Today I was listening to McCoy Tyner’s album Trident. A sunny, freezing day after a medium-size snowstorm. Some kids sledding.

To frame my experience and admiration of McCoy Tyner’s music, I thought of my experiences of certain other musicians and music.

Both of these pianists transcended “jazz” or else redefined “jazz”.

Both remained true “pianists” — and did not become “keyboardists”. There’s nothing wrong with electric pianos and synthesizers, but unlike others of their era (in particular, Herbie Hancock), their prolific recorded output was composed almost entirely of performances at the acoustic piano.

McCoy Tyner

My experience: torrential, evoking some kind of elemental power or influence. This elemental-ness reminds me of Stravinsky (below). An incredible amount of notes in the right hand and left-hand voicings on the brink of breaking with tonality, but still within it.

Excellent examples: Enlightenment Suite, part 3, Fly With The Wind; perhaps his live performance in Montreux (1973) reminds me of the transcendent Scriabin; and of course there are parallels with John Coltrane, his earlier collaborator.

Bill Evans

My experience: analytical, composed, elegant; Evans could also be torrential to some extent (e.g. a recording of Nardis from 1980), but his essence to me is during the quiet, tender moments of beauty (as in Waltz for Debby or his interpretation of Someday My Prince Will Come) grounded firmly in classical harmony.

The break with tonality

There are broader parallels between this break and European culture. It did not happen only in music. It is not incidental that the Great War happened at more or less the same time.

Wagner

Tonal system: loosening the rules of tonality, decoupling from the tonic as the center of gravity

My experience: untouchable, godlike, impenetrable, masterful. For the broad experience of these qualities — The Ring Cycle. For the summary, the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. Here appears the famous “Tristan” chord, whose irresolution came to define the departure from classical Western harmony — there was no resolution, only seemingly endless wandering and tension, and then, after the tension is built up and released, only more tension. The resolution comes only at the end of the entire opera.

Mahler

Tonal system: at the utter limit of tonality, while still operating entirely within it; if he had lived a few more years it is unlikely he would have continued within tonality, but we will never know.

My experience: humanlike — even at his most grandiose, say in the 2nd and, in particular, in the 8th symphonies, I can still connect all of it into his broader struggle within the human condition as a human. When I listen to his music I experience a personal connection with the reality that he portrays — whether that reality is external or internal to him. With Wagner, I feel that I am being forced to see things a certain way (masterfully), but with Mahler I simply experience a human asking all the right questions.

Stravinsky

Tonal system: complete break with classical tonality (along with Schoenberg)

My experience: in particular in the Rite of Spring, there is no “Stravinsky” per se — nowhere in that work can I point to a sound and say “here is Stravinsky the human being, I understand him.” But the work is profound. When I heard the San Francisco Symphony perform it in 2016 or 2017 I experienced something decidedly beyond “classical music” — I was entranced and moved in a unique way — and of course the subject matter is part of this — the pagan rituals and culture are something that has been subsumed and repressed within our culture — and somehow Stravinsky had penetrated to that lost core. In short, I could understand why the original audiences had rioted upon hearing the work. It’s hard to express this feeling, and it’s definitely not something one can experience by oneself listening to a recording, unless perhaps one is very imaginative — at least it’s not something I understood until I heard it performed live by a world-class orchestra.