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A Pedagogical Study of the Saxophone through the Lens of Acoustic Niche HypothesisNicholas James Childs

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COLLEGE OF MUSIC

A PEDAGOGICAL STUDY OF THE SAXOPHONE THROUGH THE

LENS OF ACOUSTIC NICHE HYPOTHESIS

By

NICHOLAS JAMES CHILDS

A Treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Music

Copyright ã Nicholas Childs 2019

Nicholas Childs defended this treatise on April 19, 2019. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Geoffrey Deibel Professor Directing Treatise

Denise Von Glahn University Representative

Deborah Bish Committee Member

Jeffrey Keesecker Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members and certifies that the treatise has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... iv

1. SPECIALIZATION ...... 1

Saxophone Communities ...... 2 Classical ...... 2 Jazz ...... 5 Niche Communities ...... 8 Acoustic Niche Theory ...... 9

2. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE ...... 13

Part I - Intent ...... 14 Part II – Into the Twentieth Century ...... 22 E. H. Lefèbre ...... 23 The Brown Brothers ...... 28 Part III – World Stage ...... 30 Mexico ...... 31 China ...... 34

3. TONAL PROFILE ...... 39

Manufacturing ...... 39 Evolution of Tonal Profile ...... 43 Jazz ...... 43 Classical ...... 49 Popular Imagination ...... 55 Non-Western Music ...... 57

4. PRACTICAL APPLICATION ...... 60 Outline Sampling ...... 61 Conclusion ...... 63

APPENDIX ...... 65

A. SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY ...... 65

References ...... 67

Biographical Sketch ...... 73

iii ABSTRACT

The purpose of this document is to construct a pedagogical model for which we can better teach the adaptation and versatility of the saxophone within the musical world. In my experience, there seems to be an absence of discussion regarding the rich historical diversity of the instrument. When considering the development of the saxophone it is usually within the scope of a particular musical style, most often through the genres of classical music or jazz. By narrowing our scope to the field that we inhabit we leave out some of the most innovative and interesting approaches to the instrument, and concepts that could potentially be integrated into our own performance practices.

Through an examination of how the instrument has adapted in response to technological, social and aesthetic changes we gain insight into the flexibility of the instrument and begin to dismantle barriers that often define “schools of playing.” By establishing the saxophone’s history of adaptation, I build an argument that there is no singular correct approach to sound, only a rich variety of choices.

Soundscape ecologist Bernard Krause popularized the term “acoustic niche” which originated from his colleague Ruth Happel.1 Acoustic niche refers to the situation by which vocalizing creatures within a particular environment alter their frequencies to compensate for sonic changes to their territory caused by encroaching other species including humans. He states that examining, “the diversity and structure of natural sounds from a rainforest forcefully demonstrates very special relationships of many insects, birds, mammals, and amphibians to each other.”2 The adaptation of creatures’ vocalizations, rising and falling within certain frequency levels, is essential to their survival. Any “masking” or invasion by others threatens an

1 Bernie Krause, Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2002), 26. 2 Bernie Krause. “The Niche Hypothesis: How Animals Taught Us to Dance and Sing.” Wild Sanctuary, 1987. Accessed on March 17, 2019. http://www.appohigh.org/ourpages/auto/2010/12/21/52074732/niche.pdf.\ iv individual’s ability to locate food sources, communicate danger signals and attract mates. In this context, acoustic niche theory becomes a useful metaphor for the development, adaptation, and trajectories of the saxophone in the instrumental world. Since its invention in the mid-nineteenth century, the saxophone has regularly adapted and altered its tonal profile to carve a place in a diverse spectrum of genres and musical styles.

The opening chapter discusses the landscape of the saxophone community as a whole.

This includes the genres of classical and jazz as well as niche communities such as Carnatic and popular musics. In this chapter I frame the issue of “specialization” and provide background material on acoustic niche theory. The second chapter seeks to complicate and enrich the saxophone’s historical narrative in order to demonstrate the logic of various communities existing within. The third chapter begins with a discussion of technological changes made to the instrument since its invention. The remainder of chapter three explores a variety of diverse tonal profiles that exist within general communities such as classical, jazz, popular and non-Western musics. The final chapter considers a practical application of these discussions and presents a sample pedagogical method.

v CHAPTER 1

SPECIALIZATION

Despite being relatively late to the instrumental world, the saxophone has navigated a variety of musical genres and styles to overcome mounting opposition since the time of its invention. Today the instrument occupies all musical venues, performs in an eclectic array of styles and genres, and its flexibility has allowed it to integrate with indigenous musics across the world. Within the academic saxophone community, however, boundaries often arise between the broad structures of classical and jazz saxophone. While these boundaries do not alienate the instrument from its roles in popular and world musics, they hinder young saxophonists within the academy from exploring musics outside of their respective fields. The issue of specialization within these broadly defined communities of classical and jazz saxophone often breed insular factions of students that ultimately end up preventing the development of new and interesting tonal profiles.3 Not only does this isolation stifle imaginative or experimental possibilities for the young musician, it ultimately pushes the community closer to homogeneity.

The ideal foundation for the young saxophonist would include exposure to a wide range of performers and styles to encourage diversity and experimentation. However, what seems more common is a pedagogical approach of imitation, whether that is conscious or sub-conscious. In order to demonstrate the issue of specialization and isolation, this chapter provides a discussion of the dominant classical and jazz communities as well as a brief survey of communities existing outside these structures considered here as “niche”.

3 The term “tonal profile” refers to both timbral sound production and the techniques, or vocabulary, that develop alongside the creation of new music. 1 Saxophone Communities

Classical

Adolphe Sax was a prolific inventor whose legacy includes vast contributions to the instrumental world. Not only was he fully immersed in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century wind band playing, as his father was a manufacturer of musical instruments, he was also a talented instrumentalist himself. After inventing the saxophone in the early 1840s, Sax had formed a close network of composers, including Georges Kastner and Hector Berlioz, who he had convinced to write small pieces for the instrument in its infancy. It was the early endorsement of Berlioz that gave the instrument the boost it needed to survive in the musical world. The saxophone also found a favorable reception in opera around this time as Sax worked backstage at the Paris Opera and found opportunities to get the saxophone included in works by

Meyerbeer and Massenet. Despite their efforts, the instrument would struggle to be recognized in solo and chamber repertoire until the 1930s.

When teaching the general history of the instrument, the current scholarly narrative tends to skip over saxophonists between the latter half of the nineteenth-century when Adolphe Sax was performing and the 1930s when pioneers Marcel Mule and Sigurd Raschèr began their performing and teaching careers. During these years, however, the instrument thrived within the framework of military ensembles thanks to a number of talented saxophonists. Performers who were a part of these ensembles often enjoyed illustrious solo careers in conjunction with their participation in the military ensemble. Contemporaries of Sax who spread the influence of the saxophone before the 1930s include Edouard Lefèbre, Louis-Adolphe Mayeur and Henri

Wuille.4 These musicians propelled the saxophone into the twentieth century and contributed to

4 Richard Ingham, The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 13. 2 the popularity of the instrument in the United States in the military ensembles of Philip Sousa and Patrick Gilmore, a topic that will be discussed at length in the first part of chapter two.

In addition to military band playing, musicians such as Rudy Wiedoeft (1893-1940) entertained crowds in America in the prosperous years leading up to the Great Depression.5

Wiedoeft’s virtuosic playing, novel techniques and prolific output of recordings and arrangements left a significant impact on the popular imagination in regard to what a saxophone should sound like. From the 1930s to the present, the classical saxophone community can be summarized as consisting of three main schools of playing: French, German and American.

These schools of playing are generally attributed to the lineages of Marcel Mule, Sigurd Raschèr and Larry Teal respectively.

Marcel Mule (1901-2001) began his career in French military bands, ultimately winning a competition in 1923 that led to a thirteen-year tenure with the Garde Républicaine, a premier military ensemble.6 Mule was briefly involved with the jazz scene in Paris, established the first saxophone quartet and eventually was appointed Professor of Saxophone at the Paris

Conservatoire, a position that had once been held by Sax and had remained vacant since his dismissal in 1870. Mule’s tenure at the Paris Conservatoire was pivotal in the development of the saxophone. His teaching career produced many important figures in the classical saxophone world such as Jean-Marie Londeix, Frederick Hemke and Daniel Deffayet.

In neighboring Germany, Sigurd Raschèr (1907-2001) left his impact on the saxophone community. Raschèr studied clarinet and piano in a Waldorf school in Germany before taking time off to perform in local dance bands, where he would first encounter the saxophone.

Enthralled with the instrument, Raschèr began a prolific concert career performing with over 250 bands and orchestras all over the Western world, such as the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin

5 Ibid., 38. 6 Ibid., 43. 3 Philharmonic and the Prague Philharmonic. Like Mule, he wrote a large amount of pedagogical material for the instrument; however, his teaching career spanned only a couple of years in the academy, followed by private instruction into the late 1900s. A majority of the standard classical saxophone repertoire was written for these two figures. Their legacies can be traced through hundreds of virtuosos and pedagogues.

The American school is often considered to have a mixture of the French and German influences. However, there were a few concert saxophonists making a name for themselves in the early twentieth century whose styles were distinctly American. Cecil Leeson (1902-1989) made his debut in 1937 at the New York Town Hall.7 His influence resonates, much like Mule’s, in his commissions, dedications and impressive teaching career. Perhaps the most influential saxophonist in the early American school is Laurence (Larry) Teal (1905-1984). Teal contributed greatly to the widespread influence that American universities have had on the classical community. He taught at the University of Michigan for nearly twenty years and established the first doctoral program in saxophone performance in the United States.8 Like Mule and Raschèr, his pedagogical material remains useful and relevant to players today.

The efforts of these pedagogues can be traced to essentially every saxophonist studying within the academy. While a more thorough examination of these specific lineages will take place in the third chapter, any attempt to outline a comprehensive family tree of classical saxophonists would result in thousands of saxophonists who teach or perform across the world.

What is remarkable about this is that so few distinct tonal profiles have emerged in the last century. Within the academy, refinement takes precedence over experimentation, with few exceptions.

7 Ibid., 39. 8 Ibid. 4 Jazz

In the classical saxophone community nearly every performer comes from an academic tradition which directly affects tonal development; jazz is historically the opposite. On the most fundamental level the social connotations attached to jazz are far greater than classical. In the introduction to Geoffrey C. Ward’s Jazz: A History of America’s Music he describes jazz as, “A prism through which so much of American history can be seen—a curious and unusually objective witness to the twentieth century. And so, Jazz necessarily becomes a story about race and race relations and prejudice, about minstrelsy and Jim Crow, lynchings and civil rights.”9

Although the saxophone found itself central to the jazz movement, Stephen Cottrell argues that a paradox exists in that the saxophone was relatively absent in its precursor musical genres such as ragtime and blues.10 While the instrument may have had a slight involvement in ragtime, the genre was typically piano-driven because of the efforts of pianist Scott Joplin.

Similarly, the blues was originally a vocal tradition. Brass bands incorporated saxophones as early as 1910 with the Holmes Band of Lutcher, a town situated just north of New Orleans.11

Early traveling vaudeville and minstrel show groups, such as the Brown Brothers, also incorporated the saxophone. The saxophone proved versatile and through its broad marketing as easy to play, the instrument became attractive to early jazz musicians.

New Orleans clarinetist Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) adopted the soprano saxophone in

1920. As Richard Ingham observed, “Bechet’s style on the soprano is unique, incorporating long, flowing melodic lines with driving accents and an unmistakable vibrato.”12 Bechet is known for exaggerated wide-amplitude vibrato that masked the soprano saxophone’s intonation problems.

9 Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns, Loren Schoenberg, and Michael Cuscuna. Ken Burn's jazz: the story of America's music. (New York: Columbia/Legacy, 2000), vii. 10 Stephan Cottrell, The Saxophone (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2013), 185. 11 Ibid., 184. 12 Ingham, 126. 5 Johnny Hodges (1906-1970) made a name for himself playing in the Duke Ellington Band for forty-two years. He defined the role of lead alto within the developing saxophone sections in big band ensembles.

Coleman Hawkins (1904-1969), one of many notable saxophonists to come from Kansas

City, which became a cultural and economic oasis for jazz musicians, is perhaps the most influential early tenor saxophonist.13 He was greatly influenced by Rudy Wiedoeft, who had been recording for a few years by the time Hawkins began playing. Hawkins navigated trends in saxophone playing with a full-bodied sound, a Bechet-like vibrato (narrower), and Wiedoeft’s flexibility. Hawkins first recording with Dizzy Gillespie in 1944 is widely considered the first bebop recording.14 The tenor saxophone became increasingly popular due to players such as

Hawkins, as well as Ben Webster (1909-1973) and Chu Berry (1908-1941). Tenor saxophonist

Lester Young (1907-1959) performed in the Fletcher Henderson Band, replacing Hawkins, and the Count Basie Big Band. As Ingham has explained, Young challenged the stereotype of tenor playing, as his “lightness of tone coincided with his lightness of phrasing. He used silence as a structural device, and often ran his phrasing across bar lines and against the usual accepted phrase lengths.”15

An in-depth discussion of saxophonists that would dominate the bebop scene, including

Charlie Parker will be discussed at length in chapter three. Parker was known for his virtuosic and frenetic improvisations, a common trait of the bebop movement. The next few decades in jazz are not as easily categorized as they are in the realm of classical saxophone. Multiple distinct jazz styles coexisted at the same time. Saxophonists such as Lee Konitz (b.1927) and

Gerry Mulligan (1927-1996) were at the forefront of the Cool Jazz movement, whose smooth

13 Cottrell, 198. 14 Ingham, 127. 15 Ibid., 128. 6 and lyrical aesthetics contrasted with the aesthetics of the bebop movement. This movement gave way to other notable players, including Art Pepper (1925-1982) and Paul Desmond (1924-1977), whose fame stems from his performance of Brubeck’s hit Take Five (1959). Cannonball (Julian)

Adderley (1928-1975) was part of a reaction to this West Coast “cool” movement and incorporated more rhythm and blues elements (driving vs. cool); it was known as “hard bop.”

Saxophone giants John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman are also the subjects of chapter three. Both were experimental in style and contributed greatly to the free jazz movement. As

Ingham has described, Coleman’s playing was known for “fragmented lines, blues licks, bop interjections, repetitions, cries and wails, use of both extremes of register as pure sound, but always a sense of forward movement, of narrative.”16 Moving toward the twenty-first century lineages begin to develop from the earlier players that parallel the classical world mentioned above.

Tenor saxophonists Archie Shepp (b. 1937) and Albert Ayler (1936-1970) expanded on the freedom demonstrated by Coleman and Coltrane by incorporating techniques such as multiphonics and normalizing extreme register playing. Figures such as Eric Dolphy (1928-

1964) and Anthony Braxton (b.1945) expanded upon the creativity of the free jazz movement, which would encourage contemporaries such as Evan Parker (b.1944) and John Zorn (b.1953).

