Ars Subtilior

While saxophone quartets are common in the jazz and free music worlds, there are few models in the world of classical music — the 20th century notwithstanding. The saxophone quartet XASAX is dedicated to pursuing the saxophone's richness throughout the history of music, whether or not a particular piece of music was written for the saxophone. Here the group performs four modern pieces written for saxophones — particularly quartets — all written between 1973 and 1994. In between they have ever so delicately laced three works from classical antiquity, when the saxophone itself hadn't even been a bell in the eardrum of composer Jacob de Senleches. The first of these is by Hugues Dufourt: his "Quartet for Saxophone" (1990). Here the elemental rhythms of jazz are inserted into a tonal system of pitch and repetition like that of Ligeti. Each horn uses the microtones produced by the others to enter into a harmonic agreement within preselected rhythms. This is followed by the heartbreakingly beautiful "En Attendant Asperance (Ballade)" from the 14th century. It is so mournful and regal in its lyric line — originally written for voices where a kind of improvisation was allowed above a certain register — that it sinks lowly in the body of the listener, creating sad reveries from the pulse and the timbre of its harmony. Unfortunately, this is followed (terrible sequencing!) by Bernardo Maria Kuczer's "Even...the Loudest Sky" from 1981. From the sounds of it, he must have encountered Rova's earliest work and thought he might improve upon it. Terrible. Again the listener moves through antiquity, searching among de Senleches' pieces for strings and finding "En Ce Graieux Temps." All tonal considerations are based on intonation and the mechanisms of rhythmic interplay, giving the listener the impression that one horn's phrase ends as another's begins — although they never end, and the weave is constant until the end. Alvaro Carlevaro's "Quiebros" is based on sonant counterpoint between altos and soprano. The tenor, in this case, acts as a baritone and creates the interval for changes in tempo, color, and nuance — and there are many here. Another ballad by de Senleches steals the show with its organlike siphoned pulsation. This is sacred music; the quartet sounds like the four parts of an organ — keys, pipes, pedals, buttons — carrying the antiphon for the mass from the choir loft to the entrants below. Again, it is moving and beautiful in a way it couldn't be for any other arrangement. This is foreign music, "other" music; it operate from the heart in a different way and tonally offers a dissonance that can only be consonant because of the isorhythms in the composer's intention, explained so beautifully and succinctly by Art Lange in the liner notes: arithmetico + melodico + rhythmico. The closer by Henri Pousseur is the bridge across the chasm of the past to the present, where notions of melody and harmony are melded onto modern conceptions of time and meter. Additionally, conceptions of line, phrase, polytonalism, and microphonics are all considered in a fairly traditional lyric mode. In all, XASAX is a gorgeous and brave recording with only one snafu, but it can hardly be held against them for their adventurousness in their quest to bring the saxophone out of the shadows of the Western classical tradition.