mediation— negotiations between artistic production and audiences that, in Schuller's hands, have resulted in “especially interesting combinations.”

Among the dualities marking his personal life, the most obvious, perhaps, is Schuller's combination of European heritage and American identity. Born in 1925 in New York City to German immigrants and schooled abroad in the early 1930s, Schuller nevertheless found in American places like the Adirondacks and New York City sources of beauty, wonder, and inspiration. His affirmation of American democracy, moreover, has always been more than an ideological position; it has been integral to his conduct as a person. His capacity to link the Old and New Worlds has made him a true cosmopolitan, able to sustain a wealth of international friendships and an appreciation for the dignity of every individual.

Schuller's sensibility likewise reveals a second, more subtle conjunction: between spiritual transcendence and intense physicality. Recalling a journey to one of his favorite American locales, Lake Placid, he writes, “The trip became even more exhilarating on the final leg,” as the train passed through forests “bathed in the bright early morning sunlight.” The “pure clean mountain air, the intoxicating pine fragrance” (as well as the lack of sleep!) heightened his receptivity to feelings that, he avers, would otherwise have escaped him.