ANTITHESIS: Contemporary Saxophone Music

Description

One of the most significant compositional trends developed in the second half of the 20th century is the effort to enhance the level of listening perception. Sounds have been given elaborate attention in the guise of scientific research. This tendency has opened a new and demanding frontier in music in which the notations for the dynamics in the scores have suddenly become futile compared to the depth of the sound research and the unusual techniques. The contemporary music system has commenced an unorthodox revolt scrutinizing the details surrounding the inaudible as well as those around the full intensity of the sound. This kind of research spans from the silent detail of the famous Scelsi piano key with the pedal until the ending of the sonic matter to the recent saturationist excursions found in French composers. One might ask if it is possible for the research and the techniques to blend so as to create a new contemporary panorama. Can scanning the dynamics and the extreme areas be a way of being transported into an emotional cell which is stimulated by the instruments? Is it possible to create a new sensitivity? And, if so, what kind of dialectic would emerge from the game of forces?
The selection that Bianchini proposes might be the answer to these questions. Here the compositions converge towards an idea of flow regulation, extensions and techniques that work together to catch what happens within a sound in a specific time. The saxophone is chosen for its corporeal sound offering an instrumental excellence that allows to live the ‘matter’ dimension. Everything that hands, mouth, fingerings, or breath carve is unity, a tangible tension that brings us closer to the physics of the materials as well as the abstraction of art. The corporeality is to be embedded in what Bianchini wished to explore, namely the transparency and the intensity of timbres, currently seen as problematic universes. This corporeality expresses itself in a variety of compositional styles though united by the thread of a definitive semantic change. This work tackles the predictable harmonic sequences as they have been known in classical music until now, because the tension lives in confused situations, in the definitely unconventional textures of the saxophones and in the gestures of the performer.
In the last 20 years composers have turned the timber parameter into a meaning bearer, thus challenging both the laws of music and the theorists that do not recognize a direct relation between sounds and cognitions connected to them. Among these challengers, Salvatore Sciarrino has conceived a profound theory about signs for dynamics in the score and about the relations existing in the extreme limits of the sound registers, verifying the acoustic valorization areas that verge towards silence. Just as central is the value of harmonics, of the energy being released, and of the enticement of the noise. Bianchini guides us through a combination of harmonics emerging from a connection used by composers to recognize the acoustic meaning of their pieces: these harmonics are not always preponderant, they are produced in the development of the pieces and accept to become ‘adult’ only to contrast more powerful phenomena (such as the relation with electronics).

Going into the details of Bianchini’s work, there are two exquisite examples of how to produce music in relation to fingering. The first is the soprano saxophone version of Canzona di Ringraziamento by Sciarrino, a piece written in 1985 within the composer’s research on the flute, but which has encouraged saxophonists to play it considering its adaptive solutions that characterize it ab origine. This piece works on the relationship of the intensity of the breath with certain fingerings as a function of that research on the inaudible that has characterized much of Sciarrino’s production. The acoustic discoveries are implemented through the management of the octave key, with some arpeggios repeated, perfectly dosed in pressure and speed, which flush out the sounds present in the air channel of the sax. The other composition is iv12 by Mark Andre, for soprano, taken from the cycle that the composer dedicated to “introversion” (this is the meaning of iv), an invitation to new perceptions that follow a specific project: creating processes of disappearance of music and musical interstices endowed with space-temporality. A first part of impulses, five minutes of a strange rhythmic texture that does not produce tones, which shows the slaps produced thanks to the changes in the fingering and a second part that loses the constancy of the impulse and instead looks for variations and a speculative intent, with suffocations or elisions on the soprano. The research stays into the relationship between unusual rhythmic textures and hidden microtonal particles. The idea behind Delta Waves – written by Malin Bång for tenor saxophone – is to ​​musically fly over the waves of sleep. Here the techniques review a complex intertwining of situations that identify the alternation of phases of light sleep or little bumpy to others with very little movement; the saxophonist is asked to implement the same plan (as far as he can do!), trying to blend the perspectives with appropriate extensive techniques: the whispered and the rustle obtained without mouthpiece, the strong counterweight of the over-tones register are the elements on which the performer’s action is constituted. The other piece for tenor saxophone selected by Bianchini is …voci e parole sono delle linee… (Quarto studio sull’opera Nanof) by Antonio Agostini, a composition that is inspired by Oreste Fernando Nannetti, an unfortunate engraver suffering from spondylitis and insanity, who during his hospitalization covered the walls of the Ferri department of the Volterra asylum with graffiti produced through the buckles of their “crazy uniform”. Recognized a posteriori as art brut, in those wall engravings it is possible to glimpse stories that do not follow immediate logical lines. The piece, therefore, tries to give voice to the graffiti also using the electronics. It presents acoustic contrasts on the one hand, sly and swollen with sound, on the other harmonics and slaps that are dosed in the space at the same time enchanted and impervious in which the composition slips. Le rive di Mykines by Andrea Nicoli, for alto sax and tape, takes its cue from frequenting the coast of the small town of the Faroe Islands. However it is a piece that has no descriptive nature, it is a musical alteration that supports an alternative world of sounds obtained through tool extensions and a well-organized part of pre-registered electronics. The augmentations, the apoplectic strokes of the sax, the chokes, the air flows or the very fine harmonics are found in the double condition of the scenarios, which suggest grandeur and wonder. The use of the electronics becomes heavier for ØX, alto sax and tape composed by Maja Ratkje, with a sampling of effects of various kinds processed as noise that dot the path of the saxophonist, committed to inserting himself with ardent simulations in the development of the composition. The Norwegian composer’s investigation goes in the direction of probing the extremities where Ø is the expression of silence (emptiness) and X is the unknown substance of the saxophonist’s forays into the high notes. In Olga Neuwirth’s Spleen III, Bianchini introduces the baritone saxophone, conveying the Austrian composer’s message on the musical coherence of a state of human malaise. Melancholy and chronic dissatisfaction present themselves as in a circle of actions that explore the extremes of apparent tranquility and irritability to the bitter end. For Anna Clyne’s Choke, the goal is to build a score in which the baritone filters its characteristics in a synthetic environment, suitably composed of samples and preventive manipulations of the sax. The performer, however, confronts himself with his weapons, those that identify effects found on the keys, on the release of air flows and on the creation of very rich harmonics; the clogging is both musical and psychological.

Bianchini behaves as a conductor of energy, no matter what type, interpretative realism of an explorer of sounds, adamantine or explosive to occurrences, mysterious or granite depending on the type of reflection required by the composition. The dialectic of Antithesis requires the ability to know how to dominate contrasts and it demands a musician capable of creating a range of congruences that are not easily manageable. Ultimately, the entire project of Bianchini is a domination of the objective world liberating a perfectly totalized sound world.
Ettore Garzia © 2022