Sonata For Soprano Saxophone & Piano
Steve Cohen
About this work:
The Sonata grew out of my happy and productive musical friendship with saxophonist James Noyes, the piece’s commissioner and dedicatee. Jim led the ensemble that premiered my Saxophone Quartet Nº 2 at Manhattan School of Music and repeated that performance at Weill Recital Hall the following season.
I seem to be most motivated as a composer when I feel that the music I’m writing in some way fills a need. I’m sure this is what first drew me to writing for saxophones, the “orphans of the orchestra,” if you will. When Jim suggested I write a solo piece for soprano sax, he said that it had been unjustly neglected in favor of the alto, and there was, he felt, a dire shortage of repertoire for soprano sax. This statement obviously pushed the right button in me, and set off a spark within my imagination. I started making sketches for the piece in September, 2001, put it aside for a month, resumed in earnest in December and completed it in early January, 2002.
Most of my saxophone writing prior to this piece was for ensembles of various sorts; sax quartets, sax plus string quartet, sax choir, sax plus chamber orchestra. Now, with this piece, I was faced with the challenge of working with only one solo instrumental voice accompanied by piano. As I proceeded, I discovered that the intimacy of this combination prompted me to write in a very personal, almost confessional manner, and it felt as if I were not writing musical movements so much as entries in a diary.
Movement 1, Allegro assai, centers around the key of B-flat minor, and has a gentle lyricism, touched with a sense of unrest, with many uneven phrase-lengths and abrupt changes of harmony. A contrasting theme in G-flat is ardent and yearning. After a brief development section, marked “misterioso.” the main themes are reprised, and reach a resolution of calm repose.
Movement 2, Slow Blues, is in E-flat, and begins with high, gentle patterns in the piano that gradually coalesce into the accompaniment for a blues. The sax enters, playing softly (using a technique called “subtone”) in its lowest register, a mournful, world-weary song of resignation. The harmonies are those of the traditional blues form, until they break away into a new direction, built on a chromatically descending bass line. This section is repeated, with variants, in the middle register of the sax, and again, where it screams in anguish in the highest register, and then subsides to a return to the opening piano figures. Just before I started writing this movement, I learned of the death of Ralph Burns, a legendary composer/arranger from the big-band era who would go on to put his indelible stamp on Hollywood soundtracks and Broadway pit orchestras, and I was moved to dedicate this movement to that great man’s memory.
Movement 3, Allegro giocoso, is an abrupt change of mood, a rondo that continually returns to a jaunty, carefree theme in the B-flat lydian mode. A cantabile theme in D-flat is introduced, and after some development the “yearning” motive from the first movement is brought back, now sounding strong and optimistic, and the piece ends with a confident swagger.
Year composed: 2002
Duration: 00:22:00
Ensemble type: Chamber or Jazz Ensemble, Without Voice:Other Combinations, 2-5 players
Instrumentation: 1 Soprano Saxophone, 1 Piano
Instrumentation notes: Soprano Sax & Piano. Also playable for Clarinet.