John Coltrane and the End of Jazz

- Jazz didn't begin to die on Kind of Blue. That was a popular, well selling jazz record. Rather than setting Jazz on a path to irrelevance, Kind of Blue reinvigorated the genre and inspired an abundance of accessible and innovative material in the years following its release.

- Alice Coltrane is not the "Yoko Ono" of Jazz. She made a lot of good records. And Yoko Ono isn't bad for that matter. I like her solo music better than John's.

- Many people besides music critics and academics enjoy Coltrane's late period. Some of us like abrasive, chaotic music.

It's kinda funny because Coltrane and Holdsworth are possibly at the opposite end of a spectrum when it comes to the way they approach harmony and rhythm, and while they play completely different instruments(one being a sax and the other being an electric guitar) their melodic lines through heavy legato use might as well be played by the same person.

I think I'll go listen to 'A Love Supreme' now, followed by Holdsworth's 'Secrets'.

Whilst it's beyond question that the emperor sometimes is without clothes, everyone seems to disagree on when precisely he disrobed.

Sometimes music is only "difficult" until something clicks with you. (But some music seems eternally out of reach to me and I have been known to cry "fraud!" every now and then...)

Is it the year's most significant jazz release this year though?

Kamasi Washington charted in the main Billboard 200, and thanks to the strength of Heaven and Earth, Washington's year old Harmony of Difference is climbing back up the ranks as well. He's selling out ~3k size venues across the country on the strength of that album, too, playing to young and old fans alike.

And speaking of improv, I don't care if you're a musical genius on the level of Bach, when you're ad-libbing, you're not going to come up with material that approaches that which is composed over weeks or months.

There is also only so much you can do with those "Jazz standards". Once people have heard the same song with the dominant and other chords substituted in all the common ways, and numerous alterations to the II-V-I cadences and whatnot, they heard it all. Oh goody, another rendition of Autumn Leaves ...

Jazz is basically undone by the fact that it's a form of pop music with micro-complexity at the level of individual bars and phrases heaped on it, and freedom everywhere else.

Basically Jazz composition should be approached like classical music; just with the full harmonic palette of Jazz, to make Jazz sonatas and symphonies.

Problem is, that is probably not recognizable as Jazz any more. Maybe music is only Jazz when it fits into one of the common formulas. Like if we take away most of the noodling and have much more composed notes around a much more contrived harmonic labyrinth, it won't be "it" any more.

Writer has a point. As much as I like jazz, it's ossified badly as a genre. Love to see some forward motion that isn't free jazz or other noise.

Ultimately I can't play music so I can't really speak to the author's argument that I'm cowed by being impressed and don't know what I'm talking about. But I enjoy listening to experimental jazz. A Love Supreme was the album that made me start enjoying jazz.

A few things about this filter through which Beethoven is often heard:

Early on, Beethoven mastered and began to extend a particular technique of Haydn's: motivic development. There were a lot of aspects of Haydn's music which he didn't imitate, like Haydn's proclivity for witty musical jokes.

In the early pieces where Beethoven imitated Mozart, the imitations aren't anywhere near the level of sophistication of any of Mozart's music that Beethoven would have been studying. Young Beethoven in no way mastered Mozart's lyrical writing, breadth of musical allusions, contrapuntal control, formal complexity, or (especially) operatic textures and virtuosic arias. He certainly tried to emulate Mozart by attempting to write the highest quality music he could, but by any serious measure he failed to achieve this in his early period works.

At least to my ear, the beginning of Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Op. 101 is the first piece that attempts to "imitate" Mozart melodically while actually approaching the level of overall sophistication of what are considered Mozart's greatest melodies. But this is the beginning of the "late period," which is supposed to be the master composer looking inward and floating off to meditate musically by himself on Mars as a human god.

In other words, Romantic period musicophiles interpreted Beethoven as transcending all musical time and space to reflect on "eternal questions of music" at the same moment he was first able to write a single fragment of a "Mozartian" melody.

That should tell you something about the stature of Mozart.

This happened for philosophical and ideological reasons. Melody was seen as beourgois and restrictive, and destroying it a means of achieving spiritual and cultural freedom. The problem with this idea is that human existence is by its very nature finite, and so the avant-garde is trying to live a lie.

This is not to say there are not many fine jazz musicians out there today producing interesting music. It is just that they don't write melodies that ordinary people can appreciate.

But I still remember the first time I listened to a Coltrane album, I think it was Live at the Village Vanguard, and it was like a third eye opening in my head.

I.e. nothing? Haha.