導言：
本文是Pitchfork執行編輯Mark Richardson於2015年9月25日為John Coltrane的經典專輯A Love Supreme的3CD套裝新版所撰寫的樂評。對於這套重新製造發行的套裝唱片，他給出了十分滿分的評價。該文從多個角度分析了這張經典專輯，特別是從新版套裝中收錄的素材入手，開闢了一條新的研究路徑。不過，關於本文，譯者最希望讀者留心的是：一貫以偏於文學批評、文化研究範式的評價方法來評價音樂的Pitchfork作者，遇上音樂意義最為強烈、文本意義最為淡薄的爵士樂，而且是John Coltrane的音樂，最終形成的樂評文字究竟如何？
譯者對此不作評價，只請讀者自留評判的權利。
A Love Supreme is John Coltranes defining album. Structured as a suite and delivered in praise of God, everything about it is designed for maximum emotional impact. This exhaustive 3xCD set gathers every scrap of material recorded during the Love Supreme sessions as well as a live performance of the suite from later the same year.
A Love Supreme是John Coltrane的代表作。這張專輯以組曲（suite）的形式呈現，以對上帝的讚美為核心思想，它每一部分的設計標的都是傳遞一種最強有力的情感衝擊。此番發行的3CD套裝內容詳盡充實，不僅收錄了專輯錄製過程中產生的所有素材，還收錄了那一年（1964年）晚些時候Coltrane表演這些曲目時的現場錄音。
John Coltrane was a late bloomer. Born in 1926, the same year as Miles Davis, he spent his twenties in and out of small-time bands, a promising journeyman moving between playing jazz and the more bar-friendly music that was starting to be called R&B. During these early years he had problems with narcotics and alcohol, alternating stretches of heroin use with periods of binge drinking. Charlie Parker—every sax players hero when Coltrane was coming up in the 1940s and 50s—had given the junkie life a romantic aura for some naive souls, connecting drug use with creativity. But the underachieving Coltrane was a run-of-the-mill addict, someone broke and in ill health whose habit clearly kept him stuck in place. He was fired from Miles Davis band in 1957 for showing up on the bandstand dressed in shabby clothes and visibly drunk—by some accounts he took a punch from the trumpeter before being given his walking papers. And if Coltrane had spiraled and his career had ended there, hed be remembered now as a musician who flamed out just as he was discovering his voice.
John Coltrane是一個大器晚成的人。他出生於1926年（與另一位大師Miles Davis同年），二十到三十歲的十年里，他流連於一個個三流爵士樂隊，充當一名可靠的臨時工；有時玩爵士樂，有時玩一種更適合在酒吧演奏的音樂——我們後來管這種音樂叫R&B。在這樣的早年歲月里，他深陷於毒品與酒精，平日不是在吸食海洛因，就是在開懷暢飲。Charlie Parker——在Coltrane聲名漸起的四五十年代，Parker是每個薩克斯風手的偶像——他將吸食毒品與獲取靈感相聯繫的態度，給癮君子式的生活蒙上了一層浪漫主義的光暈。但後進生Coltrane不是Parker那樣的癮君子藝術家，他就是完全的癮君子。那時的他生活拮据，而吸毒與酗酒就是他深入骨髓的癖好。1957年，他被Miles Davis的樂隊開除了，緣由是某次樂隊演出中，他穿著破舊的衣裳、醉醺醺地就登台了。據某些人的描述，他接到開除通知前還被樂隊的小號手狠狠揍了一拳。如果Coltrane就此耿耿於懷、半途而廢，那麼今天他就會是我們記憶中那個一朝聞名、卻已在前夜告別的音樂家。But thats not what happened. Everything changed for Coltrane in 1957 when, as he wrote in the liner notes to his defining album, A Love Supreme, he "experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life." During that year, Coltrane stopped drinking and kicked heroin, and from that point forward, his career would unfold with an almost frightening amount of focus and intensity. These final 10 years are when Coltrane made his mark on the world of jazz as a leader, and he was then seemingly always on the move, in transition, each moment glimpsed as a blur on a continuum rather than a fixed point in space. He wasnt just covering ground, he was accelerating, and every phase of his later career has the attendant feeling of stomach-dropping free-fall, of being pushed forcefully into new places.