Saxophonists including Joshua Redman (b.1969), Joe Lovano (b.1952) and Branford Marsalis

(b.1960) continue to build upon bop traditions as they exist inside and out of the academic tradition. Saxophonists Michael Brecker (b.1949 - 2004) and David Sandborn (b.1945) made careers navigating under the umbrella of jazz-fusion in the 1980s and 1990s. Fusion combined elements of American rock, R&B, funk and jazz and often varies in complexity.

16 Ingham, 138. 7 When discussing jazz pedagogy, it is important to understand that jazz education emerged much later than classical music education. Jazz courses weren’t offered in higher education until the 1940s and the first fully devoted Jazz Studies programs were not created until after the NAJE (National Association of Jazz Educators) was formed in 1968.17 A brief survey of saxophonists in jazz institutions such as Jaleel Shaw and Gary Smulyan from the Manhattan

School of Music, Jerry Bergonzi of New England Conservatory and Dave Liebman reveals a trend of traditional playing that never ventures far from bop. Gregg Gelb argues that a “fault of modern jazz education, … is that countless numbers of licks and patterns from Young, Parker,

Coltrane, and others are expected to be memorized and used for improvising, decreasing the amount of individuality in today’s styles.”18 In the same way that classical saxophonists risk their work becoming homogenous via specialization, jazz musicians become increasingly dependent on the ideas of predecessors.

Niche Communities

While a majority of saxophonists exist within the two broader communities above, there are a few utilizing the instrument to explore interesting non-Western musics, including Carnatic music in India, ethnic jazz fusions in Ethiopia and West Africa, maqam tonal systems in Egypt,

Cantonese opera in China, and Tejano music in Mexico. In addition, contemporary artists such as

Colin Stetson and Moonhooch are using the instrument in unconventional ways that contribute to the electro-acoustic movement characterized by the use of acoustic instruments to invoke sounds of the electronica genre.

17 Jaap Gerritse, "Jazz and Light Music in Music Teaching Institutions," Fontes Artis Musicae 32, no. 3 (1985): 157- 60. 18 Gregg Gelb, "1959 jazz: A historical study and critical analysis of jazz and its artists and recordings in 1959." PhD diss., The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008, 17.

8 The following chapters explore these niche communities in greater detail and provide supplemental examples of what the instrument is capable of as well as how musicians have adapted the instrument to musical genres outside of Western musical traditions. In classical saxophone spheres in particular, tone development is of the utmost priority. Because of this, objective expectations and guidelines have been implemented as to what a “good” tone should sound like as a classical saxophonist. Through an exploration of the instrument’s flexibility, we begin to dismantle tonal barriers that often define “schools of playing.” By establishing the saxophone’s history of adaptation and examining how saxophonists have evolved their tonal profiles I argue that there is no correct or incorrect approach to sound, only a rich variety of choices.

Acoustic Niche Hypothesis

By outlining the various threads saxophonists have traced since the instrument’s invention we begin to see a trend of adaptation, navigation and evolving complex communities.

Each community consists of many individuals who are unique in their musical taste and cultural/historical background. Many parallels exist between the adaptation and complex relationships of the saxophone community as a whole and acoustic ecological work done by scholars such as Bernie Krause (b. 1938) and R Murray Schafer (b.1933).

Bernard L. Krause is the President, CEO and founder of Wild Sanctuary, Inc. Since 1968, he, “has traveled the world recording and archiving the sounds of creatures and environments large and small.”19 Krause has recorded over fifty albums of natural soundscapes and has designed interactive sound sculptures for spaces such as the Smithsonian Museum of Natural

History in Washington D.C., the Chicago Science Museum and the American Museum of

Natural History in New York City. In addition to his soundscape recordings Krause took over for

19 "Bernie Krause." TED. Accessed February 18, 2019. https://www.ted.com/profiles/1549455.

9 renowned folk instrumentalist Pete Seeger in the Weavers. He holds a PhD in creative arts from

Union Institute and University in Cincinnati and has published extensively in the field of soundscape ecology.

In the glossary of Krause’s Wild Soundscapes, he defines the term acoustic ecology as,

“the study of how sound in given environments affects humans and non-humans alike.”20 This term was brought into the lexicon by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax from Simon Fraser

University in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the late 1970s. In the beginning of the environmental movement in the late 1960s R. Murray Schafer,

encouraged an aesthetic appreciation of environmental sound, characterizing the soundscape as a continuously unfolding symphony for whose content we were all responsible, and speaking out against the ever-increasing levels of noise pollution resulting from modern industrialization.21

Soundscape ecologist Bernard Krause popularized the term “acoustic niche” which originated from his colleague Ruth Happel.22 Acoustic niche refers to the situation by which vocalizing creatures within a particular environment alter their frequencies to compensate for sonic changes to their territory caused by encroaching other species including humans. He states that examining, “the diversity and structure of natural sounds from a rainforest forcefully demonstrates very special relationships of many insects, birds, mammals, and amphibians to each other.”23 The adaptation of creatures’ vocalizations, rising and falling within certain frequency levels, is essential to their survival. Any “masking” or invasion by others, often as a result of deforestation and climate change, threatens an individual’s ability to locate food sources, communicate danger signals and attract mates.

20 Bernie Krause. Wild Soundscapes, 193. 21 Jonathan Gilmurray. "Sounding the Alarm: An Introduction to Ecological Sound Art." Musicological Annual 52, no. 2 (2016): 71-84. 22 Bernie Krause, Wild Soundscapes, 26. 23 Bernie Krause. “The Niche Hypothesis,” 2. 10 Many questions arise from Krause’s work on acoustic environment that relate to musical instruments and how they not only alter in manufacturing, but how musicians have adapted the instrument to their own sonic imaginations. In his 1993 essay, Krause highlights the ability of the

Jivaro people to "recognize the subtle differences in sound between the various mini-habitats (as small as 20 sq. meters) in a forest, even when these localities appear to have visually identical biological and geological components."24 He argues that this advanced echo-location is vital to the tribal people’s survival. The Jivaro’s ability to navigate their environment is due to the rich diversity of vocalizing species. It is useful to consider if we were to place the Jivaro tribe in an environment populated by one or two vocalizing species would they maintain the ability to navigate to such an extraordinary degree? The resulting homogeneity would impact navigation as well as the location of essentials such as food sources and water. Similarly, if the saxophone community became more homogenous in tone and style the musicians within would surely find it increasingly difficult to reach audience members or find unique opportunities to create and experiment. As an audience member there would be no reward in searching for other artists if they all sounded similar in tone and character.

This example is reminiscent of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s culture industry.

The term culture industry was presented in Adorno and Horkheimer’s work Dialectic of

Enlightenment. It refers to popular culture being similar to a factory mass-producing standardized cultural goods that ultimately manipulate society into being docile and content.

They argue that “culture now impresses the same stamp on everything.”25 Adorno and

Horkheimer would likely argue that homogeneity in sound leads to the loss of the individual and

24 Ibid. 25 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (Frankfurt School: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception), Accessed April 22, 2019. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm.

11 is a product of a manufactured aesthetic by the culture industry. In the case of the saxophone, the readily available online resources and mass-produced recordings deliver a standardized tonal profile.

In the same article, Krause discusses species of birds such as the Asian paradise flycatcher which are specialized vocalizers that have the ability to occupy several levels of the acoustic environment. In contrast, species such as the American warbler come from a younger environment, learn only one song, and thus find themselves unable to adapt to any disturbances in their environment such as deforestation or invading species. Much like the Asian paradise flycatcher, the saxophone has adapted to vocalize in a variety of musical genres in order to survive. As discussed in the next chapter, the instrument initially struggled within the classical medium. Being relatively young among orchestral instrument families, the saxophone never found a place in standard classical orchestrations and was often deemed exotic or auxiliary. The instrument owes its survival to popular musics and its use in various non-Western settings. The acoustic niche hypothesis becomes a useful metaphor for the development, adaptation, and trajectory of the saxophone in the instrumental world.

12 CHAPTER 2

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

By having a greater understanding of the complicated and diverse history of the saxophone and the figures who helped shape it we begin to understand the logic behind threads that are traced throughout the instrument’s history. Often as young saxophonists, the relatively small historical instruction we receive concerns itself with the chaotic life of Adolphe Sax, then we learn of the exploits of the two iconic concert saxophonists, Marcel Mule of France and

Sigurd Raschèr of Germany. We follow lineages of “schools of playing,” compile resource recordings and discuss the histories of some of our most famous players and the composers who wrote for them. In the context of this classical narrative it becomes increasingly easy to dismiss the importance of jazz or non-Western musics, for instance, as a young classical student. Rather than tracing our direct ancestry, the goal should be to foster interest in the diverse spectrum of playing and history that the instrument has to offer.

The following chapter is split into three sections: Part 1 focuses on the intentions of

Adolphe Sax, the environment surrounding the instruments conception, and its trajectory as a solo instrument; Part II focuses on bridging the gap between Adolphe Sax and what is considered the revival of serious saxophone playing in the 1930s and will focus on contemporaries of

Adolphe Sax who helped propel the instrument into the twentieth century; Part III discusses the adaptation of the saxophone on the world stage with a focus on Mexico and China. By complicating and enriching the saxophone’s historical narrative we demonstrate the instrument’s flexibility and foster a culture of exploration in young students.

13 Part I – Intent

The saxophone’s entry into the world of classical music was tumultuous. Belgian instrument maker Antoine Joseph Sax (1814-1884), better known as Adolphe Sax, was fully immersed in the tonal landscape of nineteenth century wind instruments, yet it is speculation as to what the precise inspiration was for his new invention. In order to discuss the tonal profile and intended uses of the saxophone we must first explore the tradition of wind playing in the nineteenth century. A history of Sax’s involvement in the wind band will perhaps provide insight into the sound that was in his mind as he built his new instrument.

Bandmaster and composer Arthur Clappé described the nature of wind band instruments in the nineteenth century and Adolphe Sax’s contribution as follows:

Before Sax entered the field as an instrument maker, wind-bands, such as they were, presented a weird aspect, and produced a most wonderfully complex, often inharmonious not to say discordant agglomeration, of sound. The elements entering into their formation were all awry, no uniformity of dimensions or forms, no scientific adaptability of mouthpieces; some instruments had keys, others valves of various kinds, imperfect in construction and ill-fitting; relationships by groups of instruments had not been thought of, in fact no such kinship existed, and the wind-band was a heterogeneous mass of badly assorted sound mediums, such as the key bugle, ophicleide, serpent and Russian horn, all calculated for effect of ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing but noise’ and that in volumes immeasurable.26

Clappé argues that in the midst of this myriad of heterogeneous instrument families that “Sax evolved order out of chaos.”27 Rebekah Crouch adds that early nineteenth century wind instruments were quite undeveloped in comparison to their contemporary counterparts.

Chromatic pitches were not often produced by means of keys, but rather by “forked” fingerings.

Brass instruments of the time were essentially limited to the harmonic series in which they were

26 Arthur A. Clappé, The Wind Band and its Instruments. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1911), 197. 27 Ibid. 14 pitched. Crouch continues in great detail discussing each instrument’s design as it relates to keys, chromatic capabilities, intonation and range.28

In the middle of the nineteenth century, emphasis was placed on thickening the often designated “weak” bass voices in the large ensemble, which was primarily facilitated by the addition of larger versions of currently existing instruments, such as the bass trombone. Crouch states that, “methods were now being sought to add mechanisms to the existing brass instruments to enable them to play melodically,” which resulted in the keyed bugle. 29 It was at this time that wind bands were gaining popularity in countries outside of France.

In addition to the rising popularity of the wind-band genre, Anthony Baines mentions the

“mechanization” of musical instrument manufacturing that was happening simultaneously.

Leading into the mid-nineteenth century “followed a period of intense activity which produced our modern designs… These years also saw a great revision of woodwind bores in order to clear weak spots in the compass and to give a generally louder, more open sound.”30 This era of manufacturing not only produced some of the prototypes still used today, but also led to a tonal shift in wind playing towards projection – a factor that would eventually become one of the saxophone’s most defining characteristics.

Adolphe Sax arrived in Paris in 1842, having already achieved some recognition as an instrument maker. According to Crouch,

Sometime between 1835 and 1837, he had obtained a six-year patent for the construction of a new bass clarinet, which had been highly praised by the French composers of the day, and which had been already adopted by the Opera Orchestra in Paris.31

28 Rebekah Ellen Crouch, “The Contributions of Adolphe Sax to the Wind Band” (Dissertation, Florida State University, 1969), 14-28. 29 Ibid., 28-34. 30 Anthony Cuthbert Baines, Woodwind Instruments and Their History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1962), 312-15. 31 Crouch, 42. 15 Sax must have also brought with him fully realized versions of his saxhorn family and a saxophone from Belgium.

In 1845 a commission was formed to improve the state of the French military band.

Georges Kastner (1810-1867), a close friend and colleague of Adolphe Sax, was appointed to an administrative role. Sax submitted a proposal for a new instrumentation that featured one piccolo, one Eb clarinet, six clarinets, two saxophones, valved cornets, trumpets, alto through contra-bass saxhorns and percussion. Each sample instrumentation recommended to the commission included instruments of Sax’s making, which spurred immediate protests against the use of Sax’s instruments.32 In response to protesters, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) responded:

A monopoly of bugles, trombones, trumpets and tubas has not been promised to anyone. These instruments will be examined. If those of Sax are better, they must be adopted; but if to the contrary, those of the competitors surpass Sax’s, the adoption will be directed to them; nothing is more obvious. Moreover, this question is secondary. This adoption of instruments is not being conducted in the interest of the manufacturer, but of those in the arts and the army. The agitation of the heads of workshops where wind instruments are made are united, but it will have no more influence on the Commission than would the merchants of brass, who, if the reorganization is put into operation, are assured of a substantial increase. With these parallel considerations, we arrive, following the chain of interests, to the miners who work extracting ore.33

The Commission decided to have a contest on the Champs de Mars pitting band against band. Whoever got the popular vote would win and their instrumentation proposal would be accepted. Ultimately Sax prevailed, as his family of saxhorns was described as offering a

“powerful and homogeneous sonority, capable of the most subtle forte and piano distinguishable in the open-air.”34 This competition helped popularize Sax’s family of saxhorns. In addition to the military band, the Distin family, a brass quintet from England, helped facilitate the saxhorn’s appeal by requesting and touring with a set of the instruments.35

32 Georges Kastner, “Manuel general de musique militaire” (Paris: Typographie de Firmin Didot Frères, 1848), 266. 33 Hector Berlioz, “Feuilleton,” Journal des Débats, April 1, 1849. 34 Crouch, 54. 35 Ibid., 85. 16 As mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, Sax’s ties to military bands were strong. This contest was not Sax’s only involvement with French military bands. He wrote an article in 1867 titled De la necessite des musiques militaires that argued against efforts to suppress the number of military bands in France. While he advocated for the needs and support of the military musician, some speculate that Sax was only thinking of his own business interests, as his instruments were championed primarily within the military band medium.36

Exploring the tonal landscape of nineteenth century wind playing and Sax’s rise to success in the wind band medium could suggest that he intended the instrument to be used solely as a blending agent in this medium. In 1842, one year after the completion of his bass saxophone in C, Adolphe Sax allegedly walked from Brussels to Paris carrying the large instrument to play for Berlioz, who was an old acquaintance and an admirer of Sax’s work. Berlioz wrote in an article the following day:

The tone color of the saxophone bridges the gap between the tone colors of a brass and woodwind instrument. But it also brings to mind, however more remotely, the sound of the strings. I find its principal advantage to be the richly changeable beauty of its various expressive capabilities. At one time low and calm, then passionate, dreamy, and melancholy; indefinite, plaintive howl of the wind in the branches; moreover, like the uncanny, fading vibrations of a bell long after it has been struck. I know, up to now, of no other instrument that possesses this particular sound that seems to lie at the limits of that which is audible.37

Berlioz’s public praise garnered the attention that allowed Sax to open a workshop in

Paris where he would improve upon and manufacture his instruments.

