
John Coltrane and the End of Jazz - tintinnabula
https://www.weeklystandard.com/dominic-green/john-coltrane-and-the-end-of-jazz
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eerwrq
This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

\- 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.

~~~
Finnucane
> Alice Coltrane is not the "Yoko Ono" of Jazz

Yeah, that was uncalled for. Journey in Satchidananda and Ptah the El Daoud
are excellent albums.

~~~
mtalantikite
Yeah he lost me with that comment. Journey in Satchidananda is my favorite
record, period. It was one of many records that changed my life as a young
teenager, and of all of those albums it’s still the one that surprises me most
every time I listen to it 18 years later.

------
throwaway8879
My obligatory Coltrane comment. I actually didn't hear any Coltrane or even
jazz at least a decade into seriously learning/practicing music. My first
introduction to legato-based guitar playing was Allan Holdsworth, who used to
play these beautiful monstrous never-ending buttery lines with luscious and
unusual chords in harmony. I spent a while imitating that style of playing.
Holdsworth had put some really great instructional material and in one
interview he mentions how he never really wanted to play the guitar, but he
couldn't really afford a saxophone to play like Coltrane.

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'.

~~~
knowsmorsecode
Nice to find another Holdsworth fan. Secrets is an awesome album, as is A Love
Supreme.

~~~
throwaway8879
Great! Do you play the guitar too?

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andybak
I think the most interesting aspects of this piece aren't about Coltrane, or
even about jazz. It's an interesting essay on modernism and it's troubled
relationship with it's audience.

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...)

~~~
emodendroket
That's a more interesting question. In general I love avant-garde art but,
like, after the first time someone did it I'm not sure what's increasing about
a single-color canvas.

~~~
aikah
> That's a more interesting question. In general I love avant-garde art but,
> like, after the first time someone did it I'm not sure what's increasing
> about a single-color canvas.

But it wasn't impressive the first time someone did that either. It was more
about the process than the piece itself and that's the very line of thought
that "killed" painting and art in general. Fortunately, artists are ditching
the whole "abstract pomo" thing and coming back to simple and direct ways of
expression.

~~~
emodendroket
It's not "impressive," but subverting audience expectations can be
interesting. But the fiftieth guy "subverting" expectations in exactly the
same way has kind of missed the boat.

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dfxm12
_The fact that this 55-year-old recording is the year’s most significant jazz
release_

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.

~~~
UncleMeat
And even if it were the most important thing, so what? If we found a lost
Beatles record in 2018 it would be one of the biggest releases of the year.
That wouldn't mean that rock and pop was dead.

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kazinator
I think the problem in jazz music (if there is one, but let's go with it) is
that it has harmonic (and rhythmical) complexity at the microscopic scale, but
doesn't go for the big picture that much: the large scale structure of the
composition. A lot of jazz is just theme-improv-theme type stuff. No matter
what the content is, that trivial formula itself will tire the listener.

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.

------
pnathan
> The fact that this 55-year-old recording is the year’s most significant jazz
> release tells you all you need to know about the health of jazz in 2018.

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.

~~~
kop316
As a counter point, imagine if the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac, Notorious
BIG, etc. had an unreleased album and it was released this year. If that
happened, I would guarantee that the same thing that happened with Coltrane's
Album would have the same thing. Does that mean Rock, Hip-Hop, Rap is dead?

I do think jazz as a genre has an issue, but it is a much different issue.
Personally, I think Jazz is way to inbred, and most Jazz artists only play to
other jazz artists, and most like to keep it a niche genre.

~~~
emodendroket
To the extent jazz is stodgy it's because commerical interest has dried up and
it's attached itself to schools instead. But what was the alternative, you
wonder? Do we want to only have Kenny G?

~~~
kop316
I don't know to be honest. When I think of contemporary Jazz Artists out
there, I think of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Gordon Goodwin, (to an extent)
Trombone Shorty. I enjoy playing and listening to Jazz, but I personally am
disappointed when I go to shows and it's obvious that the soloist is there to
show off how great they are at Jazz, not to be there to entertain. Granted
that could be a one off thing and not really a greater issue.

------
emodendroket
I don't really get the thesis. He ruined jazz? Or he took it as far as it
could go? I think Ayler is probably more atonal and challenging than A Love
Supreme, for instance. And jazz lives on in both more traditional forms and in
the more popular "smooth jazz."

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.

~~~
icebraining
I think it's the latter - Coltrane exhausted jazz. That's my reading, anyway.

~~~
emodendroket
But as I said, it isn't true. People kept right on experimenting with
different forms. Coltrane was certainly an all-time great but I don't agree
that he took experimentation to its limits and was playing noise nobody could
possibly enjoy listening to, as the author seems to want me to believe.

~~~
narag
The thing with experiments is that sometimes they fail. You can try endless
variations but only a few will work. Coltrane and his generation were
massively successful. And they innovated over Parker that had in turn
innovated over previous generations. I'm no expert and I can _understand_ that
evolution and at the same time enjoy all that jazz. I can enjoy later music
but there seems to be a somehow unbroken chain.

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jancsika
> He divided Beethoven’s music into an early style, imitative of Haydn and
> Mozart; a middle style, grand and exhortatory like the Eroica Symphony; and
> a late style, more private than public, that meditates on eternal questions
> of form.

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.

------
grasshopperpurp
_A Love Supreme_ is still my favorite Coltrane album. But, I wanted to say
that I can listen to Eric Dolphy (briefly mentioned here) on anything. _Out to
Lunch!_ , Andrew Hill's _Point of Departure_ , and _Mingusx5_ are the places
I'd start.

------
woodandsteel
I think jazz is dead in the sense that it no longer attracts a broad audience,
like big band music did. It happened because the most brilliant jazz musicians
became elitist and avant-garde and destroyed melody.

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.

------
Finnucane
I guess whether you think jazz is dead is partly dependent on how far you're
willing to stretch what you count as jazz--which, I suppose, is the problem--
jazz has become so diffuse. A lot of the more recent stuff I listen to is on
John Zorn's Tzadik label, which leans toward the avant-garde and 'radical
jewish culture' thing. So it's already pretty tangential, jazz-wise.

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.

~~~
emodendroket
I mean, Wynton Marsalis and those kind of players are around if all you
consider jazz is the most classic kind.

------
skybrian
It seems a bit weird to use the word "death" or "end" for music that's still
being played by musicians and discovered by new listeners.

~~~
emodendroket
It's no longer very commercially popular -- there is no jazz radio station in
the US that isn't smooth jazz and jazz albums represent like 1% of sales. In
that sense you could call it "dead," but I'm not sure commercial success is
the right metric for art music.

~~~
ebikelaw
Did you mean no commercial stations? Because I can think of lots of listener-
supported jazz stations that are mainstream, definitely not smooth. KCSM in my
local area, for instance.

~~~
emodendroket
I guess that must be it. Been a while since I read that and I know NPR
stations play some jazz. There's also jazz on Sirius XM if you have it.

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jejones3141
As I read what the author wrote about playing in both directions at once, I
couldn't help thinking of Machaut's "Ma Fin est Mon Commencement". Time to go
listen to it and then to Coltrane.

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kazinator
> _For it is a sad fact of musical history that after Coltrane, there was
> nothing left to say on the saxophone. But Kenny G said it anyway._

I.e. nothing? Haha.

