A source for Giant Steps?

[umum_cypher]

I don't think I've heard anyone mention the finale from Fauré's sonata for cello and piano no. 1 as a source for Giant Steps, and I suppose we'll never know, but still ... 

The fun starts just after the 30-second mark and continues throughout. What do we think?

This would be an unsurprising composer and piece for Coltrane to have been listening to, or maybe even playing (given the cello's register).

 

[EKE BBB]

Looks like at least this Italian guy did:

https://pietrodossena.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/dossena.pdf

[sonnymax]

In a 2018 interview, Quincy Jones said that the work was based on an example in Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. Jones stated, "Everyone thinks Coltrane wrote that, he didn’t. It’s Slonimsky. That book started all the jazz guys improvising in 12-tone. Coltrane carried that book around till the pages fell off".

Marchese, David (February 7, 2018). "In Conversation: Quincy Jones". Vulture.

[umum_cypher]

Congrats to Pietro!

(We can't set any store by that QJ quote though, which is by turns general and meaningless - 'improvising in 12 tone?')

Edited November 29, 2020 by umum_cypher

[JSngry]

Did Faure invent moving keys in 3rd?

[sgcim]

The Faure had the ii-Vs rising in major 3rds, but I didn't hear much of  the opening four chord pattern in it.

I heard that pattern in Harold Shapero's String Quartet, and I almost fell out of my chair!

[umum_cypher]

12 hours ago, JSngry said:

Did Faure invent moving keys in 3rd?

He did not, but that's not the only similarity is it - the melodic line is almost the same too, as is the harmonic rhythm, and the use of sequence. 

11 hours ago, sgcim said:

The Faure had the ii-Vs rising in major 3rds, but I didn't hear much of  the opening four chord pattern in it

Sure. I think this is likely to be 'a' source, but it's not the recipe for Coltrane's achievement, which is of course his own. That said, the opening section is easily seen as an extrapolation of the second half of the progression. The whole thing is 'about' movement in thirds, on local and larger scales.

Edited November 30, 2020 by umum_cypher

[JSngry]

Have fun with this: http://www.scottlernermusic.com/ftp/coltrane%2520dissertation.pdf

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Have fun with this: http://www.scottlernermusic.com/ftp/coltrane%2520dissertation.pdf

I can't make heads or tails of that dissertation, much in the same way I can't make heads or tails of late-period Coltrane. So ... Bravo! Must be right.

[umum_cypher]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Have fun with this: http://www.scottlernermusic.com/ftp/coltrane%2520dissertation.pdf

Fun indeed. I think Occam's razor is called for at some point though.

[JSngry]

It's a doctoral dissertation...too much math for R&B, imo.

But it documents (ie - repeats what is already known), the Slonimsky foundations of the tune. The Faure thing is there, obviously, but I hardly thing it's a fundamental element of the overall piece. It's more like a happy secondary element.

[umum_cypher]

3 minutes ago, JSngry said:

It's a doctoral dissertation...too much math for R&B, imo.

But it documents (ie - repeats what is already known), the Slonimsky foundations of the tune. The Faure thing is there, obviously, but I hardly thing it's a fundamental element of the overall piece. It's more like a happy secondary element.

I'd be inclined to see it the other way around. For me the Fauré lift sounds so primary, so obvious. It seems like the starting point. It's a snatch of music that sounds, moves, and (in its shape and urgency) even feels like the second half of Giant Steps. Slonimsky is a list of scales and intervals, and a systematic demonstration of the ways they can be manipulated. There certainly could be some Slonimskian ideas in the mix when it came to extrapolating the 3rds idea and doing something with it, turning it over, and making the rest of the tune. It's not a zero-sum game. But I think it's a leap to see the Slominsky as the basic source, when there is something to hand as striking as the Fauré. Yes, we know JC practised out of NS's thesaurus, but we also know Coltrane had form in lifting things from pleasingly lush composed music for his own composition.

