Coltrane: A Love Supreme, 4—Back to His Notes (+Bonus)

(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you will find a very interesting paper analyzing A Love Supreme.)

Now, going back to Coltrane’s planning notes for the album, the remaining pages do not have as much on them as the main page that we analyzed last time. The most significant one is labeled (not by Coltrane, but by Guernsey’s auction house) Ac07v3. (All of his note pages also appear in the booklet to the 3-CD edition.)

As you may recall, it appears that he did not originally plan for “Resolution” to be part of the suite. But six lines from the bottom, at the words “Melody Tenor,” this page shows the melody of “Resolution,” no longer in Bb as he played it “live” before the recording session, but now starting on the note F. That must be the tenor saxophone part, which would translate to a concert key of Eb, which indeed is the key of the recording.  And we see the words “A Love Supreme” in the middle of the page, which confirms that at this point “Resolution” was part of the suite:

Notice that he has written a first and second ending to “Resolution.” Although it’s an eight-bar theme, Coltrane always plays it three times, with a different, inconclusive ending the second time — so the theme is really 24 bars long, A A’ A, with each A being 8 measures. Coltrane writes “Approx[imate]” for the second ending, which in this case seems to mean “something like that.” His sketch of the second ending resolves on the tonic, so it’s possible that he initially envisioned only playing it twice each time. But what he actually recorded at the second theme statement ends on the fourth of the key (Ab concert, Bb for tenor sax), leaving us in suspense and preparing for the third statement.

As I recall, McCoy and John even maintain this 24-bar form in their solos. U.K. jazz historian and pianist Brian Priestley recently suggested to me that there might be some unknown reason for this unusual form. That got me thinking—why didn’t John just make it an 8-measure form, or even 16-measures (omitting the last A)? Or, if it had to have three sections, why not make the middle one a totally different bridge, a B section? Certainly the number 3 has significance in many spiritual traditions. Maybe that’s why John wrote it with three sections. But that still leaves the question of why the middle section is slightly different. I’ll keep thinking about this, and please let me know if you have thoughts about that varied middle A.

So, we now have “Resolution,” and in the key of concert F. But on this page the “Acknowledgement” sax part, marked “Tenor” in the middle of the page, starts on the note F, which is still the concert key of Eb. This is confirmed by what he writes:

“Start and end in Eb concert minor.” So this isn’t yet the final version, which was in the key of concert F.

What follows is one of the most interesting passages in all of Coltrane’s notes for the suite: He sets the Main Motif starting on F, then on D, then adds “ETC.” Then he writes “Other instrument,” followed by the Main Motif starting on G, then on D.

And he writes:

“Move in all 12 keys” Then below that, “Move freely in 12 keys” — and at the bottom of the page, “Solo in all keys.”

I mentioned last time that there is a passage at the end of his solo in Part One, “Acknowledgement,” where he takes the Main Motif and transposes it around, eventually going through all 12 keys. Really this passage is after the end of his solo. In every version of “Acknowledgement,” he essentially finishes his solo, and then begins repeating the Main Motif in various keys. I believe that this is his way of saying “‘A Love Supreme’ is everywhere.” And the fact that he explicitly planned to do that is telling. We now know for certain that he wasn’t just improvising that part, although he did leave it open as the the sequence of keys.

Also, let’s remember that he writes the Motif on a second line, for an “other instrument,” with the same indication to go through all 12 keys. Apparently he hadn’t decided yet that the other instrument would be saxophonist Archie Shepp. We will come back to this note when we discuss the recordings with Shepp, which were not part of the original album.

On this page there’s also a “rythmn” [sic] that’s a little hard to place but could be seen as a variation on the Main Motif.

So, his original key and movement scheme, as described last time, was:

1. Intro in E, then Acknowledgement in Eb minor.

2. Pursuance, blues in Bb minor

3. Bass solo, free and open, after a very slight pause, connects with:

4. Psalm in C minor.

But the final key and movement scheme, as recorded, is:

1. Intro in E, Acknowledgement in F minor. At the end, after the chant descends to Eb, there is a short bass solo.

2. Another short bass solo leads into Resolution in Eb minor (transposed from its original key of Bb minor).

3. A drum solo leading into Pursuance, a blues in Bb minor. Then a bass solo, free and open, connects with:

4. Psalm in C minor.

Varun Chandrasekhar, who is working on his Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote his Masters thesis on these key schemes and themes. He feels that the final sequence of keys makes for a very coherent album and works beautifully with the various iterations of the Main Motif. He notes that on a practical level, it’s clear that Coltrane changed “Resolution” to Eb so there wouldn't be two up-tempo swing tunes in Bb minor in a row. But, he adds, at another level the change from Bb to Eb makes structural sense, which he explains in a theoretical analysis.

(His interesting paper is Attached below for Paying Subscribers. Just scroll down.)

In the next two installments we will look at Coltrane’s remaining sketches, including for the poem.

All the best,
Lewis