Abstract
John Coltrane's classic recording, "A Love Supreme" (1965) has only one line of lyrics, namely, "A love supreme," which appears at the end of the first part of his four-part jazz suite. To be sure, these words are not a direct quotation of any biblical text. Nevertheless, this study treats the album as an expression of the musical reception history of the Bible. The essay provides a musical analysis of the album's four parts, entitled "Acknowledgement," "Resolution," "Pursuance," and "Psalm," alongside a textual analysis of the liner notes. The analysis shows how Coltrane's work reflects the tradition of sapiential psalmody. This album reveals numerous similarities in form, texture, and theme with the wisdom psalms, especially Psalm 119, the psalm supreme.
John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (1965) * is heralded as among the greatest recordings in the history of jazz. 1 Its unique form and structure challenged the conventions of jazz, redefining what jazz musicians could do and how jazz could be understood as expressing profound sentiments, even truth itself. 2 Released just two and half years before John Coltrane's death at age 40, many critics maintain that this session with Coltrane's classic quartet constitutes the musical and spiritual high-point of Coltrane's career. 3 Discussions of the religious aspects of A Love Supreme often rightly dwell on the details of Coltrane's biography, how the album reflects his struggle with addiction and his evolving spirituality, an emerging pluralism that combined elements of Christianity and Sufism among other religious traditions. 4
The discussion here strikes a different tone. In what follows, I explore the effects of the final track "Pt. IV - Psalm" within the larger context of the recording. I also identify the ways that A Love Supreme contributes to the rich reception history of the Psalter. Along the way, I hope you hear something new in the grooves of Coltrane's celebrated album, namely, how Coltrane participates in the tradition of biblical psalmody and how this music resonates with themes and rhetorical strategies found throughout the Psalter. My goal is to recast John Coltrane as a wisdom psalmist, with A Love Supreme providing a sonic counterpart to wisdom psalms such as Psalms 1, 19, and 119. 5
In the history of the reception of the Psalms, there are countless lyrical psalm settings, with composers and librettists providing melodies and harmonies for individual psalms as well as reworking psalms into hybrid forms. New modes of musical expression have arisen from the lyrics of very old songs. One of the most compelling examples of musical psalm settings of the twentieth century premiered within a few months of A Love Supreme, namely, Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (1965). 6 It is easy to recognize Bernstein's work as an important moment in the musical reception history of the Psalter. One could undertake a relatively straightforward project of tracing the interpretive moves he makes in his setting of five individual psalms in a classic oratorio style.
It is more complicated, however, to consider A Love Supreme as a moment in the reception history of the Psalms. Doing so requires us to expand our scope and understanding of what qualifies as musical reception. Unlike Chichester Psalms and thousands of other psalm settings, Coltrane's music is almost entirely instrumental. There are only three words in the lyrics recorded on the album, and these are not from the Psalms.
Coltrane gives us an anchor point for our reception-historical considerations with his title of Part IV. Calling this section "Psalm" colors everything that comes before, recasting the entire album as participating in the tradition of psalmody. The title of Part IV invites us to ask a number of questions. What kind of psalm does Coltrane have in mind? After all, there are many types of psalms. Is Coltrane's "psalm" drawing from the tradition of one or more particular types of psalms (e.g., royal psalms, lament psalms, praise psalms, wisdom psalms, some blended psalm forms?). This question leads us to ask how the psalmic elements of Part IV relate to the larger work. To figure out how this hard bop masterpiece can be understood as a moment in the reception of the Psalms, we need to sketch the contours of the work.
A Love Supreme is a jazz suite comprising almost thirty-three minutes of recorded music and divided into four parts: "Pt. I - Acknowledgement" (7:42); "Pt. II - Resolution" (7:17); "Pt. III -Pursuance" (10:42); and the aforementioned "Pt. IV - Psalm" (7:02). The musicians in the recording session on December 9, 1964 were members of John Coltrane's Classic Quartet: McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on percussion. Coltrane plays tenor saxophone and sings one line, "a love supreme," a phrase he intones nineteen times in the last minute and a half of the first track, Part I.
Coltrane's Letter
While this jazz suite is vocal music only in the broadest sense, Coltrane does provide text to guide the listener on how to approach his music. There are two large sections of text on the gatefold—the liner notes when one unfolds the record cover. These appear on the original release of the album on the Impulse! label: a letter at the upper left and poem entitled "A Love Supreme" at the bottom (Figure 1). In the following discussion, I will describe the form, content, and themes of each of these literary units and how they can be related to the Psalter.