I will finish dying on this hill now.

[JSngry]

So you think he built the first part of the tune to have something to go with the second part? Seriously?

I mean, possibly, but the scholarship indicates that his interest in moving in 3rds was a long one (cf Sandole), and the Slonimsky thing is well documented from many sources...I think it's was probably a lot more holistic a process than just grabbing something and finding something to fit with it.

And there's also the whole "Have You Met Mis Jones" bridge thing, there's a contingent that claims that as part of the mix as well.

[umum_cypher]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

So you think he built the first part of the tune to have something to go with the second part? Seriously?

I mean, possibly, but the scholarship indicates that his interest in moving in 3rds was a long one (cf Sandole), and the Slonimsky thing is well documented from many sources...I think it's was probably a lot more holistic a process than just grabbing something and finding something to fit with it.

And there's also the whole "Have You Met Mis Jones" bridge thing, there's a contingent that claims that as part of the mix as well.

I honestly can't see what the issue is here. Sure, a holistic process. Sure, long-standing interests. (I'm familiar with the scholarship). Yes, HYMMJ, and Slonimsky. It's all swimming around in a post-Romantic, tonal world that is deeply attractive to jazz musicians at that time, and still. I just don't think that precludes a meaningful encounter with the Fauré.

Not 'to have something to go with it', no, although jazz tune-writing history is littered with people taking this or that bridge to go with this or that A section, as everyone knows. But imagine that Coltrane, or anyone else with an analytical mind like his, seizes on that Fauré object, sits at the piano and plays around with the thing that makes it unusual - it's hardly a stretch to see the mvt by thirds compacted into the single bar changes (BMaj7 D7 etc) and stretched out to form the two spans (the first coming to rest in B, the second in Eb / D sharp) that form the first 8 bars. By this time, the writing is not about Fauré at all, if it ever was, but a composerly mulling over of a kind of movement that is absolutely present in that Fauré object. 

[JSngry]

I don't think it's a stretch to not see that either.

The tune itself is stretch enough!

[sgcim]

3 hours ago, umum_cypher said:

I honestly can't see what the issue is here. Sure, a holistic process. Sure, long-standing interests. (I'm familiar with the scholarship). Yes, HYMMJ, and Slonimsky. It's all swimming around in a post-Romantic, tonal world that is deeply attractive to jazz musicians at that time, and still. I just don't think that precludes a meaningful encounter with the Fauré.

Not 'to have something to go with it', no, although jazz tune-writing history is littered with people taking this or that bridge to go with this or that A section, as everyone knows. But imagine that Coltrane, or anyone else with an analytical mind like his, seizes on that Fauré object, sits at the piano and plays around with the thing that makes it unusual - it's hardly a stretch to see the mvt by thirds compacted into the single bar changes (BMaj7 D7 etc) and stretched out to form the two spans (the first coming to rest in B, the second in Eb / D sharp) that form the first 8 bars. By this time, the writing is not about Fauré at all, if it ever was, but a composerly mulling over of a kind of movement that is absolutely present in that Fauré object. 

The single bar changes (BMaj7 D7 GMaj7 Bb7 Ebmaj7) was present in the Shapero String Quartet, so that could have been the catalyst for GS. Shapero had some connection with the jazz scene of the 1950s, as one of his pieces was presented along with George Russell's "All About Rosie" at the 1957 Brandeis University Third Stream Concert.

Russell was friends with both Coltrane and Shapero, so it wouldn't be that unusual for Russell to introduce Coltrane to Shapero's String Quartet.

The similarity of Coltrane's "Impressions to a piece by Morton Gould has also been pointed out.

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, sgcim said:

The similarity of Coltrane's "Impressions to a piece by Morton Gould has also been pointed out.

And Ahmad Jamal did a cover of that one in 1955.

Not saying that Coltrane would not have heard the Faure piece, and if he had that it would not have caught his ear. Just saying that there was surely a lot more that went into it (Giant steps) than just that. A lot more.