The specific inspiration for the saxophone’s origin is difficult to ascertain. Horwood describes an instrument manufactured by Scottish bandmaster, William Meikle, fitting a similar description to the saxophone in all but bore. Meikle’s alto fagotto was made of wood and

36 Kenneth N. Deans “A Comprehensive Performance Project in Saxophone Literature with an Essay Consisting of Translated Source Readings in the Life and Work of Adolphe Sax.” (Dissertation, The University of Iowa, 1980), 139. 37 Hector Berlioz, “Feuilleton.” 17 resembled a tenor bassoon, yet it used a small single-reed mouthpiece instead of the typical double reed. Horwood argues that “it is doubtful that Sax knew anything of it, at least at the time he began to work on the saxophone.”38

Throughout his career Sax experimented with the clarinet. In 1864 Francois Fétis,

“bemoan[ed] the clarinet’s imperfections and suggested that these will not be overcome until a conical bore is adopted.”39 Lavoix, however, thought that the invention of the saxophone came from a desire to make an octave-speaking clarinet.40 Sax was most certainly trying to overcome this issue, as he had previously experimented with the tapered tube of the clarinet. Horwood argues that it is improbable that Sax came to the idea of the saxophone by experimenting with tapering a clarinet, as the first saxophone developed would have been around the same length as the clarinet and resulted in the soprano saxophone.41 The first saxophone built by Sax, however, was a bass in C.

In 1848 Georges Kastner gave his account of the saxophone’s invention. He painted an image of Sax toiling over one failed experiment after another until the perfect instrument was born, which is a highly romanticized and perhaps flawed account. Kastner also described the role that material and timbre may have played in the instrument’s invention.

[Sax] knew that wood gave a softer sound... that brass gave a much more vigorous, noisier sound than that of wood. He knew that, by reason of these characteristics of differences in sound, wood instruments in orchestras, and particularly in military bands, are powerless in competing against a choir of brass instruments, and that, in symphony orchestras, string instruments do not match woodwind instruments in sonority.42

Sax was fully aware of the timbral qualities of wooden instruments. Horwood argues, however, that Sax chose to use brass simply because the making of a tube with the amount of taper

38 Wally Horwood, Adolphe Sax 1814-1894 His Life and Legacy (Baldock, England: Egon, 1992), 34. 39 François-Joseph Fétis and Arthur Pougin, Biographie Universelle Des Musiciens Et Bibliographie Générale De La Musique. (Brussels: Meline, Cans &, 1800), 414. 40 Horwood, 34. 41 Ibid., 34-37. 42 Kastner, 234-235. 18 required would have been extremely difficult in wood and practically impossible for the larger instruments.43

Perhaps a more practical theory for the inspiration of the saxophone is connected to Sax’s father being a manufacturer of the ophicleide. As Sax worked extensively on perfecting the bass clarinet, he had the means to experiment with materials and mouthpieces. In regard to this particular experiment, Horwood states that a

demonstration took place at the Royal College of Music, London during the World Saxophone Congress of 1976. Paul Sargeant, an accomplished clarinetist and performer on obsolete wind instruments, demonstrated a very serviceable ophicleide by first using the normal cup mouthpiece to show the euphonium-like qualities of the instrument. Then, in view of the audience, a bass clarinet mouthpiece was substituted. The subsequent quality of tone must have put the question of the saxophone’s derivation beyond all reasonable doubt to any that heard it.44

Horwood also states “the ophicleide, being an instrument of bass register, tallies with the fact that the first saxophone was of similar pitch.”45 He goes on to mention similar proportions of the bore to that of a saxophone of like size. In addition, Sax constructed full sets of saxophones in F and C suited for orchestral playing, and in Eb and Bb, keys suited better for military playing. The construction of these saxophone families was surely an effort to make the instrument as accessible and flexible as possible within these orchestrations. It is entirely plausible that Sax stumbled upon this new tone color and wanted nothing more than for his instruments to be played in a diverse array of musical ensembles, rather than for a specifically intended group.

Yet for all the praise that the saxophone received during its early development it never entered the canon as an orchestral instrument. It had its small victories, but much of its success was due to the tenacity of Adolphe Sax to track down and associate himself with composers. The instrument’s progress as a serious concert instrument was steady but not impressive. The

43 Horwood, 34. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 19 championing of the saxophone was mostly left to Sax’s close friends including Arbane,

Cressona’s, Klosé and Mohr, who wrote small solo and chamber works for the instrument. For example, the first account of the saxophone in a large ensemble was in 1844 for Kastner’s opera

Le Dernier Roi de Juda. The saxophone was used in cantilenas by Meyerbeer and Massenet, an opera by Ambrois Thomas and in the symphonic poem La Jeunesse by Saint-Saëns.46

Adolphe Sax taught at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1857 to 1870, yet despite his promotion of the instrument it seemed to fall into obscurity after his death in 1894. Perhaps a key factor in the saxophone’s absence from the limelight of the musical world was the lack of professional players. The Paris Conservatory position was vacant for a little over seventy years before being filled by Marcel Mule in 1944. According to Horwood, Edward Elgar (1857-1934) sought the use of a saxophone quartet after being delighted by the sound of the instrument but was dissuaded from doing so as the expense and scarcity of players would be too bothersome.47

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) used a quartet of saxophones in his Sinfonia Domestica but was quickly discouraged by the difficulty of procuring the quartet. They were not used in the second performance as the parts were doubled to begin with. Jaap Kool states that “Strauss ‘s [addition of] ‘in extreme emergency’ to his ‘ad libitum’ … shows that he did not really think of the use of the saxophone from the start as indispensable.”48

Sax dealt with overwhelming pressure from rival instrument manufacturers for the majority of his career. This started as early as 1843 with Sax’s improved bass clarinet. Kool writes:

When Donizetti wanted to use several improved instruments by Sax in the world premiere of his new opera Don Sebastian in 1843, he ran into strong opposition on all sides. The newspapers, influenced in part by the competition, publicized the affair, until Donizetti was finally obliged to scratch Sax’s instruments from his score.49

46 Ibid., 166. 47 Ibid. 48 Jaap Kool and Lawrence Gwozdz, Das Saxophon (Baldock, Hertfordshire: Egon, 1987), 259. 49 Ibid., 202. 20 Pushback from rival instrument manufacturers and Sax’s mounting health and legal battles were surely factors in the instrument’s decline.

The European general public was exposed to the saxophone only through the occasional

French military band. That changed, however, when variety act musicians, such as the American

Saxophone Band and the Brown Brothers Saxophone Sextet, as well as soloists like Rudy

Wiedoeft (1893-1940), began to gain notice overseas in the early twentieth century. These vaudeville and minstrel groups placed the saxophone into the popular imagination and set the stage for the saxophone’s adoption into jazz. Popular culture encouraged the saxophone’s involvement in the concert band idiom with groups such as Patrick Gilmore’s 22nd Regiment

Band and Sousa’s Marine Band of 1891. Horwood explains that the “legitimate world of music was, in varying degrees, shocked, disgusted and outraged by this commercial cacophony.”50

Interestingly, the other instruments associated with these acts such as trumpet and clarinet never endured such close scrutiny as did the saxophone as they were already integral parts of orchestral instrumentation.

The characterization of the saxophone as a virtuosic solo instrument was born out of a mix between popular movements, where the instrument was used solely in an “entertainment” role, and changes in the manufacturing of the instrument, not unlike the movement discussed in the mid 1800s to improve the instrument’s versatility and projection. Perhaps this soloistic connotation is contrary to Adolphe Sax’s original intent. From its inception, the saxophone was praised for its flexibility and homogenous characteristics. It provided a blend between distinct timbres and instrument families. Kool even goes as far as describing the saxophone as “a sonorous, piano instrument, it is hardly capable of holding its own against another instrument. Its

50 Horwood, 169-174. 21 sound is easily absorbed by almost all other instruments and, for that reason, is particularly suitable as an unobtrusive, filler voice.”51

Beginning in the early twentieth century American manufacturers experimented with mouthpieces with narrow, square chambers. Villiers explains:

The idea was to create a mouthpiece that would project more in the context of the jazz band. An expert like Ralph Morgan (who designs and improves contemporary mouthpieces) believes that the interior square of the mouthpiece immediately changes the volume of the instrument. The acoustic construction of the saxophone does not favor square mouthpieces as the dimensions of such a mouthpiece lead to deficiencies in intonation. The brighter sound does not equal projection as some believe, and as a consequence of the square mouthpiece the higher harmonic partials sound thin and very sharp.52

Experiments like these in changing the interior mouthpiece design and ergonomics were all a means to improve the saxophone’s power and versatility. As the instrument didn’t have a consistent home in genres of classical music, saxophonists had to adapt to playing in large halls, in front of dance bands, and as part of a diverse set of variety acts. The combination of experimenting with bore and crook sizes, widening tone holes and mouthpiece design paved the way for the saxophone’s breakthrough as a solo instrument.

Part II – Into the Twentieth Century

In the latter half of the nineteenth century the public slowly lost interest in Adolphe Sax and his instruments. In a treatise on the early history of the saxophone Frederic Hemke states,

[Sax’s] great reforms in instrumentation were completed, consequently the press took less interest in him as an individual. The glowing reports of Sax’s instruments were heard as echoes rather than declarations. The mention of saxophone became more dependent upon the successes of its individual performers.53

51 Kool, 247. 52 Abraham Albertus De Villiers, “The Development of the Saxophone 1850-1950: Its Influence on Performance and the Classical Repertory.” (Dissertation, University of Pretoria, 2014), 41. 53 Fred L. Hemke. "The Early History of the Saxophone." (Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison. 1975), 359. 22 A possible reason the saxophone fell into obscurity is that the majority of competent saxophonists were playing in military bands at the time. In the late 1800s the Garde Républicaine band “featured a section of outstanding saxophone virtuosos: Ségou in, Casqueless, Patteyn,

Thiels, Dupaquier, Lalaude, Meyer.”54 Due to the influence of the French military band model in

Europe, saxophones were being used in Belgian, Spanish and Italian military ensembles moving into the twentieth century.

As a majority of the professional saxophonists in the nineteenth century took positions in military ensembles there were few left to teach and concertize. “The German author August

Kalkbrenner observed the absence of saxophones in Germany, Austria, Russia and England in

1884.”55 This was in part due to the absence of players in the area. One saxophonist in particular has seemed to escape the popular narrative of saxophone history despite being so pivotal in its development.

E. A. Lefèbre

Edward Abraham Lefèbre (1834-1911) was born in The Hague, Holland. Little is known of Lefèbre’s early musical training, yet his initial impression of the saxophone and its maker are well documented. In 1919 Conn published an account of the meeting between Lefèbre and Sax:

Monsieur Lefèbre was the most enthusiastic lover of the saxophone the writer has ever known. He has often told of how he met Antoine Sax who was struggling to obtain recognition of the saxophone by the musicians and of how he, Lefèbre, vowed he would take up the saxophone and give up the clarinet of which he was master, and try to prove to the world that the saxophone was a serious and most worthy instrument. He kept his word.56

In addition to having corresponded with Sax, Lefèbre was surely exposed to the playing of virtuoso saxophonists who came before him such as Henri Wuille and Charles Soualle, both of

54 Hemke, 242. 55 Hemke, 240. 56 Conn promotional material. 23 whom were touring members of Antoine Jullien’s famous orchestra in the 1850s. Like the aforementioned players Lefèbre had his start on clarinet before seriously pursuing saxophone.

Between 1855 and 1873 Lefèbre had traveled the world extensively. He first moved to

Cape Town, South Africa in 1859 where he was appointed musical director of a German singing society, owned a music shop, and performed regularly.57 He returned to Holland in 1863 and would work for the next six years at F. J. Weygand and Company, who published bi-weekly saxophone newsletters. He would continue to concertize and compose original works for the instrument – effectively being marketed through the publishing company he worked for. In 1869

Lefèbre secured a job in London as saxophonist in the sixty-two-piece orchestra at the Royal

Alhambra Palace in Leicester Square.58 He would go on to secure a position as clarinetist in the

Parepa Rosa English Opera Company. This was pivotal to his saxophone career as it would take him to the United States. When his commitments with the opera company were fulfilled, he stayed in the United States and became one of the leading soloists in the country.

Lefèbre’s musical endeavors became solely saxophone-centric when he was asked to join the 22nd Regiment National Guard Band in 1873. The Guard Band’s new director, Patrick

Sarsfield Gilmore (1829-1892), would unknowingly increase the popularity of the saxophone exponentially. Noyes writes in regard to Gilmore’s instrumentation: “The addition of an entire

SATB saxophone section (Lefèbre was the alto saxophonist and soloist), indicated Gilmore had learned about military band instrumentation from the Garde Républicaine.”59 In reaction to

Lefèbre’s first concert with the 22nd Regiment Band in 1873, the New York Times stated, “Mr.