Bass ostinato from “Acknowledgement,” after Porter, John Coltrane, 237. Copyright © 1973 JOWOCOL MUSIC. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Hal Leonard Corporation.
The text at the left side of the gatefold assumes an epistolary form. It begins "DEAR LISTENER" [in all caps] and runs down two thirds of the gatefold, flanked by a charcoal sketch of Coltrane playing his tenor sax. Thus Coltrane choses two distinct literary genres to frame his music, both prose and poetry, along with an image of himself that gives the sense of immediacy and direct communication with his listener and reader.
Turning to the prose first, we find that Coltrane calls his readers together through a doxological statement: "
Coltrane begins by summoning his listeners in the cohortative mood, inviting them to join him on a journey: "Let us pursue Him in the righteous path." Coltrane depicts himself as fundamentally in motion, going somewhere, and the route he is traveling is the righteous path. Readers of the Psalms will immediately associate this language with Ps 23:3 "he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake," as well as Ps 119:105 "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."
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Particularly astute listeners might also hear an echo of Ps 1:6, with its portrayal of two types of paths, "For the
After calling his readers to pursue God on the righteous path, Coltrane narrates his own path, assuming the voice of one giving testimony. Coltrane refers to a "spiritual awakening" that brought him into a new way of life, one comparatively better than before. The description of his awakening is punctuated by another call to praise: "PRAISE BE TO GOD." According to Coltrane's telling, the path was neither direct nor easy. He recounts a difficult time in his life, which he describes cryptically as "a period of irresolution" when he moved "away from the esteemed path." Yet, the letter indicates that he has since changed his ways, having been reoriented. He writes: "I do perceive and have been duly re-informed of His Omnipotence, and our need for, and dependence on Him." Taken together, this second section assumes the quality of a spiritual autobiography. Yet it also shares features of the lament psalms tradition. Coltrane describes personal crises, divine intervention, and a confession of trust in God, which Coltrane frames as "dependence" on God.
Following the narrative of renewal, Coltrane offers an extended statement of praise: "At this time I would like to tell you that
Coltrane's description of the righteous path leads him to describe the relationship of his music to the God in whom he trusts. Coltrane frames the album as "a humble offering to Him . . . an attempt to say THANK YOU, GOD" in music. Coltrane names the four parts of the album, but only gives explanation for the last part, which he describes as "a musical narration of the theme, 'A
After this cryptic phrase, Coltrane goes back to more standard fare for an album gatefold. He thanks his side men by name along with his producer, recording engineer, and record company. Yet the letter concludes with a final exhortation, "May we never forget that in the sunshine of our lives, through the storm and after the rain—it is all with God—in all ways and forever. ALL PRAISE TO GOD." Here again, Coltrane highlights the passage of time, in the sense of movement through life "with God." "In all ways" can thus reflect the idea of all of the paths one takes throughout one's life. But "in all ways" can also have the sense of multiple variations. As we shall see, this album has the effect of providing many musical variations, many ways of expressing the one way, a love supreme.
The letter closes with Coltrane's signature. Its inclusion underscores the authenticity of his direct address to the reader and listener. Throughout the letter he is speaking to the listener always in the first-person common plural: "may we never forget," "let us pursue him," and "only through him can we know." Coltrane engages the reader in an earnest, personal, immediate voice, one that reflects the broad contours of the Psalter, with its extensive first-person reflection on episodes of crisis, expressions of trust, and resolution of those crises through divine salvation, bounded by praise and punctuated by praise. Coltrane's frequent expressions of commonality with his listeners also resonate with the tradition of communal psalms of lament and thanksgiving. Finally, it is especially important to note that Coltrane's use of imagery of paths and ways accords with both the Psalms as a whole and the book of Proverbs as a whole, with "paths" and "ways," being primary foci within these two corpora. 8
Coltrane's Poem
The text at the bottom of the gatefold is entitled "A Love Supreme." It spans some sixty lines and is rife with biblical allusions. It directly reflects the biblical form of a psalm, that is, a poem that is also a prayer.
While the letter above was addressed to the listener, God is the primary addressee of the poem, "A Love Supreme." The text assumes the first person "I" at the outset, with God as the second-person "Thee/you" beginning with a confession "I will do all I can do to be worthy of Thee O Lord." The first-person speech continues throughout the poem, e.g., "It is most important that I know thee" (first column) and "May I be acceptable in your sight" (second column). The direct address to God appears most often in the phrase "Thank you God," the most common phrase in the poem, appearing thirteen times.
