DTM Love

Many thanks to the great Ethan Iverson (owner of the Jazz Journalist Association's "Blog of the Year") for sharing this blog with his readers! 

"Transition"

"In 1987, Horace Silver told me [Dave Douglas] and Vincent Herring, ‘You young musicians all got the wrong musical lessons from John Coltrane.’… Horace’s point was that people who listen to Trane play all that stuff over a D minor seventh chord. They want to know how to superimpose and put the most complex substitution in. In Horace’s musical world, what was hip wasn’t what you played over one chord, but how you got from one chord to the next—voice-leading. … If you look closer at what Coltrane played, the reason all those superimpositions worked is because they were so brilliantly rhythmically voice-led.”  

Horace Silver, RIP. 

...

"Transition" is one of John Coltrane's greatest recorded performances. A harmonic reduction of his improvisation at 12:27 to 13:32 of the recording shows the smoothness and parsimony of Coltrane's voice-leading as he ascends through two octaves to a local climax. (Here I have relied on Miles Okazaki's transcription.)

The climactic altissimo A/B-flat is reached after a steady stepwise ascent in the upper voice of Coltrane's polyphonic melody, which composes out a tonic D minor triad over the course of seven (mostly) eight-bar phrases. (Emphasis on C-sharp at the start of the sixth phrase temporarily upsets the rhythmic contour of the composed-out triad.) 

In addition to D minor, tonicizations of chromatic-mediant related E-flat minor and C minor are prevalent, usually facilitated by way of the diminished triad formed by lowering the fifth degree of the tonic triad. Occasionally other sonorities containing the D/A-flat tritone are substituted for the D diminished chord; for example: A-flat diminished, B-flat7b13, and D half-diminished seventh. There are five tonicizations of E-flat minor and two of C minor in this section. 

The climactic melodic gesture consists of two transpositions of a diminished collection. The second more complete statement highlights the diminished tetrad (D F A-flat B), the "vagrant chord" which helps tonicize the remote key areas of vii and flat-ii as described above.

The D diminished triad is also central to the melodies of "Vigil" and "Suite" on the same album, suggesting the kind of compositional interrelation found in A Love Supreme, First Meditations, and Sun Ship, all from roughly the same time period. 

Following the climax, Coltrane reverses course and follows a quasi-symmetrical descent to 14:13 on the recording, again mostly by stepwise voice-leading. This section includes three tonicizations of E-flat minor and four of C minor, including a concluding "cadence" on C minor that returns him to the lower tessitura of the saxophone. 

Why the prevalence of E-flat minor and C minor tonicizations over a background D minor harmony? These harmonies originate with the theme to "Transition," which emphasizes the Phrygian scale degrees of the lowered second and seventh. The C gravitates toward the dominant and the E-flat towards the tonic, melodically embellishing that structural axis. It is quite logically beautiful, therefore, that Coltrane's improvisation harmonically integrates at a climactic juncture this notable feature of the thematic melody.

Geometric Representation of Whole Tone and Diminished Scales

Miles Okazaki shares a geometric representation of the two whole tone scales and three diminished scales in pitch-class space. 

Okazaki's hexagon with inscribed triangles is certainly more elegant than a traditional Tonnetz diagram of the same scales. 

Okazaki's diagram relates pitch classes to their proximate neighbors by step, allowing for the easy recognition of scales. The Tonnetz is intended to show tonal relations and is thus based on triads rather than steps. As a result, connecting pitch-classes in order to form scales is somewhat ungainly. 

On the other hand, it does allow for the visualization of the chords---augmented triads and diminished seventh chords---that form the whole tone and diminished scales. It also provides an easy way to visualize how the two whole tone scales and three diminished scales are related by transposition and how the diminished scales are related by inversion: by geometric "translation" and "reflection," respectively. 

Quite a bit more on this general topic here, and more about Miles. 

Key Transformation and Motive Relation in "First Meditations" and "Sun Ship"

First in an article and later in his book, Lewis Porter shows how the four movements of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme suite are integrated, specifically through the application of set class (025) to both thematic motives as well as key transpositions between movements. Porter writes: "During his final period, 1965--67, Coltrane succeeded in eliminating the feeling of sectionality altogether, so that one experiences each late work as an indivisible whole..."

A Love Supreme was recorded in December 1964. Do Coltrane's studio albums recorded later in 1965, like Sun Ship and First Meditations, exhibit similar integration through motive and key relations despite not explicitly being "suites"? 

The key areas of the fives pieces released together as First Meditations are transformationally related and can be mapped as a transformational network. I find Kopp's system of chromatic mediant transformation most useful to illustrate the triad transformations in Coltrane's music. In Kopp, R/r represent diatonic mediant relationships (two common tones), and M/m represent chromatic mediant relationships (one common tone), with major and minor third between chord roots, respectively; D/F represent the relationships between triads with a fifth between chord roots (one common tone), of the same mode and changing modes, respectively. 

The relationships between the five key areas of First Meditations (Ab-flat major, F minor, B-flat major, D minor, and F-sharp minor) can be mapped accordingly. 

