Set of Parts Saxophone
Quartet (Parts)
SKU:
HL.48024645
Saxophone Quartet Set
of Parts. Composed by
Louis Andriessen. Boosey
& Hawkes Chamber Music.
Classical. Softcover. 48
pages. Duration 780
seconds. Boosey & Hawkes
#M060134821. Published by
Boosey & Hawkes
(HL.48024645).
ISBN
9781784544034. UPC:
888680949099.
In
1989 when Louis
Andriessen was teaching
at the State University
of New York at Buffalo,
Miles Davis Autobiography
was published.While
reading it, he suddenly
knew what the subject of
his piece for the Kronos
Quartet should be - early
be-bop licks and
especially the work of
Charlie Parker. He wanted
to do the impossible -
be-bop is not at all
idiomatic for string
instruments. But be-bop
had been an important
influence on his musical
development when he was
young, and he decided to
do something with this
music from his youth.
Basically the essence of
Charlie Parkers playing
is the extremely fast
tempo. This fast tempo is
really fast, because the
playing is based upon the
chord structure of
existing melodies which
are sometimes played two
or three times as fast as
normal. Parker needed
speed to express what he
musically felt: little
time was left for him.
This is the main
explanation of the title
of the work.In the
beginning of Facing
Death, Andriessen
literally quotes
fragments of Charlie
Parker improvisations. He
also quotes one original
melody: Ornithology
(which is based on How
High the Moon). The 7th
and 8th bars of
Ornithology become an
important motif inthe
piece. The whole
composition is one long
development in Parker's
fast tempo. This work was
composed in 1990 for
string quartet and later
arranged for saxophone
quartet.