Lefèbre rendered a solo on the saxophone – a new instrument resembling the cello in tone.”60

57 American Art Journal. New York, March 31, 1883. 18. 58 Ibid., 22 59 James Russell Noyes. "Edward A. Lefebre (1834–1911): Preeminent Saxophonist of the Nineteenth Century." (Dissertation, Manhattan School of Music, 2000). 60 Gilmore Band Program, Academy of Music (Brooklyn), 18 November 1873, Frank Cipolla collection, Buffalo, New York. 24 As a member of the 22nd Regiment Band Lefèbre toured extensively in the United States as well as a participating in a European tour in 1878 that included concerts in Dublin, Liverpool,

Glasgow, Brussels, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and the Hague.61 Lefèbre received much praise during his time in Europe. One particular brochure showcased his contact with composer Richard

Wagner:

Lefèbre was playing at the Schutzen House, Leipzig, where the musical instructors of the Geward House advised him to play for the great Richard Wagner, who was there striving to invent some brass instrument for special use in certain of his grand operas. The soft and sympathetic tone of the saxophone together with its almost unlimited power, proved to them to be the very instrument the great Wagner had been searching for so long. With this royal stamp of approval Lefèbre at once sprang into popularity, and he was booked for special engagements as saxophone soloist at many of the musical centers of Europe-as Hanover, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Wiesbaden, Denmark, Stockholm, Leipzig and other places. It was while playing as soloist [sic] at one of these formal musical festivals, where only the highest grade of music was played … that Mr. Lefèbre experienced his first and only fit of nervousness or stage fright. The audience was highly critical and not given to applauding; but when Lefèbre finished playing, the audience forgot itself and gave him a spontaneous and enthusiastic encore.62

Lefèbre took this time to freelance across Europe, yet cancelled plans to tour in Russia due to commitments back in the United States. Noyes speculates that,

his immediate departure for America leaves one wondering what might have been if Tchaikovsky had heard Lefèbre; or Rimsky-Korsakov, who, as Inspector of the Imperial Russian Navy Bands (1873-84) wrote three works for solo instruments and military band at this time.63

The last in a long list of notable contributions Lefèbre made to the saxophone was the formation of the New York Saxophone Quartette Club alongside his 22nd Regiment Band colleagues Franz Wallrabe, Henry Steckelberg and F. William Schultze. Gilmore began to aggressively feature the saxophone as a soloist and in quartet settings, which encouraged new original works to be written for saxophones in all combinations. This exposure was certainly

61 Harry Wayne Schwartz. Bands of America (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1957), 105. 62 C. D. Phillips, “32 Years of Musical Triumphs,” Edward A. Lefebre promotional brochure, (c.1903), private collection of Carole Lefebre, St. Petersburg, Florida. 63 Noyes, 42 25 necessary as the saxophone was still relatively unheard of in the United States. “Printed on a music hall program dated 4 December 1875, Lefèbre’s instrument was incorrectly identified as

‘Saxhorne,’ a valved brass instrument found in many bands.”64

Later in life, Lefèbre lived in Elkhart, Indiana, the location of America’s largest instrument manufacturers. He aligned himself with the Conn Corporation, playing on their new line of “Wonder” saxophones, and worked as a “distinguished virtuoso [who tested] personally every instrument before it was sent to the prospective buyer.”65 It is speculated, as it was with

Sigurd Raschèr and Gus Buescher, that Conn’s new line of saxophone was inspired by Lefèbre’s own saxophone given to him by Adolphe Sax. The widespread appeal of the saxophone in

America was due to the advertising efforts of companies like Buescher, Conn, and Martin that marketed the saxophone as an easy, yet versatile instrument that anyone could learn. Lefèbre remained with Gilmore’s Band until a short time after Gilmore’s death after which he would briefly become one of a few members that migrated to John Philip Sousa’s (1854-1932) New

Marine Band.

The format of Sousa’s concerts typically opened with overtures and encores then would continue to a solo that featured an instrument in the ensemble. Notable saxophonists who served as section leaders and were featured as soloists in Sousa’s band include Jean H.B. Moeremans,

Benjamin Vereechen and H. Benne Henton. Each of these musicians was a virtuoso in his own right and achieved positive critical acclaim in very much the same way as E. A. Lefèbre. Sousa’s ensemble performed hundreds of concerts a year, traveled to every state and territory in the

United States, toured extensively in Europe and was featured on some of the world’s largest

64 Noyes, 35 65 Margret Hindle Hazen and Robert M. Hazen, The Music Men: An Illustrated History of Brass Bands in America, 1800-1920. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), 144. 26 stages such as the Columbian Exposition at the Chicago World Fair in 1893.66 Sousa’s band had grown over the years from utilizing alto, tenor and baritone saxophone in 1884 to an octet by the

1920s that consisted of four altos, two tenors, baritone and bass saxophones.67 Professional touring bands were popping up all over America including the Arthur Pryor Band, The American

Band, directed by D.W. Reeves and the Pat Conway Band.68 Even the Barnum and Bailey’s

Circus Band utilized three saxophones during their 1897-1902 European tour.69

Harry Hindson writes of Sousa’s philosophy of music at this time centering on entertainment. He states that “the nature of popular music currently in vogue did not escape

Sousa.”70 From the beginning Sousa intertwined styles such as the “cakewalk” with serious concert music on programs. Eventually these “entertainment pieces” evolved to “ragtime and jazz, or what Sousa called “syncopated” music.71 Bierley discusses Sousa’s use of “sanitized” versions of these musics that traced their lineage “to the cotton fields of the South, through the minstrel shows, burlesque, and vaudeville.”72 These “sanitized” versions of American popular music had widespread influence on the world stage as Sousa toured Europe in the early 1900s.

Bierley goes as far as to say that these performance “affected such a composer as Debussy to write “Golliwog’s Cakewalk” after the fact.73 Sousa’s octet of saxophones,

[Added] much local color to their performance… because they could read the local papers, and indulge in other entertainments familiar to residents, and tailor their act to fit. This was a concession to the predominant popularity of the plethora of saxophone acts touring the country at the time, and no doubt, inspiration to others, since they were an extremely high-profile act, being with the premiere touring organization of the age.74

66 Michael Eric Hester. "A Study of the Saxophone Soloists Performing with the John Philip Sousa Band, 1893- 1930." (Dissertation, The University of Arizona, 1995), 20. 67 William Carter White. A History of Military Music in America. (New York: Exposition Press, 1944). 153. 68 Harry Wayne Schwartz. Bands of America. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1957). 129. 69 Horwood, 169. 70 Harry Burdette Hindson. “Aspects of the saxophone in American musical culture, 1850-1980.” (Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin – Madison, 1992), 40. 71 Schwartz, 287. 72 Paul E. Bierley. John Philip Sousa, American Phenomenon. Rev. Ed. (Westerville, Ohio: Integrity Press, 1973). 73 Ibid., 136. 74 Hindson, 40. 27 The addition of local aesthetics in the octet’s performances demonstrates the group’s ability to navigate their environment and alter their act to increase accessibility within local audiences.

Touring saxophonists such as Lefèbre and Sousa’s soloists help to fill a gap in the traditional saxophone narrative. The extensive performing careers of each artist performing into the twentieth century showcase how active the saxophonists were in a period that is rarely discussed outside of Adolphe Sax.

The Brown Brothers

The origin of vaudeville traces back to the fifteenth century to popular songs that were often satirical or comedic by nature. In the early eighteenth century Alain Renè Le Sage (1668-

1747) utilized these vaudeville songs in his opera comique, La princesse de Carizme.75 Clifford

Barnes states, “At the turn of the [twentieth] century, in the USA, vaudeville achieved great popularity with its combination of songs, dances, pretty girls, rapid-fire comics, skits and acrobatics.”76 Due to the exotic and expressive qualities of the saxophone, it soon found a home in vaudeville acts across the country. Two of the most prominent saxophone groups performing in vaudeville groups were the Four Musical Cates and the Six Brown Brothers Sextet.77 The remainder of this section focuses on the impact and career of the latter.

The Six Brown Brothers originally began their career as a quintet in 1909 on the

Burlesque circuit with the Broadway Gaiety Girls.78 Some insight is provided into the complex nature of these vaudeville acts in a review of the Brown Brothers routine in 1910. A reviewer from Variety writes,

The frame-up of the act follows more or less that of Waterbury Brothers and Tenny, inasmuch as four of the Browns work straight in military uniform and the fifth member affects blackface comedy in a quiet, effective manner. It must not be supposed, however,

75 Clifford Barnes. “Vaudeville.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., 342. 76 Ibid. 77 Scott Douglas Plugge. “The History of the Saxophone Ensemble: A Study of the Development of the Saxophone Quartet into a Concert Genre.” (Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2003), 106. 78 Ibid., 107. 28 that the quintet has taken anything from the other act mentioned. The comparison is confined only to the general plan of the turn. They work entirely on the brass instruments, except for one selection on the bells (four using mechanical hand bells and the fifth accompanies on the bamboo chimes-a decidedly agreeable combination). The cornet numbers have the big, resounding quality that burlesque (and vaudeville) audiences like and a quintet of saxophones at the finish in ‘one’ was a tremendous applause-getter. The comedian does just enough, getting incidental comedy points over without the common fault of ‘hoggin’ the stage. The act is a sure-enough winner.79

The Brown Brothers’ fame rose exponentially once they were associated with the United

Booking Office, a union formed in 1900 consisting of “vaudeville managers that came together to monopolize all the vaudeville talent.”80 Soon the Brown Brothers were being featured in large venues all across the United States. This success led the Brown Brothers to record in June of

1911 with Columbia Records.

The next step in success for the Brown Brothers came with the meeting of Charles

Dillingham, a prominent producer in New York. In 1914 the Brown Brothers were signed by

Dillingham to join the famous comedy team of Dave Montgomery and Fred Stone in the show

Chin Chin. The Brown Brothers provided musical and comedic relief and in return Chin Chin propelled the group to “the top ranks of the vaudeville circuit.”81 Over the next six years the

Brown Brothers would attach themselves to a few other shows including Tip-Top and Jack

O’Lantern, yet the 1920s would see public interest fade in vaudeville acts. Plugge states that

“later, in part due to the Great Depression and the rise in popularity of movies and radio, the demise of vaudeville and touring groups, such as the Brown Brothers, was a certainty.”82

The impact that the Brown Brothers as well as other vaudeville groups that featured saxophone had within American popular music culture was paramount to the longevity of the instrument. The Brown Brothers’ legacy is most widely felt in the sheer number of recordings

79 Variety, vol. XVII, no. 6 (January 15, 1910), 14. 80 Plugge, 110. 81 Ibid., 114. 82 Ibid., 120. 29 manufactured and distributed as well as the efforts of Carl Fischer, Inc. who published Brown

Brothers arrangements in a series titled Carl Fischer Popular Series of Saxophone Quartets and

Quintets with or without Piano Accompaniment.83 Exposure of saxophone in America via acts like the Six Brown Brothers and the Four Musical Cates led jazz artists such as Sidney Bechet to consider the instrument for use in jazz. John Chilton claims that,

During his [Bechet] trip to Galveston, Texas, in 1916, Sidney heard a recording by the Six Brown Brothers, a touring vaudeville act that featured six saxophones on varying registers, from bass up to soprano. For Bechet the appeal of their version of Bull Frog Blues was the sound of the soprano saxophone; he resolved to buy one for himself if the opportunity arose. Sometime during the winter of 1918, after he made his home in Chicago, Bechet saw a curved soprano saxophone in a pawnshop window. The asking price was 20 dollars, which was less than half what Sidney was making a week, so he decided to buy it.84

It was through these vaudeville acts that the saxophone became intertwined with the

American popular imagination. This exposure was a double-edged sword, however. These musical groups supported a “saxophone craze” and perhaps steered jazz musicians toward the saxophone, which would lead to greater technical and expressive advancement of the instrument, but the social connotations of vaudeville acts and jazz would continue to separate the instrument from the classical canon as their racial implications came under attack by fascist movements in

Europe during World War II.

Part III – World Stage

Exploring the increasing popularity of the saxophone in the United States is critical to understanding the complex threads throughout the saxophone’s historical narrative, yet it is equally important to explore how the saxophone has performed on the world stage.

83 Ibid., 121. 84 John Chilton, Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 31-32. 30 Mexico

The historical narrative of the saxophone is generally confined to Europe and the United

States because of the focus on notable performers and pedagogues who reside in a few select countries. While the saxophone’s origin and early history can easily be traced through Belgium and France, once it was accepted into the European band model its influence was felt on the world. In his treatise Toward a History of Saxophone Performance in Mexico, John Salinas discusses music journalist Vicente Maria Riesgo’s proposal to reform Mexican military bands in the mid-nineteenth century, similar to what Adolphe Sax was successfully accomplishing in

France around the same time. Riesgo mentions the brass instruments of Sax in his proposal and calls for larger instrumentation similar to European band models.85 Riesgo favored modern brass instruments, emphasizing their visual appeal, ease of playing, low cost and projection.86 In regard to the success of this proposal Salinas observes,

Ultimately, Riesgo’s proposal to reform the instruments in Mexican military bands with modern brass instruments from Europe could not be carried out during this time period. Due to the political instability that arose with the rise of Antonio López de Santa Anna’s final presidential administration, musicians and military ordinances had to accompany the regiments to battle and wait for better times to reform the military band. There is no doubt, however, that Vicente Maria Riesgo’s articles influenced future major decisions in reorganizing the military bands in Mexico and may have influenced the arrival of the saxophone in Mexico.87

While the saxophone’s appearance in Mexico is commonly attributed to Palatino Hussars and the Austrian Legion bands that operated under the French government between 1863 and

1867, Salinas speculates that the instrument arrived in Mexico through Cuba.88 Multiple articles began circulating in Cuba in the mid-nineteenth century that mention Adolphe Sax and his various instruments. As early as 1847 the first saxophones were available for purchase in Cuba.

85 John C. Salinas, "Toward a History of Saxophone Performance in Mexico (Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2014), 17. 86 Vincent Riesgo, “Reforma De Las Orquesta Militares,” El Orden 1853, May 20, 1853. 87 Salinas, 19. 88 Ibid., 21. 31 Scholars have speculated as to whether instruments that were arriving in Mexico City around this time included the saxophone, however, the first documented performance of the saxophone in

Cuba took place on November 30, 1852 by Julian Reinó. Regarding Reinó, Salinas notes;

While there is very little information known about Reinó, he is the earliest documented saxophonist in all of Latin America. This particular performance in Cuba comes more than a year prior to the first known performances of the saxophone in the United States, given by Henri Wuille on December 19, 1853.89

Regardless of where and how the saxophone first entered Mexico there is no doubt as to who would first champion the instrument in the country. José Ortiz became the first Mexican saxophonist to perform in his home country on November 12, 1862 at Mexico City’s National

Grand Theater. For the next five years, Ortiz would concertize throughout Mexico, performing in benefit concerts and the Austrian Legion Band while maintaining an active career as a flutist. He would continue to be the sole advocate for the saxophone in Mexico until his sudden death in

October 1867.