As with the forms of poetry in the Psalms, the direct addresses to God stand alongside references to God in the third person. "I have seen God—I have seen ungodly—none can be greater—none can compare to God" (third column). We can understand these phrases as statements of praise that depict God's attributes, including God's unchangeability, God's incomparability, God's worthiness to be glorified, God's ultimate existence, and God being the source of all things and end of all things. These statements describing God's attributes are not addressed to God alone but to a wider community. The wider community comes into view early in the poem, with the petition "Help us resolve our fears and weaknesses" in the first column. Coltrane's voice here shifts from first-person singular "I-me" to first-person plural "we-us." He is interceding for and with his community. He is also speaking for the community, addressing God and describing God. This first-person plural voice also appears in the context of a confession of trust in the first column: "In You all things are possible. We know. God made it so" (first column). Finally, the text assumes a direct address to the community, in the form of exhortations: "Keep your eye on God," (first column) "Seek Him every day. In all ways seek God everyday. Let us all sing songs to God" (second column), and "Obey the Lord" (third column).
Coltrane's poem reflects a wide degree of flexibility with respect to genre and audience. It contains elements of thanksgiving, praise, first-person testimony of individual experience, cohorta-tive statement calling the community to praise, exhortation directed to the community, and direct instruction. A similar mixture of genres is found in wisdom psalms, especially as exemplified in Psalm 119, which includes these elements across its 176 verses.
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Psalm 19, with its clear divisions of different genres, provides another example of the sapiential tradition of poetry that mixes genres (vv. 1-6; 7-14). In fact, Coltrane comes very close to a direct citation of Ps 19:14 "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight O
Another major element of this poem is its focus on paths and ways. In the first column we read, "thought waves—heat waves—all vibrations—all paths lead to God. Thank you God. His way. . .it is to love . . . . it is so gracious. It is merciful. Thank you God. One thought can produce millions of vibrations and they all go back to God." This line is repeated in the second column with only slight variation. "His way . . . it is wonderful. Thoughts-deeds—vibrations, etc. They all go back to God." And further, in the third column, he continues to amplify the imagery of paths and ways, with "No Road is an easy one, but they all go back to God . . . . Obey the Lord."
This trope of the path or way is one that resonates deeply with Psalm 1, with its description of two types of ways (Ps 1:6), and especially with Psalm 119, right at the outset of the poem: "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the
Taken together, the form of the text in the gatefold of A Love Supreme has given us a framework for understanding Coltrane's self-conception. Like the wisdom psalmist, his mode is eclectic, borrowing from a wide range of genres. His writing is also closely aligned to the wisdom psalm tradition with respect to themes and texture, especially his focus on paths and ways. Most important, he characterizes "A love supreme" as both the way of God and the way of those who follow along God's way.
Coltrane's Music
Casting Coltrane as a wisdom psalmist on the basis of his words is only part of the story. We must, of course, engage his music. Psalmody is, after all, the interaction of words and music. Coltrane's music gives us much to consider—much more than we could consider in an essay like this. I will, however, highlight a few elements of his musical offering that fill out the picture of Coltrane as wisdom psalmist in A Love Supreme.
The opening track "Acknowledgement" begins with a cascading saxophone fanfare, largely comprised of stacked perfect fourths. 10 The effect is consonant rather than dissonant, but also indeterminate with respect to tonality and time signature. It conveys an ethereal sense of atemporality and a lack of consistent movement. The fanfare is then immediately contrasted by a solid blues-inflected Latin groove. Like the opening section, this groove has no clear harmonic structure, which is to say, the section is not governed by specific chord changes. Instead, the organizing principle of Part 1 "Acknowledgement" is an ostinato bass line, F-At>-F-Bt> comprised of ascending and descending minor thirds followed by an ascending fourth. The riff creates the impression of an F-minor tonality but could also be interpreted as a Bt> blues riff moving from the dominant up a perfect fourth to the tonic, with an intervening flat seventh. More important than the tonality is the governing groove that the riff establishes: "du dwee du wap." (Figure 2)
Bass ostinato from "Acknowledgement," after Porter, John Coltrane, 237. Copyright © 1973 JOWOCOL MUSIC. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Hal Leonard Corporation.
