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Music open thread: Saxophone concertos [1]
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Date: 2025-02-03
I started the open thread about bassoon concertos mentioning that I’ve been thinking a lot about Nazi Germany of late. It seems that every time I tune to PBS, there’s some sad violin music playing, the kind of sad violin music associated with the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany and throughout Europe at that time in history.
You know the kind of music I’m talking about. John Williams excerpted three solo violin and orchestra pieces from his score for Schindler’s List for concert use. That’s the kind of music I’m talking about.
But I’m not doing the thread about violin concertos just yet. Or horns for that matter (given that the horns’ staves are generally placed below the bassoons’ in an orchestral score). I’ve decided to go on to the saxophones, which are technically woodwinds even though if you’re using a plastic reed rather than a wooden reed there’s no wood in this wind instrument. Though I suppose the modern orchestral flute doesn’t have any wood components either.
Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1840 and patented it a few years later. Sax intended the instrument for military bands, but by time Hitler came to power in Germany, according to an article by Anna Kelsey-Sugg,
the saxophone had become a symbol of jazz music and inextricably intertwined with African-American culture. The instrument fell under what Nazis referred to as "Entartete Kunst", or "degenerate art", which saw many artforms banned. One 1938 poster advertising a "degenerate music" exhibition featured a black, monkey-like caricature, wearing a Star of David badge and playing the saxophone.
The Nazis banned the instrument, and there were “reports of SS soldiers knocking saxophones out of players’ mouths,” whereas with the clarinet the musician could swear he wasn’t using it for jazz or klezmer or whatever entartete Musik a saxophonist might be accused of playing.
I like the saxophone, it’s easy for beginners to get a sound out of it the first time. Terry Crewes plays flute, did you know that? One time he appeared on The Talk and he was challenged to play the tuba. And he actually got sound out of it. Not the most pleasant of sounds, but it was workable. Many tuba beginners, even those who already have some experience with some other wind instrument, just can’t get it to sound.
Wind instruments like flutes and tubas have a very basic premise: you blow air into them, and you get a sound of definite pitch. It’s not that simple in practice. I have heard first hand several music students trying to get sound out of an oboe for the first time. It’s a miracle when they do, even though it can be a rather ugly sound, like some kind of wounded duck.
The saxophone is easier to begin on, but to master it to the level you can play a concerto, that takes dedication.
The earliest saxophone concerto that I’m aware of is the one by Aleksandr Glazunov, a Russian composer who lived in the Soviet Union for its first few years before immigrating to France. His Concerto in E-flat major for Alto Saxophone and Strings, Opus 109, was first published in 1936 by Alphonse Leduc in Paris.
Isn’t there something particularly French about the saxophone? Like, of course Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition uses saxophone.
However, Glazunov’s concerto was first heard in concert in Sweden in 1934, though probably with piano substituting for the strings, with the soloist being German saxophonist Sigurd Raschèr (who, by the way, presented himself as Swedish when he came to America).
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It was fitting that Raschèr’s final concert included this concerto.
Part of Sax’s genius was the idea of using transposition to maximum advantage for composers and performers. Composers had long wanted wind instruments that blend together as seamlessly with each other as the strings, and performers like being able to switch from one instrument to another with a minimum of mental effort.
All the saxophones are written in the treble clef, with a range that starts on the B-flat just below middle C, and extends a few ledger lines above the staff. The musician does not have to learn a completely new fingering to switch from one saxophone to another, nor even any clef other than treble clef. These are the most commonly used saxophones today:
Soprano saxophone in B-flat, sounding a major second higher than written
Alto saxophone in E-flat, sounding a major sixth lower than written
Tenor saxophone in B-flat, sounding a major ninth lower than written
Baritone saxophone in E-flat, sounding a major thirteenth lower than written
Higher- and lower-pitched saxophones, also in B-flat or in E-flat, are found in some ensembles. The instruments of course vary widely in weight. The sopranino saxophone in E-flat probably weighs no more than a piccolo flute, while a bass saxophone in B-flat is probably as heavy as a contrabassoon.
It is my understanding that the soprano saxophone is usually made in a shape more like that of the clarinet, but it is also available in the more distinctive saxophone shape, whereas the higher-pitched saxophones are only made in the straight tube shape.
Sax also made a similar group of saxophones pitched in C and in F which he thought would become standard members of the orchestra. Those never caught on. When orchestral composers want saxophones, they usually call for the E-flat or B-flat instruments.
This gives composers some flexibility. For example, Heitor Villa-Lobos wrote a Fantasia for Saxophone, Three Horns and Strings. He specified saxophone in B-flat, but he didn’t say it has to be soprano saxophone in B-flat, the usual choice.
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The piece is just as effective with tenor saxophone in B-flat.
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To my knowledge, no one has ever played it on bass saxophone in B-flat.
When I first started looking for music for this open thread, the first piece YouTube gave me was the Saxophone Concerto by John Adams.
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Schindler’s List isn’t the only movie score from which composer John Williams has extracted three pieces. In his score for Catch Me If You Can, about the notorious impostor imposter Frank Abagnale, Williams uses the alto saxophone in E-flat to represent the mischievous character played by Leonardo di Caprio.
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The open thread question: what is your favorite music with saxophone solos?
Bonus open question: do you remember hearing Bill Clinton playing saxophone?
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