但（萬幸）這是另一個平行宇宙里的事情。正如Coltrane給自己的代表作A Love Supreme寫的註解文字所說，在1957年，他的生活發生了翻天覆地的變化。他「體驗了——感謝上帝——一種靈魂上的覺醒，這種覺醒將我導向了更豐富、更充實也更高產的人生。」在那一年裡，Coltrane戒掉了酗酒和吸毒，而這正是他此後生涯里無與倫比的專註度與精力的源泉。這最後十年（Coltrane英年早逝，於1967年去世）正是Coltrane確立自己在爵士樂壇的領導地位的十年。十年里，他幾乎永不停歇，永遠在改變與創新。那些優秀作品與精彩時刻，與其說是空間里的一個個定點，還不如說是一個連續體里的模糊影子。
A Love Supreme, recorded with what was later called his classic quartet, is Coltranes musical expression of his 1957 epiphany. Its the sound of a man laying his soul bare. Structured as a suite and delivered in praise of God, everything about the record is designed for maximum emotional impact, from Elvin Jones opening gong crash to the soft rain of McCoy Tyners piano clusters to Coltranes stately fanfare to Jimmy Garrisons iconic four-note bassline to the spoken chant by Coltrane—"a-LOVE-su-PREME, a-LOVE-su-PREME"—that carries out the opening movement, "Acknowledgement". By the time the record gets to the closing "Psalm", which finds Coltrane interpreting on his saxophone the syllables of a poem hed written to the Creator, A Love Supreme has wrung its concept dry, extracting every drop of feeling from Coltranes initial vision. Its as complete a statement as exists in recorded jazz. Hearing it now as part of this exhaustive 3xCD set, which gathers every scrap of material recorded during the sessions as well as a live performance of the suite from later the same year, you get a clearer sense than ever before of the different forms A Love Supreme might have taken, and how Coltranes desire to communicate something specific and profound led to its final shape.
A Love Supreme，這張與後來被稱作Coltrane的「經典四重奏組合」的樂手們合作錄製的唱片，是他那1957年的「覺醒」在音樂上的表達。那是一個男人展示自己赤裸的靈魂時發出的聲音。專輯以組曲（suite）的形式呈現，以對上帝的讚美為核心思想，它每一部分的設計標的都是傳遞一種最強有力的情感衝擊。從Elvin Jones的敲鑼聲起，到McCoy Tyner如雨點般落下的鋼琴聲，到Coltrane莊嚴又不失熱烈的薩克斯，再到Jimmy Garrison標誌性的四音節式低音走向（bassline），最後還有Coltrane唱詩一般反覆念誦的「a-LOVE-su-PREME, a-LOVE-su-PREME」，以上元素構成了組曲的第一部分，Acknowledgement。在專輯行進到組曲的最後一部分Psalm時——在這首曲子里，Coltrane用自己的薩克斯逐個音符地解讀了他寫給造物主的音樂贊詩——A Love Supreme這張唱片已經將Coltrane設計的概念闡釋得淋漓盡致，從Coltrane的原始靈感里萃取出了每一滴精華。Coltrane用寫聲明一樣嚴謹紮實的風範錄製了這張爵士樂唱片。現在再聽這部新發行的內容詳盡充實的3CD套裝，欣賞專輯錄製過程中產生的所有素材以及那一年（1964年）晚些時候Coltrane表演這些曲目時的現場錄音，你能夠比以往都更清晰地構想出A Love Supreme所可能呈現出的不同形態，也能夠更清晰地感受到Coltrane對於探討某些事情的渴望，以及這種渴望是怎麼讓A Love Supreme最終被塑造為64年發表的四曲目組曲形態的。A Love Supreme is also one of the most popular albums in the last 60 years of jazz, selling the kind of numbers usually reserved for pop (it quickly sold more than 100,000 copies, and has almost certainly sold more than a million since). If Miles Davis Kind of Blue is the most frequently bought first jazz album for those curious about the genre, A Love Supreme is easily number two. But though they were released just seven years apart, theres a world of difference between the two records, and the success of A Love Supreme is trickier to explain. For all its structural daring, Kind of Blue also functions as an ambient record, with slower tempos and late-night ambiance. A Love Supreme is harder to get a handle on. If you can think of Coltranes work on a continuum, from the gorgeous melodicism of "My Favorite Things" or Ballads or his album with Duke Ellington on one end and the brutal noise assault of the 1966 concerts collected on Concert in Japan on the other, A Love Supreme sits perfectly at the fulcrum, challenging enough to continually reveal new aspects but accessible enough to inspire newcomers.
