John Coltrane Attracts a Image Illustrating the Arithmetic of Music

Physi­cist and sax­o­phon­ist Stephon Alexan­der has argued in his many pub­lic lec­tures and his e-book The Jazz of Physics that Albert Ein­stein and John Coltrane had rather a lot in com­mon. Alexan­der in par­tic­u­lar attracts our atten­tion to the so-called “Coltrane cir­cle,” which resem­bles what any musi­cian will rec­og­nize because the “Cir­cle of Fifths,” however incor­po­charges Coltrane’s personal inno­va­tions. Coltrane gave the draw­ing to sax­o­phon­ist and professional­fes­sor Yusef Lateef in 1967, who includ­ed it in his sem­i­nal textual content, Repos­i­to­ry of Scales and Melod­ic Pat­terns. The place Lateef, as he writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, sees Coltrane’s music as a “spir­i­tu­al jour­ney” that “embraced the con­cerns of a wealthy tra­di­tion of auto­phys­iopsy­stylish music,” Alexan­der sees “the identical geo­met­ric prin­ci­ple that moti­vat­ed Einstein’s” quan­tum the­o­ry.

Nei­ther descrip­tion appears misplaced. Musi­cian and weblog­ger Roel Hol­lan­der notes, “Thelo­nious Monk as soon as stated ‘All musi­cians are sub­con­scious­ly math­e­mati­cians.’ Musi­cians like John Coltrane although have been very a lot conscious of the maths­e­mat­ics of music and con­scious­ly utilized it to his works.”

Coltrane was additionally very a lot conscious of Einstein’s work and appreciated to speak about it fre­quent­ly. Musi­cian David Amram remem­bers the Big Steps genius telling him he “was strive­ing to do some­factor like that in music.”

Hol­lan­der care­ful­ly dis­sects Coltrane’s math­e­mat­ics in two the­o­ry-heavy essays, one gen­er­al­ly on Coltrane’s “Music & Geom­e­strive” and one specif­i­cal­ly on his “Tone Cir­cle.” Coltrane him­self had lit­tle to say pub­licly concerning the inten­sive the­o­ret­i­cal work behind his most well-known com­po­si­tions, prob­a­bly as a result of he’d moderately they converse for them­selves. He pre­ferred to specific him­self philo­soph­i­cal­ly and mys­ti­cal­ly, draw­ing equal­ly on his fas­ci­na­tion with sci­ence and with spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions of every kind. Coltrane’s poet­ic means of converse­ing has left his musi­cal inter­preters with a large vari­ety of the way to take a look at his Cir­cle, as jazz musi­cian Corey Mwam­ba dis­cov­ered when he infor­mal­ly polled sev­er­al oth­er play­ers on Face­e-book. Clar­inetist Arun Ghosh, for examination­ple, noticed in Coltrane’s “math­e­mat­i­cal prin­ci­ples” a “musi­cal sys­tem that con­nect­ed with The Divine.” It’s a sys­tem, he opined, that “feels fairly Islam­ic to me.”

Lateef agreed, and there could also be few who below­stood Coltrane’s methodology wager­ter than he did. He stud­ied shut­ly with Coltrane for years, and has been remem­bered since his demise in 2013 as a peer and even a males­tor, espe­cial­ly in his eu­meni­cal embrace of the­o­ry and music from around the globe. Lateef even argued that Coltrane’s late-in-life mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme may need been titled “Allah Supreme” had been it not for concern of “polit­i­cal again­lash.” Some might discover the declare ten­den­tious, however what we see within the wide selection of respons­es to Coltrane’s musi­cal the­o­ry, so properly encap­su­lat­ed within the draw­ing above, is that his recog­ni­tion, as Lateef writes, of the “struc­tures of music” was as a lot for him about sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery because it was a reli­gious expe­ri­ence. Each for him had been intu­itive course of­es that “got here into exis­tence,” writes Lateef, “within the thoughts of the musi­cian by means of abstrac­tion from expe­ri­ence.”

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this publish appeared on our web site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saint John Coltrane: The San Fran­cis­co Church Constructed On A Love Supreme

The Secret Hyperlink Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian primarily based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness