A Love Supreme

As a continuation of the listening exercise I did with Acknowledgement (the first part of A Love Supreme), I listened to all of A Love Supreme and realized that perhaps Coltrane is trying to tell a story with his four works. The first clue is their respective titles - Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalm. Deeper than that, each individual piece seems to tell its own story, revolving around its title. The most obvious of these is Pursuance, which is the fastest paced song of the 4 and immediately gave me the image of someone pursuing someone else. It is filled with ups and downs and varying tempo, but maintains a fairly frantic pace most of the time, as any good chase song should and even slows down at the end to symbolize a successful pursuit. Likewise, Acknowledgement and Resolution are both slower and more thoughtful, as they represent the introspective emotions and actions that accompany love. However, most of Psalm is also slowly paced, which seemed odd at first. Upon further examination, though, it makes sense as it symbolizes a break-up or devorce from his love, as the song has a definate sad mood to it. Overall, this could just be an incorrect interpretation but I think I found a storyline that Coltrane may have been trying to convey.

Note: this was written before reading the book