After the drums and piano find the grove, Coltrane sounds a solo that is an expansion of the same series of fourths in the opening fanfare. Porter's analysis suggests that the fundamental melodic shape is a stacked fourth: C to F and F to Bt>. 11 What is important to emphasize here is that there is no melody in "Acknowledgement" that supplants the governing grove of the opening bass ostinato. Coltrane's solo is a gradual exploration and expansion of the bass line that orients the seven-minute long vamp. Coltrane begins his solo with a surefooted establishment the C-F-Bt> tonal framework. Within a few moments he is stepping in and out of this tonal framework, guiding the listener into new harmonic possibilities with the full capacity of his instrument. Coltrane's adventurous tonal imagination drives this solo through a range of colors, and through moments of great tension and release, especially as he reaches for alitssimo notes that break down the tone in throaty, urgent exclamations (see especially at 4:00).
About four minutes into his solo, Coltrane's approach changes. Until this point, Coltrane has been exploring vast and emotional possibilities in his extended vamp. But at 4:43 Coltrane's playing becomes more focused and deliberative, even cerebral. He undertakes a disciplined, exhaustive development of the opening bass ostinato pattern. In a jaw dropping display of harmonic dexterity, Coltrane repeats the bass ostinato pattern, "du dwee du wap," twenty-nine times, but expresses the pattern in all twelve keys (Figure 3). Having gone to the moon and back harmonically, 12 Coltrane settles into the original expression of the ostinato pattern in F minor. Then he takes the horn from his lips and leans over the microphone. The riff "du dwee du wap" becomes the lyrics "a love supreme," a vocal figure repeated nineteen times before Coltrane gives the figure back to the bass. Piano and drums eventually drop out of the groove, and the track ends as it began, with the bass alone.
Measures 121 to the end of Coltrane's "Acknowledgement" solo, after Porter, John Coltrane, 243. Copyright © 1973 JOWOCOL MUSIC. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Hal Leonard Corporation.
The lyrics are a stunning revelation. Coltrane waits until the end of the track to show that we were listening to an instrumental version of vocal music the whole time. The central instrumental figure of "Acknowledgement" is actually a vocal figure, based on the prosody of the phrase "a love supreme." Coltrane told his listener in the opening letter that a love supreme is "God's way." Coltrane has been taking us along God's way, "A love supreme," and we didn't even know it. We realize it only in retrospect. The absolute supremacy of God's way has been elucidated in multiple emotional tones and in every key.
We can note here how Coltrane's exhaustive exposition of God's way resonates with the psalmist at work in Psalm 119, the psalm supreme. This highly structured poem contains every possible inflection of a life spent following God's way. It extols the virtues of following God's path and invites its readers to walk this way as well. The psalm assumes the form of a first-person address and offers benedictions, admonitions, petitions for help, complaints, testimonies, vows of praise, and outright praise. This panoply of psalmic forms is scrupulously organized in a monumenal acrostic poem, with the first word in every line in successive stanzas beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
In "Acknowledgement" Coltrane develops his vision of following God's way throughout all twelve keys: A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, and so on. The wisdom psalmist in Psalm 119 develops his vision of following God's way through all letters of the Hebrew alphabet: aleph, beth, gimmel, dalet, all the way to tav. The acknowledgement of God's way is profoundly comprehensive. As Coltrane's poem maintains: "The fact that we do exist is acknowledgement of Thee O Lord." All variations, tonalities, and forms together are a recognition of God's work.
The second part of the suite is entitled "Resolution." Given what Coltrane says about his own "period of irresolution," we are led to interpret this section as an expression of Coltrane's commitment, or perhaps his re-commitment, to following "the esteemed path." The musical shape of the melody that breaks out at mark 0:20 in the track broadly follows the descent of an Et> minor blues scale. The extended tones that dominate the melody are the tonic at the upper octave, the tritone midway down the scale, the most dissonant note within the blues scale—-and the tonic in the lower octave. 13 We have here orientation at the upper octave, followed by disorientation at the tritone, and then a new orientation at the lower tonic. This cycle of orientation-disorientation-reorientation appears six times in the first two minutes of the track and three more times at end of the track (from 6:30). The attentive listener hears echoes of Walter Brueggemann's classic typology of function for the psalms. Coltrane's musical quest for resolution resonates with Brueggeman's claim that the Psalter as a whole provides models for faithful who are faced with deeply painful, troubling experiences that reshape one's understanding of God and God's way in the world. Brueggeman claims this process of orientation-disorientation-reorientation occurs across the Psalter in various forms and modalities. 14 Coltrane, for his part, presents the process of orientation-disorientation-reorientation over and over again in seven minutes of relentless Et> minor blues.