A Love Supreme也是過去60年里最暢銷的爵士樂專輯之一，同等的銷量數字一般只會出現在流行（pop）歌星的專輯上。剛發表不久它就賣出了超過十萬張，截至目前，我們可以肯定它賣出了超過一百萬張。如果說Miles Davis的Kind of Blue是人們最常購買的用於爵士樂入門的唱片，那麼毫無疑問A Love Supreme在這方面僅次於Kind of Blue。但雖然這兩張唱片的發表時間僅僅時隔七年（Kind of Blue發表於1957年），但兩張專輯可謂大相徑庭，而A Love Supreme取得成功的緣由還要更難於解釋一些。Kind of Blue不僅在結構上是大膽的，某種程度上它還是一張氛圍（ambient）唱片，有著比一般爵士樂更輕柔的節奏，營造出深夜一般靜謐的聽覺氛圍。而A Love Supreme則沒那麼容易被定性。如果你將Coltrane的所有作品看作一整個連續體，從美妙的、旋律性突出的My Favorite Things、Ballads或是他與Duke Ellington合作的那張唱片，到收錄了1966年音樂會現場錄音的Concert in Japan里那種融入了粗糲噪音的先鋒實驗風格，A Love Supreme不偏不倚地落在兩者中間：足夠創新，打開了一些新的方向；同時又對入門愛好者足夠友好，能源源不斷地吸引新的聽眾。
Coltrane may have structured the record for just this effect. He had already been further "out" than the music heard on A Love Supreme, including some of the knotty extended jams like "Chasin the Trane" recorded at his 1961 sessions at the Village Vanguard. He was fascinated with the innovations of Ornette Coleman from the minute he heard them in the late 50s, and though he never completely abandoned chord changes, he regularly flirted with atonality, improvising outside of a fixed key. With A Love Supreme, it was almost as though Coltrane knew he had to dial things back a little in order to share his message of spiritual rebirth with a wider audience. Though conventionally beautiful in many ways, A Love Supreme is, for many, the exact point beyond which jazz becomes too experimental.
Coltrane也許就是為了實現這種效果而如此構造這張專輯的。實際上，他在A Love Supreme之前就曾走得更遠、更先鋒，比如他於1961年在Village Vanguard錄製的Chasin』 the Trane那樣複雜、厚重的即興式作品。打從1950年代末聽到Ornette Coleman在爵士樂上的創新起，Coltrane就非常著迷於那樣先鋒的風格。雖然從未完全放棄和弦變換這樣的傳統創作範式，他也常常加入無調性的創作手法，在一個固定的調性之外肆意即興創作。在A Love Supreme中，Coltrane的音樂聽上去就好像他知道上帝命令他將這種先鋒傾嚮往回收一收，以便將他的靈魂重生之經過傳播給更廣大的聽眾群體。當然，即便A Love Supreme在很多個層面上都非常符合傳統的審美，它也是爵士樂進化歷程中的一個臨界點——再往前一步，爵士樂就變得過於實驗化、先鋒化了。
Its possible to hear on this set how the album might have gone even further. At a time when a single track might have a dozen collaborators working on it over the course of weeks, its a little mind-boggling to consider that the music on A Love Supreme was recorded on a single day, December 9, 1964. This wasnt uncommon for jazz records of the time. But though they had the music in the can from that first day, Coltrane wanted to try something else. So on December 10, he called the young tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, and a second bassist, Art Davis to play with his quartet. The six musicians then ran through two versions of A Love Supremes opening "Acknowledgment", so that Coltrane could explore what the music might sound like with another horn and additional low-end rhythm. Shepp was an up-and-comer deeply influenced by Coltrane; the two takes of "Acknowledgment" featuring Shepp find him serving as a kind of textural counterpoint, his more brittle and biting tone commenting on the melody from an oblique angle and hinting at possibilities existing outside of the version recorded the day before. You sense a more abrasive road not taken, one that almost certainly would have found a smaller audience.
