Take the Horn Out 'Cha Mouth!

Kangmin Shin — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 11:57:00 +0000

Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis once said that the composer Charlie Parker most resembled was Mozart, citing the effortless elegance of both musicians: “not a note out of place, everthing crystal clear.”

My music teacher at Berkeley told us that there’s no such thing as a passing tone in Parker’s melodies: everything is essential. It’s true that some of his solos seem so pristine that it’s hard to imagine a person actually making them, to say nothing of improvising them under the strain of lightning-fast tempos and complex harmonies. Einstein’s observation about Mozart applies just as well to Charlie Parker: “music so pure that it seems to have been ever present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master.”

If Charlie Parker is like Mozart, John Coltrane is like Beethoven. Neither Coltrane nor Beethoven had the preternatural grace of their respective predecessors; there’s much in their music that’s ungainly or brusque. Both have a tendency to get hold of a single idea and refuse to let go (Miles to Trane: “take the horn out ‘cha mouth!”), probing it obssessively until it yields something of what they’re looking for. The entire third movement of the Tempest Sonata is built on the introductory four-note theme: the development section consists of nothing but this rhythmic figure repeated over and over in different keys with different dynamics, sort of like the Acknowledgement section of A Love Supreme where Coltrane plays the theme something like forty times, in every register of his instrument.

Rock & Bach: Take the Horn Out 'Cha Mouth!

Take the Horn Out 'Cha Mouth!