The saxophone’s place in Mexican military band was solidified during the Maximilian

Empire (1864-1867), installed during the French Intervention in 1861. During this period the militaries from France, Belgium and Austria came to Mexico in excess of thirty thousand troops.90 From this invasion, the Austrian Legion Band would find its way to Mexico, promoting the career of José Ortiz. Salinas states that “the Austrian Band’s popularity caused positive public uproar and the band was requested to perform in a range of public events.”91 During the next fifty years, the Mexican military would see a series of reforms that would both increase the ensemble’s exposure and quality. Moving into the twentieth century, two notable bands were la

89 Ibid., 31. 90 Rafael Antonio Ruiz Torres, “Historia De Las Bandas Militares De Música En México: 1767-1920” (Tétis de Maestría, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2002), 143. 91 Salinas, 50. 32 Banda de Artillería, under Ricardo Pacheco (1864-1923) and la Banda de Policía under Velino

M. Preza (1866-1944).92

One of the most intriguing deviations from the standard historical narrative of the saxophone is the discovery of exposure of jazz musicians to the saxophone via Mexico as early as 1875. A foundational element of early jazz included Hispanic dance styles such as the habañera and the danzón. Salinas observes, “the Tío family, as well as noteworthy saxophonists of the Eighth Cavalry Regiment Band, helped influence the development of early Jazz in New

Orleans.”93 Lorenzo Tío Sr. (1867-1908) moved to New Orleans in 1877 with his father Thomas

Louis Marcos Tío (1828-c.1881) who was involved in the antebellum free-colored society of

New Orleans. As a clarinetist, Lorenzo Sr. is generally credited with the introduction of a stylistic predecessor to the Dixieland style. His son, Lorenzo Tío Jr. (1893-1933) influenced the jazz clarinet scene as the teacher of Sidney Bechet, who was an early advocate of the saxophone in the jazz medium. Mexico’s Eighth Cavalry Regiment Band performed in the World’s

Industrial Centennial Exposition in New Orleans on December 16, 1884. After receiving acclaim during the Exposition, many band members continued to work in New Orleans. Saxophonists

Florencia Ramos and Leonardo Viscarra were among those who stayed, and according to Salinas they “created their own bands and spread their repertoire of Mexican dances in the southeastern

United States.”94

As in Europe, the origins of the saxophone in Mexico were mostly associated with the military band. It was not until the 1930s that the saxophone was integrated into native Mexican genres, such as música morteña and orquesta tejana.95 These genres are considered part of

92 Ibid., 53. 93 Ibid., 65. 94 Ibid., 67. 95 José B. Cuéllar, “El Saxoofón in Tejano and Norteño Music,” 2001. http://userwww.sfsu.edu/josecuel/sax.htm, 136. 33 Tejano music, which is attributed to indigenous Mexican musicians living in Texas. The term encompasses many musical elements that have come to fuse into distinctive styles including polkas rancheras (Spanish songs sung to a polka rhythm).96 Orquesta tejana closely resembles a scaled down version of the American big band. These groups adopted a bicultural identity as

American jazz standards were programmed on the same concerts as Latin dances and polkas rancheras.

China

On the other side of the world the saxophone found its way into native musics of China.

The saxophone was invented around the same time that China’s major ports, such as Shanghai and Hong Kong, were first opened to foreign settlement. This began in 1839 with the First

Opium War that was a result of China’s effort to stop British import of opium into the country – a practice that the British had been capitalizing on for half a century. In 1842, British warships threatened an attack of Nanking, which quickly resulted in the Treaty of Nanking on August 29,

1842.97 Shanghai became a melting pot of British, American, French, Belgian and Russian merchants, and would soon see the arrival of saxophonist Ali Ben Sou Alle.98

Charles Jean-Baptiste Soualle, known in China as Ali Ben Sou Alle, began his career studying clarinet in the Paris Conservatory. He held positions as the director of the Marine Band in Senegal, and first clarinet at the Opera Comique in Paris and the Queen’s Theatre in London before finally joining the touring ensemble of Louis Jullien. As mentioned earlier, Jullien’s ensemble sparked the careers of early virtuosos like Henri Wouille and most likely had an impact

96 "Tejano: Local Music, Global Identity." Grantmakers in the Arts. https://www.giarts.org/article/tejano-local- music-global-identity. 97 Mingchien Joshua Bau. The Foreign Relations of China. Part 3. The Policy of Japan in China (New York: Revell, 1921), 8. 98 Jason Pockrus. “The Saxophone in China: Historical Performance and Development” (Dissertation, University of North Texas, 2018) 17. 34 on players of the day such as E. H. Lefèbre.99 Jason Pockrus states, “it was Jullien, in fact, that encouraged [Soualle] to take up the saxophone. He performed in London through 1852, but while performing under the name Soualle, he listed his instrument as the corno muso.”100

Between 1853 and 1860 Soualle embarked on a world tour including stops in, “Hobart,

Singapore, Calcutta, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Paris, and Cape Town to name a few.101 Soulle gave the first ever saxophone performance in Guangzhou, China in July of 1856.102

In regard to Soulle’s later performance in Shanghai, the North China Herald wrote:

After a song by Ali-Ben-Sou-Alle which was creditably performed, the first part concluded with “recollections of Scotland” upon an instrument, which we trust our Scotch friends will pardon us for pronouncing, something worse than the Bagpipe – the imitation, however was admirable, though at the time, it reminded us most forcibly of a Chinese instrument, used at Marriages and Funerals.103

Pockrus suggests that the instrument described by the Chinese reviewer was the suona, a double- reed instrument similar to the oboe. The tonal flexibility of the saxophone led to its incorporation into Cantonese Opera where it would often be heard replacing a variant of the instrument mentioned in the above review. Soualle’s significance within Chinese culture is also related to his collecting of Chinese folk song, which he performed in international concerts. Pockrus argues, “the significance here is simple: since 1856 the saxophone has been used to perform and spread Chinese music.”104

Chinese musicians first began playing the saxophone near the end of the nineteenth century when Chinese military bands followed the trend of adopting Western military band instrumentations. In addition to the saxophone’s exposure across the country as part of military

99 Paul Wehage, “Ali Ben Sou Alle: A 19th Century Frenchman in Mysore,” Serenade, November 14, 2016. https://serenademagazine.com/features/ali-be-sou-alle-19th-century-frenchman-mysore. 100 Pockrus, 19. 101 Ibid., 20. 102 “The Canton Community” China Mail. August 7, 1856. 103 “Ali-Ben-Sou-Alle” North China Daily News September 20, 1856. 104 Pockrus, 44 35 ensembles, American jazz was entering the country as early as 1917. Waves of jazz musicians, including saxophonist Russell Ellis and banjoist Raymond Breck, were entering the foreign settlements in Shanghai, and soon popular American dances such as the fox-trot made their way into China.105 By the mid-1920s the “saxophone craze” that was occurring in America was also felt in Shanghai. In 1924, an advertisement in the North China Daily News included a listing for

“Conn silver plated C-melody saxophone in leather velvet lined case. Practically new. Cash

$225.”106

An important marker of the influence of jazz in China is the “Period Song” movement.

Andrew F. Jones describes the “Period Song” movement as incorporating

Hawaiian style guitar embellishing melodies drawn from the surrounding southeastern Chinese countryside, Soviet-style accordion accompanied by Chinese clappers, scat singing crossed with melismatic vocal production typical of late Qing dynasty courtesan houses. There are blues vamps, Cuban rhythms, and episodes of New-Orleans style polyphony as well as European waltzes.107

Chinese composer and songwriter Li Jinhui, who is commonly credited as the father of Chinese popular music, incorporated new jazz styles with Chinese folk idioms in his 1929 song

“Drizzle.”108 “Period Song” sought to capture a myriad of cultural indicators. It is no surprise that the saxophone, an instrument that was born in Europe and had found its way into the popular musics of many cultures by now, was featured in “Drizzle” as well as Jinhui’s 1936 track “Very

Fast Train.” The effect of the “Period Song” movement on China was polarizing. While the general public was receptive, Pockrus states, “the supporters of the May 4th movement, which sought to modernize China, chastised [Jinhui’s] use of folk songs forms,” and the fascist Chinese

105 Pockrus, 50. 106 “For Sale – Miscellaneous” North China Daily News, October 22, 1924. 107 E. Taylor Atkins, ed. Jazz Planet (Jackson, Miss: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2001), 233. 108 Szu-Wei Chen, “The Rise of and Generic Features of Shanghai Popular Songs in the 1930s and 1940s,” Popular Music 24/1, 2005, 108. 36 Nationalist Party labeled the music, “decadent and unpatriotic.”109 This criticism was directed not only at composers but also at individual instruments and their operators.

During the 1920s jazz spread throughout China and military ensembles introduced classical saxophone playing to the country, yet perhaps the most intriguing vehicle for popularizing the saxophonist was the Cantonese opera ensemble. In contrast to the other styles for the saxophone, this was purely native to China. Cantonese opera dates back nearly 400 years to the Ming Dynasty and includes,

Singing and dancing, musical accompaniment by percussion and melodic instruments, recitation and dialogue, make-up and costume, acrobatics and clowning. Skits with narrative content were often interwoven with segments of dance, acrobatic display, martial arts, slapstick, and other forms of non-narrative entertainment.110

Beginning in the 1920s Cantonese opera ensembles began using Western instruments as a means of enriching timbre and supplementing mid to low registers. Traditional Chinese instruments, such as the houguan, typically are high in register, so instruments like the saxophone were vital in filling the mid-low registers of the orchestra. This use of the saxophone harkens back to

Adolphe Sax’s original intent of filling mid-range voices in traditional European ensembles. In addition to arguing the saxophone’s ability to complement rather than obscure vocalists, Pockrus states, “the timbral flexibility of the saxophone is such that it can mimic that of the houguan, the only reed instrument of the traditional Cantonese opera ensemble.”111 The saxophone’s unique ability to vocalize throughout the acoustic spectrum empowered it to resemble a pre-existing instrument such as the houguan. This led to its acceptance within the indigenous musics of

China. The inclusion of Western instruments in Cantonese opera was also a marketing strategy,

109 Pockrus, 56. 110 Bell Yung, Cantonese Opera: Performance as Creative Process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1; Wing Chung Ng, The Rise of Cantonese Opera (Urbana; Chicago; Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 12. 111 Pockrus, 80. 37 as these groups were competing with popular musics of the day, including American jazz and minstrel show acts.

As demonstrated by this brief survey of the history of the musics of Mexico and China, the saxophone navigated from novelty to permanency in folk mediums. Saxophonists’ ability to navigate classical styles of touring military bands as well as a diverse array of popular musics gave them the versatility and facility to intertwine genres and styles. In his work The Devil’s

Horn Michael Segell writes, “the saxophone’s ability to insinuate itself into the classical music of cultures whose traditional music predates the instrument by hundreds of years might be the most striking example of its flexibility.”112 Segell goes on to list saxophonists who navigated other regions of the world, such as India, Egypt and West Africa, and who will be considered in the discussion of tonal profiles in the next chapter.

112 Michael Segell, The Devil’s Horn: The Story of the Saxophone, from Noisy Novelty to King of Cool (New York: Picador, 2005), 35. 38 CHAPTER 3

TONAL PROFILE

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the manufacturing process and the evolution of the saxophone in response to technological and aesthetic changes. This is followed by a survey of pivotal musicians who have altered or expanded the tonal profile of the saxophone. The goal of this chapter is to encourage early exposure of young saxophonists to a wide array of performers and styles that will provide inspiration to develop, experiment and ultimately create new and interesting tonal threads to navigate.

Manufacturing

The saxophone is unique among contemporary wind instruments because it has remained largely unaltered from its original design; however, there have been significant changes in the instrument’s tonal profile since World War II. I will discuss the last of the mechanical changes that occurred at the end of a notorious “saxophone craze” starting in the early twentieth century, followed by a chronological overview in which multiple musical genres, performance practices, and prominent figures will be explored. Special consideration is given to the artist’s contribution to the instrument’s tonal profile, with consideration as to what practical or acoustic phenomenon prompted this change. Throughout, examples are considered as to how the popular imagination of what the saxophone could or should sound like has changed over time.

Many improvements on Adolphe Sax’s original design occurred in the hundred years after its invention. However, a few leading manufacturers in America were still working to improve the saxophone’s ergonomics and acoustic design to better suit the instrument’s ever- widening versatility in the musical world. A look into strategies of two leading instrument manufacturers, the Buescher Band Co. and C.G. Conn, highlights a student-model instrument

39 marketing trend that would lead to the fall of these industry giants as dominating American manufacturers.

In 1948, both companies released new professional model instruments: Conn’s 28M

Constellation and Buescher’s Aristocrat Series II. Conn claimed a completely new instrument in bore and tone with many new features that included two octave keys mounted on a single key arm. This resulted in more even response and better intonation as well as new redesigns for the

“table” and palm keys. Like Conn, Buescher claimed their new series had “proportions improved, bell keys entirely redesigned and ergonomics improved.”113 Buescher’s new series was one of two professional instruments in their catalogue, the other being the slightly more expensive 400 series affectionately known as the “top hat and cane.”

By the 1950s both companies, along with other American manufacturers, turned their efforts away from improving upon the current design and toward expanding their markets. This resulted in the production of multiple student line models: Conn with the Director Student line and the 50M and Buescher with its “Elkhart” and Aristocrat series post-1957. A Buescher ad reads:

Here are Buescher-quality saxophones designed expressly for the great school market… giving students an interesting, easy to play, exquisitely tuned, and made to stand hard use. Keys are plated with bright and long-wearing nickel… are equipped with specially designed pads to prevent center swelling… drawn tone holes are leak-proof. There is a single-spring octave mechanism, fully articulated G# key, a beautifully tempered scale. ‘Built by Buescher’ is engraved on the bell of each instrument114

Clear emphasis is given to selling instruments that were trouble-free and inexpensive. Within twenty years each of these main American companies failed or was acquired by another manufacturing company. Conn halted saxophone production in the 1970s and Selmer bought out

113 Paul Alan. Bro, “The Development of the American-made Saxophone: A Study of Saxophones Made by Buescher, Conn, Holton, Martin, and H.N. White” (Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1992), 71. 114 “Richer, Finer Sound… New Mechanical Dependability: New Buescher ‘Aristocrats,’” advertisement in Instrumentalist (September 1956): 8-9. 40 Buescher.115 After the decline of the large saxophone manufacturers in Indiana there was one more notable moment on the manufacturing timeline, the release of Selmer’s Mark VI line.

These instruments are among the most sought-after saxophones in the world, retaining and often eclipsing their value in the current market. They are famed for their fluid ergonomics, improved intonation and tonal characteristics.