在這個新發行的套裝里，你能聽出來這張專輯在實驗性上本可能走得更遠。考慮到在那個年頭，僅僅是一首歌曲也要耗費數個音樂工作者數周時間將其打磨完善，A Love Supreme僅用一天——1964年十二月九日——就錄製完畢的事實多少令人感到不可思議。當然，這在爵士樂壇倒也不是什麼新鮮事。不過，雖然Coltrane等人在那一天就錄製完了A Love Supreme的唱片錄音，Coltrane還是想要嘗試點別的東西。翌日，他叫來了年輕的高音薩克斯手Archie Shepp、又一位貝斯手Art Davis來協助他的四重奏樂團演奏。這六名音樂家演奏了兩個版本的Acknowledgment，也即A Love Supreme里的第一首曲子。這樣，Coltrane就可以探索新增加了一把薩克斯和一條低音節奏的曲子效果如何。Shepp是一個深受Coltrane影響的音樂家，六人合奏的這兩版Acknowledgment里，Shepp的演奏與Coltrane的演奏形成了一種質感上的對位：他那聽感更尖銳的演奏像是拐彎抹角地點評著前一天的四人合奏版本，也同時像是指出了四人合奏版本中蘊藏的可能性。你能從中感知到一條更暗淡的「未選擇的路」，如果Coltrane按這條路子走下去，那麼A Love Supreme的受眾範圍就會變窄了。We hear a different perspective on the fantastic live version of the suite recorded in France five months after the albums release. Five months in 60s Coltrane time was like a decade in the career of other jazz musicians, and he was already imbuing the A Love Supreme material with an extra intensity. Tyners clanging chords on "Resolution" have a harsher edge, and Coltranes attendant soloing is much rougher and more pointed, his notes seeming to attack the structure of the composition from several directions rather than floating along above it. This is the hard-blowing sound that Coltrane would show on Meditations, another spiritually focused album-length suite recorded later in 1965 that never had a chance at A Love Supremes level of mainstream acceptance.
從原始唱片發表五個月後Coltrane在法國演奏的現場版本里，我們又能聆聽到另一種感覺。在Coltrane天才迸發的六十年代歲月里，他的五個月就好似別的爵士音樂家生涯里的十年（足以作出驚天動地的改變）。那次演出中，他往原始的A Love Supreme里灌注了更多的烈度與張力。在Resolution這首曲子里，Tyner那叮噹作響的和弦演奏比原來更稜角分明，Coltrane隨之而來的solo則比原來更粗糲、更尖銳，他吹奏的音符像是從四面八方攻擊著整首曲子的規整結構，而不僅僅是跟著曲子的結構走。這就是Coltrane在專輯Meditations里呈現的強有力的聲效——這張發行於1965年的唱片與A Love Supreme一樣以組曲的形式呈現一整張專輯的內容，不過並沒有像A Love Supreme一樣在主流聽眾之中贏得極高的接受度。In the same year, Coltrane would also record Om and Ascension, two harsh and challenging pieces of music that strain against the boundaries of what most people would even consider music. Given what surrounds it, and how sweet and gentle it so often is, A Love Supreme was an expression of a very specific time and place, a conscious attempt by Coltrane to communicate something to his audience that was broad enough to be understood but rich and complex enough to honor both where he was as a musician and the depth of the subject matter. A Love Supreme sounds like nothing else in John Coltranes discography, and indeed like little else in recorded jazz, sitting at the nexus of so many competing musical ideas.
在同一年裡，Coltrane還錄製了Om和Ascension，兩張晦澀而富有創新性的專輯。這兩張專輯就直接觸及了大部分人所能接受的音樂之底線。現在，清楚了A Love Supreme在Coltrane的音樂生涯里位於怎樣的位置，回想起它在聽感上是多麼溫柔而易於接受，不妨說A Love Supreme確實是一個特殊時期的產物，Coltrane清醒地試圖與他的聽眾交流一些想法——這些想法足夠通俗易懂，同時，就Coltrane的音樂家身份以及唱片本身的深度而言，這些想法之豐富、之複雜，也是值得大書特書的。在Coltrane的音樂生涯里，A Love Supreme是獨一無二的；不過確實像爵士樂歷史上極少數唱片曾做到的那樣，這張唱片融匯了太多富有矛盾性的音樂思想。The final piece of the A Love Supreme equation concerns the civil rights movement and black liberation, and how those swirling ideas were inextricably tangled up with the jazz avant-garde. Coltrane was never overtly political, but he did allow his thoughts and feelings to bleed into his music. Coltrane met Malcolm X, wrote a piece for Martin Luther King Jr., and his 1963 dirge "Alabama", a piece with a close tonal connection to A Love Supremes "Psalm", was written to commemorate the four girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing that year. As the 60s wore on, politically conscious "fire jazz" grew in currency, much of it directly inspired by Coltranes music, but during his life he never quite felt the need to connect his music to specific social currents, even as others drew inspiration from it in that context. Coltrane was seeking something broader, communing with God as he understood it.