[sgcim]

5 minutes ago, JSngry said:

And Ahmad Jamal did a cover of that one in 1955.

Not saying that Coltrane would not have heard the Faure piece, and if he had that it would not have caught his ear. Just saying that there was surely a lot more that went into it (Giant steps) than just that. A lot more.

Was that with the drummerless trio?

[JSngry]

Indeed.

 

the OGs:

Hear any Jimmy Heath in there, to go with the Grofe?

 

[Chuck Nessa]

53 minutes ago, sgcim said:

Was that with the drummerless trio?

I prefer to think of it as the trio with Ray Crawford.

[Larry Kart]

4 hours ago, sgcim said:

The single bar changes (BMaj7 D7 GMaj7 Bb7 Ebmaj7) was present in the Shapero String Quartet, so that could have been the catalyst for GS. Shapero had some connection with the jazz scene of the 1950s, as one of his pieces was presented along with George Russell's "All About Rosie" at the 1957 Brandeis University Third Stream Concert.

Russell was friends with both Coltrane and Shapero, so it wouldn't be that unusual for Russell to introduce Coltrane to Shapero's String Quartet.

The similarity of Coltrane's "Impressions to a piece by Morton Gould has also been pointed out.

I've got a recording of the Shapero String Quartet  by the Lydian Quartet on New World. If possible, can you tell me where in the work that passage can be found? Thanks.

[sgcim]

2 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I've got a recording of the Shapero String Quartet  by the Lydian Quartet on New World. If possible, can you tell me where in the work that passage can be found? Thanks.

I haven't heard it since college. I'll try to find it and let you know.

3 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I prefer to think of it as the trio with Ray Crawford.

Yeah, that one!

[Larry Kart]

sgcim -- I'll listen to the recording of the Shapero Quartet I have and see if I can detect that passage. Interesting composer -- I have a CD of his piano music that I like a lot -- but his contribution to the Brandeis concert, "On Green Mountain," is rather corny chi-chi IIRC.

Ssd story about Shapero's Piano Sonata in F Minor. "Premiered by Beveridge Webster in New York in 1948, it wasn't played in public again until 2013. The reason for the long delay  ... at the premiere this rather gentle work was booed and hissed, with the taunt 'Hurrah for Beethoven!' uttered by the young serialist composer George Perle. This rudeness ... was enough for Shapero to lapse into creative silence for many years."

The Sonata certainly was modeled along classical lines. Aaron Copland said that "Styistically, Shapero seems to feel a compulsion to fashion his music after some great model." Copland then mentions three Shapero works -- one modeled on Stravinsky, one on Haydn, and one on Beethoven.

Interesting that the then dogmatic Perle, while remaining a serialist in some respects -- he was the author of authoritative books on Berg's "Wozzeck" and "Lulu" --eventually made a fairly successful attempt in his own music to reconcile serialism and tonality.

 

[sgcim]

There are many stories of serialists disrupting tonalists' concerts in those years. Stockhausen used to terrorize concerts of non-serial music at that annual German festival.

It continued in academia. A composition teacher I studied with at the university I attended, premiered a piece for orchestra at a school concert, and one of his fellow teachers (who I also studied with) started booing and cursing during the piece, because it wasn't serial. The latter teacher was an eclectic composer, and wrote some Rags for clarinet and piano. One time he was rehearsing the piano part to one of his Rags, when the former composer appeared at the door of his office, and yelled out, "Can you stop playing that garbage!", and then slammed the door as hard as he could!

[JSngry]

Ok, as it pertains to Shapiro's quartet, yeah, almost immediately in the first movement, but the opening phrase, not the Faure thing.

So, imagine how LOL'ed I got when reading these liner notes!

Shapero's first composition teacher was none other than,,, Slominsky!!!!!

btw, this version of the peice does not appear to have seen CD issue, which is a pity. It's frisky!