The third and fourth parts of the suite, "Pursuance" and "Psalm," were recorded without pause in one take on the December 9 recording date. 15 We should consider them together as an integrated whole. "Pursuance" is a raw, gritty, hard-driving minor blues, counterbalanced by the chantlike quality of "Psalm," which has no chord changes and no discernible time signature. With no chord changes and no time, Coltrane's plaintive sax alone drives the track and the suite to its conclusion.
"Pursuance" begins with Jones's extended drum solo, rich in polyrhythmic figures, constantly pressing forward, moving the listener inexorably down a path. Again, we can draw interpretive clues from the title and the gatefold texts. This track reflects Coltrane as psalmist pursuing God's ways, as he encourages his listener: "let us pursue Him in the righteous path." The melody that Coltrane introduces at 1:30 is skeletal but urgent, comprised of the same melodic intervals as the opening "a love supreme" ostinato pattern in "Acknowledgement." This time the pattern begins with an ascending minor third followed by a major second: C-Eb-F. After these three notes, the same intervallic sequence begins again on the new home note F, first up a minor third then a major second, F-Ab-Bb. There is a total span of a perfect fourth between the first and last notes of each melodic motif or musical cell. 16 This spare melodic form goes through a process of virtuosic magnification through McCoy Tyner's bold, declarative piano solo, its hard-bop running lines giving way to polyrhythmic chordal stomps and hammer blows. When Coltrane takes over, these music cells go through thousands of contortions. In Coltrane's blistering lines we see his fullest energies on display, pushing to the point of breaking into shrieks and growls. This is Coltrane at his most visceral, the apogee of hard bop. Gyrating, cascading, soaring, screaming, turning the saxophone inside out as he pursues this musical idea of pursuing "Him" along the righteous path. Coltrane's musical account confirms that pursuing the righteous path is not easy. It takes every ounce of energy, and Coltrane leaves nothing unexpressed in his pursuit. The track begins with an extended drum solo (0:00—1:30) and ends with an extended bass solo (7:49-10:42), in which Jimmy Garrison takes up the path, explores it and gives Coltrane a chance to rest his chops and prepare for his final proclamation.
What follows immediately after Garrison's solo is one of the most unique and compelling moments in the history ofjazz. Elvin Jones takes up the timpani mallets. McCoy Tyner lays down C Minor chord shapes. Again, there are no chord changes. There is no time signature. There is only Coltrane's canta-bile saxophone, a fully improvised melodic chant across a sonic palette of C Minor, accompanied by the bass sounding pedal tones, along with cinematic timpani rolls and cymbal crashes.
With its lack of chord changes, "Psalm" mirrors the first part, "Acknowledgement." Part 1 was driven by Garrison's grooving "du dwee du wap / a love supreme" ostinato pattern. "Psalm" is driven by Coltrane as cantor—steady, sonorous, emotionally-laden.
Remarkably, for at least a decade after the release of the album, few people knew what Coltrane was actually doing. It was only a rumor that he was intoning syllable by syllable the text of his poem, "A Love Supreme." But the rumor was true. An analysis of his cantillation of the poem, "A Love Supreme," was only published by Porter in 1998, thirty-eight years after the album's release. Kahn's book-length treatment of the album suggests that at least some of his bandmates were totally unaware of what Coltrane was up to, that he had put his handwritten copy of his poem on his music stand and was intoning it over the course of the seven minutes of the final track. 17
I highlight one final musical element of the album in the goal of picturing John Coltrane as wisdom psalmist and A Love Supreme as participating in the long, rich musical reception history of the Psalter. In his analysis of Coltrane's cantillation of the poem, Taylor notes how Coltrane follows a particular phrasing pattern in which he ascends from the tonic to a recitation at the fifth of the key, followed by a descent back to the tonic. This pattern appears throughout the final track, and undergoes development as well, alongside the constant association of the phrase "Thank you God," with a return to the tonic in all thirteen occurrences. Porter ties this tonal phrasing pattern to the "procedure of intonational chant" of Black homiletical tradition as explicated by ethnomusicologist Jeff Titon (Figure 4). 18
Lines 1-16 of the poem "A Love Supreme," played on the saxophone by Coltrane as "Psalm." After Porter, John Coltrane, 245. Copyright © 1977 JOWOCOL MUSIC. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Hal Leonard Corporation.
This sermonic music style adds yet another dimension to Coltrane's psalmic profile. Coltrane, like the wisdom psalmist, is a teacher, instructing through his own tradition's homiletical form. Coltrane assumes the authority to speak directly through his music, to urge his listeners to walk along a certain path and a way of living, God's way, which is "through love," a love supreme.