The trend of increasing projection in wind instruments has been a focal point of instrument manufacturing since the mid-1800s. Within these contemporary contexts, saxophonists attempted to compete with amplified instruments which, in part, led to the current eccentricity of mouthpiece design. Frederick Wyman states that,

This development began in the early 1940s when dance bands began to increase in size and the saxophone section found that it was difficult to be heard over the increasing numbers of brass instruments. It was soon found that the greatest control over the brightness of the instrument’s tone could be affected by changes in mouthpiece design. A certain amount of change can be brought about by changing reed contours but mouth piece changes were more pronounced in their effect. At first, changes in facing length and tip openings were tried. Changes in the baffle shape, and, finally, changes in the complete chamber design were found to be more effective in achieving a more penetrating tone quality.116

Wyman discusses the basic design changes that facilitated a movement toward a “brighter” tonal profile, most notably constricting the chamber and emulating the straight-side walls of a clarinet.

Experimentation with the mouthpiece baffle had perhaps one of the most noticeable effects on timbre. The baffle is the portion of the mouthpiece opposite the reed on which the vibrating air column first makes contact. Placing the baffle closer to the reed typically results in a resonance of higher frequencies. For instance, modern metal mouthpieces with a high steep baffle will result in an aggressive or “bright” sound, whereas mouthpieces with a baffle that is low and straight, essentially as far away from the reed as possible, like Sax’s original design, will result

115 Bro, 61. 116 Frederick Stearns Wyman, “An Acoustical Study of Alto Saxophone Mouthpiece Chamber Design.” (Dissertation, University of Rochester, 1972), 13. 41 in a “darker” timbre, as fewer high-frequency partials are present.117 Over time bore sizes occasionally were modified, crook dimensions altered, and lacquer experimented with, a factor that has relatively no effect on the overall sound.118

A few isolated cases of experimentation occurred as the saxophone was integrated into the world of electronic music. In 1965, Selmer partnered with Electro-Voice to produce an attachment called the Varitone. According to Cottrell,

Undoubtedly influenced by similar technology applied to the electric guitar, the Varitone unit allowed the saxophone player to alter volume and tone; it also facilitated the addition of echo, tremolo and a sub-octave synthesized tone to the basic acoustic sound. A small control box was mounted on the saxophone near the right-hand key guard, where it might be easily operated during performance.119

This primitive example of signal modification perhaps foreshadowed the development of MIDI wind controllers, such as the Akai Electronic Wind Instrument, or EWI. Wind controllers have migrated towards the specialist market; however, they enjoyed some exposure in both the jazz and classical worlds through artists such as Michael Brecker (1949-2007) and composer Morton

Subotnick (b. 1933).120 The developments in manufacturing are only a small factor in the expansion of the tonal profile for the saxophone. We can consider equipment to be an artifact, a remnant that reflects the changing preferences of performers who have altered their saxophones or mouthpieces to achieve a particular sound concept.

117 "The Baffle of the Saxophone Mouthpiece | Inside the Saxophone." Shape Your Own Sound. Accessed March 25, 2019. https://www.syos.co/en/blog/material/baffle-saxophone-mouthpiece. 118 Cottrell, 265. 119 Ibid., 266. 120 Ibid., 267; Morton Subotnick’s saxophone concerto In Two Worlds (1987) was written for soloist doubling on Yamaha WX7 Computerized Wind Controller and Alto Saxophone, with Chamber Orchestra and Computer. The piece was premiered by the Electric Orchestra with soloist John Sampen, January 1988 in Cambridge, England. 42 Evolution of Tonal Profile

Within loosely defined “schools of playing” saxophonists have been experimenting in both sound profile and lexicon to develop a personal sound, both for survival and an intrinsic struggle

to uniquely express themselves. A survey of diverging tonal profiles begins with jazz.

Jazz

The saxophone quickly found a home in the hands of jazz musicians after its rise to popularity in the early 1900s through various vaudeville and minstrel touring groups. People gravitated to the saxophone due to the marketed ease of playing, profitability, musical dexterity and blend. The blend quality of the instrument was especially attractive to many early jazz musicians because jazz of that era was generally ensemble-driven in comparison to the soloist- accompaniment aesthetic that later emerged. Cottrell infers,

Another reason for the appropriation of the saxophone by jazz players lies in the instrument’s essentially vocal quality, and the relative ease with which the pitch of any given note can be manipulated or ‘bent’, thus imitating the flexibility of the human voice.121

By the second half of the twentieth century the jazz world was fully immersed in the bebop movement through the efforts of musicians including Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. As Cottrell explains bebop was, “characterized by fast tempos, angular fragmented solo lines and a much faster harmonic rhythm.”122 Bebop was part of a social movement that rebelled against recognizable swing tunes that were largely associated with the white-dominated music business.123 In addition, Parker in particular was renowned for his virtuosity, a characteristic that was surely a driving force behind saxophone manufacturers’ increased emphasis on ease of playing and ergonomics. The bebop saxophonist’s “frenetic,

121 Ibid., 167 122 Ibid., 207. 123 Guthrie. P. Ramsey Jr. “The art of bebop: Earl "bud" Powell and the emergence of modern jazz” (Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1994), 11. 43 powerful and angular” attributes were directly contrasted by the Cool Jazz players of the same era, whose lineage is drawn from earlier playing models of Lester Young (1909-1959).

Trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991) is surely the most famous name in the movement, yet saxophonists Lee Konitz (b.1927) and Gerry Mulligan (1927-1996) were pivotal in changing the public sound image of the saxophone. Cottrell states that “the brassy, forthright sounds of

Hawkins and Parker became more mellow, recalling certain aspects of Lester Young’s approach, and the energetic lines of the bebop players were similarly transformed into rather more sinewy, lyrical improvisations.”124 He goes on to discuss vibrato and its transformation away from the forefront of the saxophonist’s technical arsenal to become much less obvious.

In a study of jazz post–World War II, Gregg Gelb finds that “it would no longer be possible to denote a jazz era by saying one style dominated, such as it had during the 1930s.”125

In an in-depth study of the year 1959 Gelb traces up to ten different stylistic paths, as new trends were emerging, and old styles were still present. The few decades after World War II would see some of the most important and influential albums emerge simultaneously, a clear indication that tonal development and stylistic innovations were prioritized over maintaining any sort of linear ties.

Another giant of the jazz world who was recording in the 1950s was John Coltrane

(1926-1967). Coltrane navigated multiple genres and tonal profiles, including bebop and free jazz, throughout his career. His tenor sound was powerful, yet gritty in response to Lester

Young’s sound that was still fresh in the public ear.126 Coltrane was famous for being extremely particular about his sound. In a biography on Coltrane, Lewis Porter observed that, “finding your own sound depends largely on finding your personal combination of mouthpiece and reed.”127

124 Cottrell, 214. 125 Gelb, 1. 126 Ibid., 215-222. 127 Lewis Porter. John Coltrane: His Life and Music. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 125. 44 He goes on to speak of certain player’s “lackadaisical,” or more accurately “relaxed” approach like Charlie Parker (1920-1955) who could achieve his sound on borrowed equipment. Coltrane however obsessively mulled over mouthpiece and reed combinations as he searched for the perfect sound. Coltrane collaborated with prominent figures such as Miles Davis (recording on

Some Kind of Blue – the best-selling jazz album of all time), pushed the limits of functional harmony, and would work to develop modal jazz alongside Davis. 128 As Ramsey describes it, the main trait of Davis’s modal jazz “is the absence or suppression of functional harmonic relationships. Many performances are based on a two-chord sequence using one or two modal scales for improvising.”129

John Coltrane’s experiments in the realm of free jazz are attributable to Ornette Coleman

(1930-2015). Coleman’s non-traditional look, saxophone, and style received mixed reviews. He experimented with unorthodox phrase lengths, deemphasized harmony and was interested in non-tempered tuning systems as a means to combat Western art music’s equal temperament focus.130 Cottrell says of Coleman’s distinct sound:

The most radical dimension of Coleman’s playing was simply the way he sounded on the saxophone. More even than Coltrane, Coleman developed a saxophone style that recalled the human voice. Certainly, there were blues licks, bop figures and identifiable motives, but these were accompanied by asymmetric phrases, the use of registral extremes as sound-generating (as opposed to pitch-generating) devices, as well as cries, wails, glissandi and other effects, all of which contributed to an improvisational style that went well beyond what was taken as the conventional jazz language of the time.131

Coleman’s unconventional vernacular on the saxophone was complemented by his ideologies manifested in free improvisation. Writing about the beginnings of free improvisation, Ronald

Radana states:

[Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor] shared a common modernist sensibility as well as a desire to revise the rules of jazz improvisation. Both sought to replace the tonal-harmonic

128 Jim Luce. "Jazz Profiles from NPR Miles Davis: Kind of Blue." NPR. 129 Ramsey, 51. 130 Cottrell, 224. 131 Ibid., 226 45 framework of jazz with an emphasis on broad musical principles of tone color, rhythm, and phrasing; both experimented with collective improvisation in a non-harmonic, non- tonal or marginally tonal musical language. Yet each approached their creative work from different points of view, reflecting the disparity between their backgrounds and training.132

He goes on to mention that Coleman’s departure from traditional structures parallel New York’s abstract expressionists of the time, and that whatever work Coleman and Taylor did to define

Free Jazz, Coltrane popularized.133 Jack Wright highlights the essence of this movement in the

Preface to The Free Musics:

Free playing is the approach historically and musicologically in the background of free jazz and free improvisation, their hidden link. It exposes the gap separating human beings at play from musicians functioning as entertainers. It is available for musicians who acknowledge the current dead-in-the-water state of improvised musics and wish to move out of it, as well as those who care little about the world of music and want to take playing to its highest level134

In both the natural world and world of humans we each manipulate a place in the acoustic spectrum for survival. Perhaps what separates us as humans is the ability to surpass the goal of survival and move to self-expression.

The efforts of artists such as Taylor, Coleman and Coltrane provide the basis on which figureheads such as John Zorn distinctive tonal style come to exist. The music of John Zorn

(b.1953) encompasses many genres and his extensive collaboration and recording output has led to awards including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006.135 Zorn started studying composition in

New York while attending the United Nations School. He then attended Webster College in St.

Louis, Missouri where he took composition lessons with Kendall Stallings. Zorn discusses attending “rug concerts” of Boulez and being swept up in avant-garde classical music. He was

132 Ronald Michael Radana. Anthony Braxton and His Two Musical Traditions: The Meeting of Concert Music and Jazz. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 14. 133 Ibid., 24. 134 Jack Wright. The Free Musics. (Philadelphia: Spring Garden Music Editions, 2017), 11. 135 Paulo J. Almeida. "Organized Improvisation by Three Downtown Composers in 1980s New York." (Dissertation, California State University, Fullerton, 2008), 45. 46 also inspired by the work of Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, yet he felt an emotional connection was missing from much of the avant-garde music.

His influences came primarily from the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in

Chicago and the free improvisation records of Anthony Braxton. Braxton’s raw sound and aggressive energy struck Zorn with the emotional connection he was missing.136 In Braxton’s music Zorn heard the intellectual complexity that he connected with in the early part of his career. After a brief stint on the West Coast, John returned to New York to make a name for himself as a saxophonist and composer. As his social network began to expand, Zorn would write “improvisational music” for his close friends and collaborate extensively with artists spanning all genres. Almeida states that, “The diversity in Zorn’s music and his high visibility in the media eventually would earn him the title as the unofficial representative of the Downtown

Scene.”137

His significant projects include hardcore band Painkiller and Masada. On an album titled

Naked City Zorn performed pieces that ranged from eight to thirty minutes in length and vary from movement-inspired compositions to “silky” John Barny covers.138 Zorn frequently experimented with extreme “collage-style” writing such as in his work Speedfreaks. John

Brackett explains that

Speedfreaks is an extreme (perhaps the most extreme) example of Zorn’s jump-cut style of composition. In this work, numerous stylistic/generic references, noises, and other sonic events fly past at breakneck speed: thirty-two discrete events pass before our ears in less than fifty seconds.139

136 Ted Gordon. "John Zorn: Autonomy and the Avant-Garde (exc.)." AVANT. Pismo Awangardy Filozoficzno- Naukowej 3 (2012): 329-343. 137 Almeida, 46. 138 Cole Gagne, Soundpieces 2: Interviews with American Composers (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1993), 509. 139 John Lowell Brackett. John Zorn: Tradition and Transgression. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 24. 47 Zorn experimented with “game” pieces where he attempted to involve individuals in the composition process. Essentially the improvisers followed a set of rules that somehow governs their interactions.140 The most notable of these game pieces is entitled Cobra. John Zorn challenged the tonal profile of the saxophone not only by building upon the sound palette of free improvisational artists such as Anthony Braxton, but by also breaking down barriers and creating new and interesting tonal and instrumental combinations within multiple genres.

Another figurehead of the free-jazz movement is English saxophonist Evan Parker (b.

1944). Parker was exposed to the music of John Coltrane in 1960 and became deeply involved in the free-jazz movement in 1966 after moving to London. There he performed with the

Spontaneous Music Ensemble led by John Stevens.141 Over the next couple years Parker formed the Music Improvisation Company and record label Incus. In stark contrast to Zorn’s constructed improvisations Parker gravitated to unaccompanied improvisation, as the purity of no influence, whether of other instruments or spontaneous ideas, on his improvisations was attractive to him.

This culminated in his 1975 album Saxophone Solos. To create a sense of polyphony in unaccompanied performance Parker developed virtuosic techniques, such as split tonguing (in which an up and down motion of the tongue facilitates rapid successions of short notes), cross- fingering and overtone manipulation.142

Parker’s solo improvisations have been regarded as minimalist in style as they contain minimalist compositional aesthetics that evolve from repeated motifs. Gilbert states that “Taken together, the techniques and aesthetic that he displays as a solo improviser create a strikingly individual syntax for this instrument.”143 Later in Parker’s career he became increasingly

140 Almeida, 50-51. 141 Mark Gilbert. 2003 “Parker, Evan.” Grove Music Online. March 18, 2019. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 48 interested in improvising with electronics, which resulted in the formation of the Evan Parker

Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, which produced six albums between 1997-2012.

Classical

In stark contrast to the jazz world, we see a revitalization and codification of the classical saxophone taking place in the 1930s led by Sigurd Rascher, Marcel Mule and Larry Teal.

Moving into the twenty-first century, their legacy continues today. It is important to point out that saxophonists in the classical world worked to change the tonal profile as well, yet it never took hold in such dramatic and numerous directions as in jazz. Rather, classical saxophonists tended to expand upon pedagogical principles, champion new music, and integrate saxophone into contemporary music by expanding the lexicon of what was possible on the instrument.

Shifts in timbre and performance practice have been made, yet they are most clearly associated with broad “schools of playing,” as discussed in the first chapter.

French saxophonist Marcel Mule (1901- 2001) is considered the most important figure in academic saxophone settings. Mule earned his reputation as a saxophonist in the military band.