(The graph illustrates a relationship in which the triads representing the different keys heard in First Meditations are transformed into one another by shifting just one or two voices by step around one or two stationary common tones.) 

The five pieces and six separate keys that make up Sun Ship (B-flat minor, F-sharp minor, C minor, A minor, E minor, and G-sharp minor) are also transformationally related. 

First Meditations shows a degree of motivic integration as well. For instance, the themes to both "Compassion" and "Consequences" are based on little more than the whole-step dyad of scale steps 7 and 1, and the ultimately scalar theme to "Love" is generated from transpositions of a whole-step dyad. 

The listener notices furthermore that the scales on which the themes of First Meditations are based are related by common tones, inclusion, and efficient voice-leading. Below are the scale collections at the foundation of "Love," "Compassion," "Joy," and "Consequences."

[Eb F G Ab Bb C Db]-->[Eb F G Ab Bb C]-->[D F G Bb C]-->[D F G A C]

There are similar common-tone and semitone voice-leading scale relations in Sun Ship, for example between the two hexatonic collections comprising "Attaining" and the diatonic collection of "Dearly Beloved."

[G Ab Bb C D Eb]-->[G A B C D E]-->[G# A B C# D E F#]

Note that the common tones between the first two collections are (G C D), set class (027), and the common tones between the second two collections are (A B D E), or set class (0257). Set class (027) also provides the three-note theme to "Amen," [B E F#], to which [A] is eventually added, making set class (0257). "Attaining" also contains melodic statements of (027) and (0257): 

"Dearly Beloved" too contains a very prominent melodic statement of fourths, which stands in relief to its otherwise completely stepwise theme: 

That melodically salient tritone connects "Dearly Beloved" to "Sun Ship," whose three-note theme [C# D# A] contains nothing more than a tritone and a whole step, the interval content of set class (026). Inverting [D#] about [C#] results in [C# B A], the three-note motive that begins "Dearly Beloved" and germinates into its full, diatonic theme. Alternately, inverting [A] about the axis D-G# (the melodic tritone from "Dearly Beloved," as it happens) results in [C# D# G], the pitches which structurally outline the theme to "Ascent." Its major third interval is filled in with rising semitones referenced in the title of the piece.  

The compositional integration of "First Meditations" and "Sun Ship" through key and motive relationships lends support to Porter's suggestion that Coltrane's late period albums can indeed be heard as an "indivisible whole."

Steve Coleman and Dominant/Half-Diminished Seventh Symmetry

Steve Coleman shares an example of the first sixteen bars on a "Rhythm Changes."

Notice the prevalence of half-diminished seventh chords in melodic outline. In his discussion of Charlie Parker's solo on the bridge out of "Celebrity," Coleman points to the use of such tetrachords (he shares the beboppers's preference for calling them "minor chords with added sixth") as upper extensions on an underlying dominant seventh chord. For instance, when Bird outlines C half-diminished seventh (E-flat minor--added 6th), he is arpeggiating the upper chord tones (3-5-7-9) of A-flat dominant seventh, which itself is the tritone substitution for D dominant seventh, the first chord of the bridge of "Rhythm Changes." From a voice-leading perspective, B-flat and E-flat represent chromatic appoggiature to the chord tones A and D which arrive in the following bar. 

Coleman is also aware of course that the dominant seventh and half-diminished seventh tetrachords have the same interval content---both belong to set-class (0258). Dominant seventh and half-diminshed seventh chords can therefore be related by inversion; e.g., D dominant seventh and the C half-diminished seventh that Bird superimposes on it are symmetrical. If we imagine the twelve chromatic pitch-classes as lying on a clock-face, then inverting (geometrically "reflecting") D and A (2 9) over the tritone axis of C--F-sharp (0 6) yields B-flat and E-flat (t 3), respectively. In other words, D dominant seventh and C half-diminished seventh are inversionally symmetrical about their shared tritone axis, C--F-sharp/G-flat: 

                                                                                           

Lena Bloch, "Feathery"

The so-called Tristano School has been getting some press in the last few years, and the influence of a few of its members can even be heard from time to time.

The musical aesthetic of Tristano, Marsh, Konitz, et al. is multifarious. It is characterized in part by an introspection and a commitment to maximum spontaneity and ego-less improvisation that---despite the hype---remains quite uncommon in jazz. 

In her own fearless dedication to these ideals saxophonist Lena Bloch is therefore a rare player. The music on her new album, Feathery, bears a strong affinity to the most ineffable and unpredictable qualities in the music of Warne Marsh, Sal Mosca, Ted Brown, and her friend and mentor, Lee Konitz. But Feathery sounds like none of them, quite appropriately: it sounds unmistakably like Bloch, Cameron Brown, Dave Miller, and Billy Mintz. It's original and beautiful. Buy it.

Ray Mac's Sax Goes to 11

Tenor saxophonist Ray McMorrin summons the earth-shaking, gospel-permeated intensity of Gilmore, late Coltrane, Shepp, and Sanders while remaining firmly within the jazz folkloric tradition of swinging, melodic language. In this he is a rarity, a true original.