在「A Love Supreme=……」這個等式里，我們最後還可以放上民權運動和黑人解放運動這兩個元素，以及這些紛繁複雜的政治思想在爵士樂先鋒化的過程中如何發揮著至關重要的作用。大眾面前的Coltrane從來不對政治表現多大興趣，但他的想法和感受確實滋養了他的音樂。Coltrane曾與Malcolm X會面，曾為馬丁·路德·金創作過；那首於1963年面世的輓歌Alabama，一首與A Love Supreme組曲里的Psalm聽感相似的曲子，是Coltrane寫給那四位在伯明翰教堂爆炸案中喪命的女孩的。像整個六十年代的大環境那樣，富有政治意識的fire jazz形成一股潮流，這直接影響了Coltrane的音樂。不過，在他短暫的一生里，他從未感到將音樂與特定社會潮流聯繫起來的必要，即便在那個年代的語境里，其他音樂家都曾這樣做過。Coltrane總是在尋找一些更博大的東西，比如試圖去和上帝交流——用他領會上帝意思的方式（即音樂）。For Coltrane, that spiritual journey led him to A Love Supreme, which became the base hed explore from during his short time left on Earth. Coltrane occupies a unique position in jazz history. He was famous, especially in the jazz world, but he wasnt really a personality. He was not inclined toward interviews and he wasnt very good at them, preferring to let the music speak for itself. He didnt have the mystery of a Thelonious Monk, the tragic genius of a Charlie Parker, the cool comfort with celebrity or flamboyance of a Miles Davis, the combative verbal dexterity of Charles Mingus, the theoretical underpinnings of Ornette Coleman, the comfort with the mainstream of Louis Armstrong, or the symbolic stature of Duke Ellington. He led a quiet life, putting everything into his music.
對於Coltrane來說，那場精神旅行將他帶到了A Love Supreme的境界；它也是Coltrane在自己短暫的餘生里繼續探索的思想根基。Coltrane在爵士樂的歷史上佔有極重要的地位。他非常有名，特別是在爵士樂壇里；但他並不是一個完全的名人。他對媒體採訪不感興趣，也不擅長應對採訪。他更喜歡讓音樂本身去做發言人。他不像Thelonious Monk那樣神秘，沒有Charlie Parker那麼天妒英才（Parker只活了35歲），也沒有Miles Davis那種張揚又能恰當處理聲名的人格魅力；不像Charles Mingus那樣好鬥而機敏，沒有Ornette Coleman的理論家風範；不像Louis Armstrong那樣容易被主流聽眾接受，又沒有Duke Ellington具有象徵意義的高度。Coltrane的一生很平靜，生活的點滴都在他的音樂里。His chaotic years mostly came when he was an unknown; by the time he was a major jazz figure, almost his entire life was music. If he wasnt on stage or in a recording studio, he was practicing or studying records. Seemingly every other story of an encounter with Coltrane in the 1960s involved him in a room with a saxophone in his hand, playing scales. In his mind, God had saved him, and he was going to give back. A Love Supreme was his expression of gratitude, a hopeful prayer for a better world.
Coltrane的桀驁不馴基本都留在了他還默默無聞的歲月里。當他成為爵士樂的領軍人物時，他基本上將全副身心都投入到了音樂之中。如果他沒有登台演出或者在錄音室工作，那麼他也一定在私下練習或是聆聽學習別人的音樂。每一個出現了Coltrane身影的60年代故事裡，他都總是拿著一把薩克斯在練習吹奏。在他的觀念里，上帝拯救了他，而他必須回報上帝。A Love Supreme就是關於這種感激的表述，以及對一個更好的世界的衷心祝願。 推薦閱讀：