After winning a spot in the La Musique de la Garde Républicaine, which gave him the momentum to perform with orchestras, he became a pioneer of a serious quartet of saxophones, eventually obtaining the saxophone position at the Paris Conservatory – a position left vacant after Sax’s departure seventy-two years earlier.144 He enjoyed a twenty-six year tenure, during which he taught over 300 students, enjoyed an extensive solo career, worked tirelessly to add to the early repertoire and had a significant impact on the tonal and pedagogical expansion of the instrument. Mule’s exposure and participation in jazz settings greatly influenced his tonal profile.

For many years he performed on a metal Selmer mouthpiece and his vibrato is characteristically similar to early jazz players of the day. Studying with musicians such as Gabriel Willaume, a

144 Eugène Rousseau, Marcel Mule: Sa Vie Et Le Saxophone (Shell Lake, Wisc.: Étoile, 1982), 7. 49 violinist, had a profound effect on Mule’s tonal profile.145 He would incorporate jazz elements as well as characteristics of string and vocal traditions into his sound.

Marcel Mule’s successor at the National Conservatory of Music in Paris, Daniel Deffayet

(1922-2002), was a student in Mule’s first saxophone studio. In turn, one of Deffayet’s students,

Claude Delangle (b.1957) took over the position after Deffayet retired in 1988 and still teaches there. Delangle has collaborated with renowned composers, including Luciano Berio, Pierre

Boulez, Toru Takemitsu and Astor Piazzolla. Notable students of Mule who became familiar figures in academic teaching are Frederick Hemke (b.1935) (the first U.S. student of Mule’s) and

Jean-Marie Londeix. Hemke went on to have an illustrious career teaching at Northwestern

University and provided the United States with its next generation of performers and pedagogues. Londeix taught in Bordeaux and advocated for new music through the founding of a contemporary international competition.146 Both Hemke and Londeix were active and integral members of the community, performing internationally, expanding the repertoire, and writing multiple pedagogical materials widely used today.

Jean-Marie Londeix (b.1932) is a French saxophonist who has enjoyed a long and illustrious solo and teaching career and provides a clear example of the typical work of classical saxophonists in expanding any sort of tonal profile. Londeix studied saxophone with Marcel

Mule at the Conservatoire de Paris. First reactions to Londeix’s solo career describe his playing as containing

Dazzling technique permitting jewel-like articulations and a homogenous timbre throughout all of the registers. Is it necessary to say more about the warm beauty of the phrasing that is animated by a very musical vibrato?147

145 Ibid., 9. 146 James Umble, Michèle Gingras, Hervé Corbé, William Henry Street, and Jean-Marie Londeix. Jean-Marie Londeix: Master of the Modern Saxophone. (Cherry Hill, NJ: Roncorp Publications, 2000). 147 Ibid. 50 In addition to being an accomplished performer, Londeix wrote numerous important pedagogical materials for the saxophone, including Hello, Mr. Sax, which outlines extended techniques of the saxophone, including multiphonics, altissimo and other interesting techniques, and the multi- volume set of repertoire listings that are now standard throughout the community.

His other contributions include collaborations with avant-garde composers, such as

Edison Denisov and François Rossé, and the development of an international contest for saxophones, whose goal was two-fold:

To seriously engage the participants in the presentation of contemporary music on a variety of saxophones, and to offer a chamber music category where ensembles presenting a variety of traditional and contemporary chamber works could participate.148

As technology has developed alongside the saxophone, experimental models of amplified saxophones and their closeness to MIDI controllers have allied them with the technology.

Starting in the late 1970s we see a few composers writing for saxophone and prerecorded sounds, or tape, eventually expanding into more interactive performances that integrate saxophone and electronics. One particular saxophonist who advocated for saxophone and electronics is John

Sampen (b.1949). Sampen commissioned and/or premiered works by such accomplished contemporary composers as Milton Babbitt, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros and Frederic

Rzewski. Cottrell writes that “composers have become interested in exploring real-time transformations of the saxophone sound, with the rich harmonic spectrum of the instrument lending itself particularly well to these kinds of treatments.”149

Other musicians such as French saxophonist Daniel Kientzy (b.1951) and Swiss saxophonist Marcus Wëiss (b.1961) have worked tirelessly to expand the repertoire of this genre by performing works of composers such as Jean Claude Risset (1938-2016) and Gilles Racot

(b.1951) as well as by Subotnick and Babbitt, named earlier. Marcus Wëiss was born in Basel,

148 Ibid., 109. 149 Cottrell, 292. 51 Switzerland and studied with Iwan Roth (b.1942), and Fred Hemke (b. 1935), both former students of Mule at the Paris Conservatory. Wëiss has premiered works by a myriad of internationally acclaimed composers such as Aperghis, Cage, Haas, Lachenmann, Lang, Rihm, and Stockhausen. As a soloist, Wëiss has worked with many prominent ensembles including the

Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, and Ensemble Modern. His primary chamber ensembles, Trio Accanto and XASAX, champion new music for the instrumentation of saxophone, piano and percussion trio as well as saxophone ensemble. In addition to an illustrious performing career Wëiss teaches saxophone, chamber music and a graduate program for contemporary music at the University of Music Basel (Hochschule).150

While Wëiss has a distinctly classical sound, he has developed a unique tonal profile through expansion of the instrument’s lexicon. His music in many cases is almost entirely comprised of extended techniques which often results in any distinct tonal characteristic being secondary.

An example of a different trajectory is found in the German school pioneered by Sigurd

Raschèr. Sigurd Manfred Raschèr was born May 15, 1907 in Elberfeld, Germany. At the age of

12, Raschèr enrolled in the first ever Waldorf School in Stuttgart. The Waldorf School education system was founded the same year Raschèr attended and is based on several distinctive characteristics:

Learning experiences designed to involve the whole human being; an unusual emphasis on art, music, and hand work; and a commitment to faculty governance. According to both faculty and students at this school, it functions as a community, without a rigid hierarchy.151

150 Trio Accanto. "Marcus Weiss – Saxophone”. http://www.trio-accanto.com/biography/marcus-weiss--- saxophone.html. 151 Sarah Foster. "An Introduction to Waldorf Education." The Clearing House 57, no. 5 (1984): 228-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30185590. 52 After a brief hiatus playing in dance bands to make money, Raschèr returned to school having found an appreciation for the neglected instrument and even featured a saxophone piece on his graduation recital. Raschèr writes in his press kit from the 1950’s:

A thorough absence of knowledge of “what can and what cannot be done” on the saxophone imbued me with a desire to try everything, however improbable it seemed; thus, my experiments to extend the range of the instrument beyond the traditional two and one-half octaves.152

Rascher gave his first public recital in 1932 and spent the next few years concertizing throughout

Europe with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic and the Warsaw

Radio Orchestra. He briefly taught at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark and the Malmö Academy of Music in Sweden starting in 1933. Throughout his career Raschèr actively sought out composers to write for the instrument, premiering what would become some of the repertoire’s most beloved masterworks by composers such as Paul Hindemith, Alexander

Glazounov, Lars-Erik Larsson and Jacques Ibert. In total, Raschèr ended his career with just over

200 pieces dedicated to him, none of which he commissioned. After World War II Raschèr began concertizing again throughout Europe, performing with over 250 orchestras and wind ensembles.

He developed significant etude and pedagogical materials much like Mule. Whereas

Mule’s teachings were often straightforward and calculated, Raschèr explored a more holistic approach to tonal imagination, technique and expressive tools, such as vibrato.153 Raschèr provides an example of having a reactionary tonal profile. He strongly advocated Adolphe Sax’s original intent for the instrument and championed the saxophone all around the world, performing with hundreds of orchestras and wind ensembles.

152 Sigurd Rascher, Lee Patrick, and Carina Rascher, The Raschèr Reader (Fredonia, NY: Daniel A. Reed Library, The State University of New York at Fredonia, 2014), 105 153 Ibid. 53 Of Raschèr’s followers, the most prolific was John-Edward Kelly (1958-2015). Kelly was born in San Francisco and studied music for a brief time in the United States before being asked personally by Sigurd Raschèr to replace him in the esteemed Raschèr Saxophone Quartet.

Kelly performed internationally with orchestras, made hundreds of television and radio performances throughout Europe, recorded over twenty CDs of concerti and new music and worked tirelessly to champion new music for the instrument, including works by Hans Kox,

Tristan Keuris and Anders Eliasson.154 Through close collaboration with the composers he sought out, Kelly pushed the capabilities of the saxophone’s altissimo registers, embraced extended use of microtonality in both technical and lyrical playing and defined a new level of virtuosity in much the same way that Raschèr did fifty years earlier. Much like Sigurd Raschèr,

Kelly would never pay a commission fee for pieces of music. He convinced hundreds of unknown European composers to write for him and was an advocate for art music.

Despite his distinct stylistic characteristics and capabilities, Kelly offered very little pedagogical leadership. It has been detrimental for the Raschèr school to always be reactionary in tonal profile. Cottrell writes on Rascher:

This commitment to a saxophonic version of historically-informed performance -- at least in relation to what is sometimes construed as ‘sonic authenticity’ – might have been more influential had there been a greater corpus of early saxophone material on which it could be practiced. But the relative modernity of the instrument, and the limited musical insights that therefore accrue from adopting such approaches, has meant that the saxophone has remained relatively marginalized in the period performance movement that has been so influential in other contexts. Rascher’s practice, while undoubtedly interesting, has ultimately proven to be idiosyncratic, rather than revolutionary, notwithstanding that it has continued to inform the practice of some of those associated with him, even in their commissioning of contemporary material.155

The Raschèr school is an example of how a reactionary approach to tonal profile has had negative effects on its following. Whether or not Raschèr would agree that his tonal concept is

154 Taken from unpublished promotional material of John-Edward Kelly. 155 Cottrell, 253. 54 idiosyncratic, or categorized as performance practice, makes no difference. The combination of a nostalgic, and exclusive, tonal profile, as well a sheer lack of institutionalized following, has contributed to the relative disappearance of the Raschèr school; only a few schools scattered around the globe embrace its teachings.

Another noteworthy group of saxophonists working to expand the pedagogical and tonal profile of the instrument are those who are currently working within new music ensembles.

Beginning with musicians like Jon Gibson (b.1940) of the Philip Glass Ensemble in the late

1960’s, new music collectives like the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and Bang on a Can have been an integral part of the development of classical music. Artists like Jon Gibson and Ken Thomson of Bang on a Can come from jazz backgrounds, while Ryan Muncy of ICE has a strong background in classical training from Northwestern University. Cottrell discusses the inclusion of saxophone in contemporary ensembles:

It is unsurprising that the saxophone should have found a niche for itself in this field, since the early roots of minimalism owe more to various non-Western musics, jazz, and rock music than to the Western art tradition. Initially less drawn to regular classical ensembles such as the symphony orchestra or the string quartet, these composers utilized a range of less conventional forces, including non-Western instruments, synthesizers, and other music technology. The saxophone provided them with a modern, flexible, and timbrally distinctive voice; it lacked overt historical and cultural associations with the Western art tradition but was instead more closely identified with those popular traditions on which the early minimalists drew.156

Popular Imagination

Focusing on the popular appeal of the saxophone we must understand the instrument as an essential asset to early rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Post-World War II saxophonists were building upon and developing the “’Honking and screaming’ style, in which a fat tenor saxophone sound was allied to low honks and high screams as well as other forms of textural and pitch manipulation.”157 Two of the most iconic examples of these early saxophone sounds are

156 Ibid., 277. 157 Ibid., 293. 55 Yakety Sax (1958) by Rudy Pompilli of The Coasters and Rock Around the Clock (1954) by King

Curtis of Bill Haley & His Comets. These soloists were not revolutionary in their sound profile or improvisation, but the impact that they had on the popular understanding of the saxophone was substantial. Cottrell states that, “Just as the saxophone had been pivotal to the youth-driven dance band counterculture of the 1920s, so too was it central to the music accompanying the rise of the similarly rebellious teenager in the 1950s and early 1960s.”158

Associating with earlier trends in rock and roll, saxophonists in the mainstream today seem to make more of an identity for themselves with their image and demeanor than any revolutionary technique. Two three-man groups featuring saxophone have gone from performing for passengers in crowded New York City subway stations to viral fame essentially overnight -

Moonhooch and Too Many Zoos. The two-saxophone and percussionist group Moonhooch essentially became famous overnight via social media. They have recorded four albums since

2013 under the Dance/Electronica genres, have been featured on social media venues such as

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, and are currently scheduled to be on tour throughout the United

States for the rest of the current year. The Wall Street Journal celebrated their “electronic house music mixed with brawny saxophone riffs.”159 They are often remembered for their iconic

“traffic cone in bell” low overtone squealing sounds and work extensively with DJ-like electronic devices.

Other mainstream artists like Too Many Zoos and Colin Stetson (b.1975) are finding interesting paths to success through the medium of saxophone, often utilizing some acoustic dance/electronica methods similar to Moonhooch’s approach. Colin Stetson was born in Ann

Arbor, Michigan and studied saxophone at the University of Michigan with classical pedagogue

Donald Sinta as well as jazz saxophonists Henry Threadgill and Roscoe Mitchell who were

158 Ibid., 318. 159 "Bio." Moon Hooch. https://www.moonhooch.com/bio/. 56 famously associated with the free-jazz movement discussed earlier. During his time in Ann

Arbor, Stetson formed the experimental jazz group Transmission Trio and eventually relocated to San Francisco where he worked with rock artist Tom Waits.160 In 2007 he settled in Montreal, and within a year released the first of his trilogy of solo albums, New History Warfare Vol. I.

Stetson has already enjoyed a bountiful career working with recording artists such as

LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, Tom Waits, Bon Iver and Evan Parker. His output spans a wide range of projects from a reimagining of Gorecki’s third symphony with rock instruments and electronics to writing for the soundtrack of the 2018 American horror film Hereditary.161 Stetson brings contemporary saxophone into the popular imagination by drawing on techniques similar to Evan Parker and combining them with his experience across multiple contemporary genres.

