Do You Get On With "Late Period' Coltrane?

[Richard Barrett]

It's a brilliant summary definition - one for which I will have to gratefully reference Richard if I ever need to use it!

Thank you S_A! It wasn't an entirely, errr, spontaneous response though, I have a book coming out in a few weeks which deals with this very issue among many others (though not with specific reference to Coltrane).

[Serial_Apologist]

Thank you S_A! It wasn't an entirely, errr, spontaneous response though, I have a book coming out in a few weeks which deals with this very issue among many others (though not with specific reference to Coltrane).

You have an enviable talent for putting across complex ideas with minimal verbiage, only to be matched by Evan Parker's, in my experience, Richard. Don't forget to let us know what the title etc of the book is when it comes out.

[Richard Barrett]

You have an enviable talent for putting across complex ideas with minimal verbiage, only to be matched by Evan Parker's, in my experience, Richard. Don't forget to let us know what the title etc of the book is when it comes out.

An announcement will be made, to be sure.

[Joseph K]

Listening to this album once again- as is my tendency - I decided to look at the wiki page for it and have found to my delight that it has been augmented with quotes containing some useful information (some of which might be already known to us who already have one or more of the books quoted). Check it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_Space

[Serial_Apologist]

Listening to this album once again- as is my tendency - I decided to look at the wiki page for it and have found to my delight that it has been augmented with quotes containing some useful information (some of which might be already known to us who already have one or more of the books quoted). Check it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_Space

Great. Thanks Joseph K. I might have a re-read tomorrow of what John Litweiler had to say aboutInterstellar Space in his book The Freedom Principle, and reproduce it here if I think it's worth it. Though generally pro free jazz (and particularly good on the Chicago scene), (and indiscriminately condemnatory of Fusion!), Litweiler was ambivalent about Coltrane's late work.

[Serial_Apologist]

Litweiler on Interstellar Space:

Here is Coltrane alone on tenor sax, joined only by the wonderful percussionist Rashied Ali. The resulting clarity of dialigue suggests that his post-1964 ensembles had obscured his real advances. These tenor solos are longer and more reckless than anything he had previously recorded, with associations sometimes so free that only the kinetic energy he generates sustains his momentum. There is the immense power of his music in the very fast "Mars"; in "Saturn and "Leo", amid long, compulsive fire storms, Coltrane sings in longer note values, disassociated and unperturbed. You can hear, in "Venus" and "Jupiter", his familiar static kinds of phrase reiteration; you can also hear motivic reorganisation, using the methods of, variously, Coleman, Ayler, and Rollins. The implications of this are enormous, for Coltrane now internalizes responsibility for structure; it's possible that future developments of his capacities of organization might have resulted in the major advances of his music. Such speculation is purely academic, of course, since he stopped playing altogether three months later and died of liver cancer in July. It was at his request that Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler played at his funeral.

For those who respect puritanism, the occasionally expressed critical idea that John Coltrane was a kind of musical puritan is a reasonable conclusion. The rigor and determination of his music are puritan qualities; so is his abandonment of sonic richness for tenor sax power, control, and often beauty. Some puritan virtues are absent here - for example, his music is not an ennobling experience - but most obviously present throughout his recordings is the primary virtue of courage. His music was a spiritual quest long before he explicitly said so in A Love Supreme. His cyclic structures of the 1960s are the cycles of his inner life; that is why he needed to lay long solos. They move so urgently because in hearing him, we recognize our own struggles against complacency, against fears, even into life's unknowns. Surely the Freest of his recordings, Interstellar Space, makes clear for all time what sustains his creative spirit: Now without obstacles of any kind, he nonetheless continues in conflict, endless and exalted. And the conflicts in John Coltrane's music, the inner turmoil that's ongoing in life, are what have communicated more than any other statements in the Free jazz era.
(Litweiler, J. (1985) John Coltrane: The Passion for Freedom. The Freedom Principle - Jazz after 1958. Blandford Press, Poole, Dorset, PP 102-103).

I mentioned this statement about Coltrane's music not being ennobling to Paul Dunmall, and we both agreed that Litweiler was way off beam in saying this - unless he means something different from the term as I understand it, as feeling elevated by the experience of the music.

[Joseph K]

Thanks for copying that out, Serial Apologist, and I agree with you about him being way off beam regarding that comment.

[Bryn]

Thanks for copying that out, Serial Apologist, and I agree with you about him being way off beam regarding that comment.

Somewhat OT but have you guys taken note of http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...497#post853497 ? Now that's late Coltrane.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Litweiler on Interstellar Space:

Here is Coltrane alone on tenor sax, joined only by the wonderful percussionist Rashied Ali. The resulting clarity of dialigue suggests that his post-1964 ensembles had obscured his real advances. These tenor solos are longer and more reckless than anything he had previously recorded, with associations sometimes so free that only the kinetic energy he generates sustains his momentum. There is the immense power of his music in the very fast "Mars"; in "Saturn and "Leo", amid long, compulsive fire storms, Coltrane sings in longer note values, disassociated and unperturbed. You can hear, in "Venus" and "Jupiter", his familiar static kinds of phrase reiteration; you can also hear motivic reorganisation, using the methods of, variously, Coleman, Ayler, and Rollins. The implications of this are enormous, for Coltrane now internalizes responsibility for structure; it's possible that future developments of his capacities of organization might have resulted in the major advances of his music. Such speculation is purely academic, of course, since he stopped playing altogether three months later and died of liver cancer in July. It was at his request that Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler played at his funeral.

For those who respect puritanism, the occasionally expressed critical idea that John Coltrane was a kind of musical puritan is a reasonable conclusion. The rigor and determination of his music are puritan qualities; so is his abandonment of sonic richness for tenor sax power, control, and often beauty. Some puritan virtues are absent here - for example, his music is not an ennobling experience - but most obviously present throughout his recordings is the primary virtue of courage. His music was a spiritual quest long before he explicitly said so in A Love Supreme. His cyclic structures of the 1960s are the cycles of his inner life; that is why he needed to lay long solos. They move so urgently because in hearing him, we recognize our own struggles against complacency, against fears, even into life's unknowns. Surely the Freest of his recordings, Interstellar Space, makes clear for all time what sustains his creative spirit: Now without obstacles of any kind, he nonetheless continues in conflict, endless and exalted. And the conflicts in John Coltrane's music, the inner turmoil that's ongoing in life, are what have communicated more than any other statements in the Free jazz era.
(Litweiler, J. (1985) John Coltrane: The Passion for Freedom. The Freedom Principle - Jazz after 1958. Blandford Press, Poole, Dorset, PP 102-103).

I mentioned this statement about Coltrane's music not being ennobling to Paul Dunmall, and we both agreed that Litweiler was way off beam in saying this - unless he means something different from the term as I understand it, as feeling elevated by the experience of the music.

"His cyclic structures of the 1960s are the cycles of his inner life; that is why he needed to play long solos" (sic). Frankly, that is romanticised bullshit.