Non-Western Music

As discussed in the previous chapter, it is important to explore how the saxophone has performed on the world stage. The saxophone proves its flexibility, particularly the ability to perform microtonal inflections162 through its adoption into South Indian classical music, most notably by Kadri Gopalnath (b. 1949). To better adapt to Carnatic tradition Gopalnath removed unnecessary keys in the extremes of the saxophone, replaced rods with rubber cords, and changed leather pads to felt convex pads. “Combined with a performance style that emphasizes rapid melisma and portamento, and a timbre that is warm rather than penetrating, the saxophone can sound surprisingly idiomatic.”163

Gopalnath was invited to perform at a jazz festival when as V.V. Ramani explains in an

impromptu move, popular jazz musician John Handy joined him on stage to play a song. The fabulous response to this led the curator to present the two together in an evening show. As Kadri pushed the musical boundaries, his fame crossed the Indian shore. The

160 Christopher R. Herald. "The Advent of an Artist-Composer Movement Exemplified by the Works of Saxophonists Colin Stetson, Evan Parker, and Contemporaries." (Dissertation, The University of Arizona, 2017). 161 "Bio." Colin Stetson. http://www.colinstetson.com/bio. 162 Riccardo Selva. "The Saxophone in Sacred Music." (Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2003). 163 Cottrell, 299. 57 fusion of Jazz and Carnatic music delighted audiences so much that Handy and he performed at jazz festivals in Prague, Berlin, France and many more countries164

A student of Gopalnath, Prasant Radhakrishnan (b. 1983), continues to expand upon the relationships between American jazz and Carnatic musics. Radhakrishnan studied jazz saxophone at the University of Southern California and has acquainted himself with new music circles in the San Francisco Bay area, resulting in a number of interesting projects that include two artist residencies in 2007 and 2010 and groundbreaking musical collaborations such as

Nefasha Ayer: The Space of In Between (with Ethiopian vocalist Meklit Hadero, guitarist and painter Todd Brown, jazz artists Marcus Shelby, Howard Wiley and poet Michael Warr among others) and Teobi’s Dream (a multi-disciplinary project with Todd Brown at the de Young

Museum).165 In a similar vein, Egyptian saxophone Samir Surour, utilizes the timbral colors of the saxophone with a series of cross-fingerings to navigate the Arabic modal system, or maqam, which utilizes twenty-four notes per octave.166

In West Africa, composer, saxophonist, and activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1938-1997) combined American R&B and Soul genres with West African musical elements such as chant singing and heavy emphasis on percussion to create the genre “afrobeat.” Born in Nigeria, Kuti began as a traditional jazz musician. He traveled to Oxford, England to study music and spend time in Ghana and the United States where, “he learned of the Black Power movement, which made him aware of his “Blackism” and pushed him to define his Africanist convictions in music.”167 Shawn O’Neal describes Fela Anikulapo-Kuti music:

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti gives the listener the impression that the band is developing a standard American jazz or soul composition. Shortly thereafter, a saxophone melody combined with bass and percussion leads one to believe that James Brown or perhaps Miles Davis is conducting the ensemble. Approximately seven minutes and thirty seconds

164 Ramani, V.V. "How the Saxophone Took to Swaras." The Hindu. January 17, 2019 165 "About." Prasant Radhakrishnan. August 12, 2015. https://prasantmusic.com/about/. 166 Segell, 35. 167 Frank Tenaille, Music Is the Weapon of the Future: Fifty Years of African Popular Music (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002), 72. 58 into the band’s pulsating rhythm and driving syncopation, the first lyrics are uttered. The unfamiliar cadence and slightly broken English suggest that this music isn’t necessarily American, but conceivably a musical hybrid or musical unification of varied cultures… Afrobeat was coined by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti to describe his newfound consciousness associated with his art, to illustrate the present struggles of African people all over the world, and to discuss atrocities of the past such as African slavery and colonialism.168

Returning to Nigeria in 1973, Kuti became a cultural and political celebrity. He released multiple albums that were successful and had long-standing confrontations with the military as his music advocated for a more political youth in Nigeria.169 His legacy is passed onto his son, Femi Kuti, who continues to define the genre of “afrobeat” both musically and politically.

The above artists are a small sampling of the many tonal possibilities the saxophone has to offer. By showcasing a diversity of tonal possibilities and how extensively the instrument has adapted through popular genres as well as niche communities, students may come closer to the understanding that an ideal tonal profile is ultimately subjective. While the tonal profiles of accomplished saxophonists have always served as strong foundational models for young students, the standard pedagogical method of imitation ultimately inhibits experimentation and encourages students to be imitative rather than receptive and open-minded in their musical preferences. The next chapter provides a method by which we can bring this exploration to a classroom studio setting.

168 Shawn Trenell O’Neal. "The Soundscape of Diaspora and Anti-Colonialism: Historical Significance and Theory." (Dissertation, University of Colorado at Denver, 2016), 29. 169 David M. Herszenhorn. "Fela, 58, Dissident Nigerian Musician, Dies." The New York Times. August 04, 1997. 59 CHAPTER 4

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

The opening chapter briefly framed the issue of isolation within the saxophone community, while the inner chapters represent information that can enrich the historical narrative and encourage an exploration of tonal possibilities. It seems evident that these two components can benefit saxophonists of any age, but how do we implement this into a practical application?

In conversation with students and professionals in the field it seems that these explorations, whether tonal or historical, are often discussed later in the academic track. Many saxophonists and genres were unknown to me at the formation of this project. At the very least only a general understanding of these historical threads and niche communities.

While there must certainly be exceptions, it is common to spend saxophonists’ formative years solely honing their ability to operate the instrument. It seems counterintuitive that an exploration of the tonal possibilities of the instrument would be discussed years after our opinions and models of sound production have been cemented into place. I am not arguing that being presented multiple possibilities and options for sound production would necessarily eliminate the influence of schools of playing altogether, but rather supplement diversity in what often results in the imitation of one individual - whether that is a studio teacher or a recording artist.

A possible solution to this problem is to introduce this material as early in a student’s training as possible. This chapter provides a broad outline of a fifteen-week syllabus, that reflects a standard academic semester. While the size of an incoming freshman class greatly depends on a university size and location, weekly meetings should be manageable in a masterclass or small group format. The discussions in chapters II and III seek to be diverse and all-encompassing in

60 nature, thus being beneficial when applied to a private classical lesson, jazz lessons and across other instrumental families as will be discussed later.

Outline Sampling

In order to formulate this discussion into a standard fifteen-week syllabus it is necessary to split the material into broader sections: historical narrative, acoustics and tonal profile with an emphasis on experimental sound concepts. A semester could begin by spending the first week introducing acoustic niche as a metaphor through which we appreciate the way saxophonists have navigated through time. The next six weeks of the semester would be a discussion of the historical timeline with an emphasis on the niche communities or musicians that tend to exist outside the common historical narrative. While it is necessary for the young saxophonist to learn about foundational pedagogues, discussion of these individuals, such as Mule and Raschèr, will continue throughout the rest of their education, as their influence is strongly felt in etudes and the masterworks that are attributed to them. Further biographical information on these musicians will also be discussed in an exploration of their tonal profile.

The historical narrative section will progress through a discussion of the instrument’s development using guideposts, such as origin and initial reception, as discussed in the first portion of chapter II, and will move through the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Emphasis will be placed not only on saxophone-specific examples but also on general wind playing in the discussed timelines, as well as a general history of the historical/ political timeline surrounding each event. For instance, a discussion of the “saxophone craze” developing in the United States would not be nearly as important if background material on the First World War and the Great

Depression were not addressed; these events had a significant effect on the country preceding and during the Depression. As introduced in acoustic niche theory, it is important to capture the

61 broad environment of instrumental playing in which the saxophone exists to better understand what potential influences other factors had on its development.

In equal proportion to the historical narrative unit, six weeks would be spent discussing the evolution of tonal profile as it relates to saxophone. Beginning with the changes in saxophone manufacturing and its effect on tonal profile, the next few weeks will function in a very similar fashion to chapter two – chronologically with attention paid to the broad fields of classical, jazz, and then non-Western musics. Recordings serve as primary sources in both the historical narrative and tonal profile sections. As such, a supplemental discography is included in the first appendix. For example, a lesson pertaining to the introduction of saxophone into Mexico might begin with a brief discussion of major political events in Mexico during this time period, i.e., the

French Intervention in 1861. In order to supplement the narrative discussed at the end of chapter three, sample recordings of early influencers, such as José Ortiz and the Tío family, will be provided when available.

Two weeks near the end of the semester would be left to spend on auxiliary material.

Particular subjects of interest might include an in-depth discussion of the acoustical properties of the saxophone as it relates to design and materials. By gaining a basic scientific understanding of sound production one might encourage an objective understanding of what is changing in preferential sound design via different chamber mouthpieces, for example. Another sample subject could be a discussion of incorporating jazz studies as a classical musician. Examples of basic fundamental ii-V-I progressions or producing a jazz sound for a classical musician would be invaluable. Jeffrey Benedict has compiled a wonderful index of materials for this very purpose.170

170 Jeffrey W. Benedict. "Incorporating Jazz into the Study of Saxophone at the Undergraduate Level: A Graded Index of Materials and Recommendations for their use." (Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin. 1992). 62 We must aim to be as diverse and all-encompassing as possible in our teaching, to include musicians of all ethnicities, genders and social backgrounds. As female saxophonists remain largely absent from the historical narrative and admittedly this document, an exploration of important female figures would also be invaluable. All-female bands in the early twentieth century that were utilizing saxophone, enthusiasts and performers such as Elise Hall and Peggy

Gilbert, as well as the many female composers that have written for our instrument would all be excellent starting points for this discussion. Through the process of teaching and collecting student feedback one might discover areas of particular interest to students and use them in subsequent semesters. Lastly, it is my hope that this pedagogical model can be applied across any instrument family, as similar issues of likely exists in other instrumental areas in academic settings.

Conclusion

This treatise showcases only a sampling of the hundreds of interesting and innovative paths through which saxophonists have navigated the musical world. By spending all of our efforts focusing on a few genres or individuals we limit ourselves from developing an understanding of larger contexts. Krause argues that, “abstracting the voice of a single creature from a habitat and trying to understand it out of context is a little like trying to play Samuel

Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” absent a violin section as part of the orchestra.”171 The obvious musical reference aside, it seems near impossible to fully navigate the tonal and creative possibilities of the saxophone without grasping the larger context of the entire instrumental community. Similar to the species Krause showcases in his work on acoustic niche, saxophonists have altered and experimented with tonal profile to stand out in their environment. Additionally,

171 Krause. The Niche Hypothesis, 2. 63 the instrument has proven flexible and versatile in navigating prominent musical genres and styles in western art music, popular music, and non-western musics.

I believe that fostering a culture of exploration in ourselves and our students is of the utmost importance. Every new sound or gesture we discover increases the vocabulary or parameters through which we express ourselves with music. I am grateful to have embarked on this journey and I feel strongly that this pedagogical model has the potential to inspire much more receptive and diverse musicians. The fuller our understanding of the past and the present trajectories of the saxophone the more likely we can find our niche and articulate our voice within the community.

64 APPENDIX A

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

Sorted alphabetically by artist (first name) Artist Album Title Year Label Anthony Braxton For Alto 1969 Delmark Anthony Braxton New York, Fall 1974 1974 Arista Charlie Parker The Complete Savoy & Dial 2002 Slg, Llc Master Takes Charlie Parker Bird and Diz 1952/1997 Verve/UMG Claude Delangle The Solitary Saxophone 1984 BIS Claude Delangle The Russian Saxophone 1996 BIS Colin Stetson New History Warfare Vol. I 2008 Stetson Colin Stetson All This I Do for Glory 2017 52Hz Colin Stetson SORROW – a Reimagining of 2016 52Hz Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony Daniel Kientzy Sax-Computer 2008 INA-GRM Eric Dolphy Out to Lunch 1964 Blue Note Evan Parker Saxophone Solos 1975 Incus Evan Parker The Moment’s Energy 2009 ECM Fela Kuti Zombie 1976 Coconut Fela Kuti Sorrow Tears and Blood 1977 Kalakuta Femi Kuti Femi Kuti 1995 Tabu/Motown Gerry Mulligan & Stan Gerry Mulligan Meets Stan 1957 Verve Getz Getz Getatchew Mekuria Getatchew Mekuria and His 1972 Philips Saxophone Harry White Edvard Grieg: Summernight 2008 Musicophone Jean-Marie Londeix Portrait, Private Recordings 2012 MDG Archive Vol. 1-4 John Coltrane A Love Supreme 1965 Impulse! John Coltrane Giant Steps 1960 Atlantic John Zorn Cobra 1987 Hathut John Zorn Naked City 1990 Nonesuch John-Edward Kelly Alone 1999 Emergo Classics John-Edward Kelly Saxophone & Piano, Vol. 1 1988 EMG Classical Kadri Gopalnath Mangala Naada 2001 Sangeeth Sagar King Curtis The Best of King Curtis 1967 Capitol

65 Sorted alphabetically by artist (first name) Artist Album Title Year Label Lester Young Lester Young with the Oscar 1954/1997 Verve/UMG Peterson Trio Marcel Mule ‘Le Patron’ of the Saxophone… 1996 Clarinet Classics Encore! Marcus Wëiss Conquest of Melody 1997 Hat Hut Marcus Wëiss Neue Musik für Saxophon 1991 Xopf Moonhooch Moonhooch 2013 Hornblow/Palmetto Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come 1959 Atlantic Ornette Coleman Free Jazz: A Collective 1961 Atlantic Improvisation Paul Desmond & Gerry Two of a Mind 1962 RCA Victor Mulligan Philip Glass Ensemble Glassworks [Expanded Edition] 1982/87 Sony BMG Prasant Radhakrishnan Naada Samyama 2013 Hridaya Raschèr Saxophone Music for Saxophones 1995 Cala Quartet Raschèr Saxophone Europe – Music for Saxophone 2001 BIS Quartet Quartet Ryan Muncy Hot 2013 New Focus Sigurd Raschèr Plays the Saxophone 1960 Grand Award Sonny Rollins Saxophone Collosus 1956 Prestige Too Many Zoos Subway Gawdz 2016 Too Many Zoos Trio Accanto songs and poems 2018 Wergo

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72 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Nicholas Childs is an active saxophonist and educator currently residing in Tallahassee,

Florida. As a chamber musician, Childs has performed at the NYSSMA Conference opening concert and in various chamber music series across New York, including Caffe Lena on the

Battehnkill and the De Blasiis Chamber Music Series as a member of the Decho Ensemble.

As an advocate of new music, Childs has premiered works by Zdenek Lukas and Kevin Austin and been an active participant in the ETHOS New Music Society and Florida State Universities

Festival of New Music. He has presented multiple solo and chamber recitals at various conferences across the United States, including the Navy Saxophone Symposium and both regional and national North American Saxophone Alliance conferences.

Childs is currently in pursuit of a Doctor of Music degree at Florida State University where he holds a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. He received degrees from the State

University of New York at Fredonia (MM) and Northern Arizona University (BM) under the direction of Dr. Wildy Zumwalt and Dr. Jonathan Bergeron, respectively. Childs has performed in various masterclasses for Arno Bornkamp, Dr. Chien Kwan-Lin, Hans de Jong and Raaf

Hekkema.

Childs performs on American-made Buescher saxophones manufactured in the 1930s.

73