Think of the saxophone and, more than likely, you'll think of jazz. But the saxophone has penetrated far beyond that particular world, which, of course, didn't exist when Adolphe Sax patented his new instrument in 1846. When John Buckley was commissioned to write a saxophone concerto for Kenneth Edge, he had no difficulty getting his hands on some 15 or 20 pieces to study the field and assess the state of play.
The thought of writing a saxophone concerto was not a new one. "I've been wanting to write this piece for the best part of 10 years now, for a number of reasons." First and foremost is "the sheer appeal of the instrument, which to me is one of the most marvellous concerto instruments. It combines the sheer dynamic and volume ability of brass with all the flexibility one expects of a flute or clarinet".
Added to that was the very special character of the soloist he was writing for. "Kenneth Edge seems capable of undertaking any piece, of no matter what difficulty, and rising to the challenge - and sometimes surpassing it. In this piece, for instance, there's a very fast opening two or three minutes which I had set at a speed of crotchet equals 120, thinking that was going to be about the speed that anyone could be expected to go to. Most players in that circumstance would say: `Maybe we could take it a little slower.' But he suggested bringing it up to 132, which is now the mark that we've put on it, because he felt it would flow better. And indeed it does."
In his researches Buckley found the quality of the repertoire to be mixed, "as you would expect of any genre - some superb pieces, and some that seemed to me to be working against the nature of the instrument. For example there was a whole concerto that used virtually an octave above the normal range all the way through." He contrasts this with the concerto by British composer Dominic Muldowney, "which combines a sort of popular, almost jazz-like, dance-like style with more meditative sections. It seemed to draw out something of the nature of the instrument, perhaps."
In his own concerto, says Buckley, a certain jazz flavour will probably be felt, too, "but I would hope in a very subtle way, not in the sense of deliberately imitating a jazz style. But I think in parts of the long, middle slow section, there are forms of ornamentation and small little gestures that perhaps have more close affinity with the jazz repertoire than with the standard classical repertoire."
The piece is about 17 or 18 minutes long, "depending on how fast Ken decides to play", says Buckley with a smile. Since it was commissioned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the composer has found himself working without the full colours and percussive resources of a symphony orchestra.
`I was quite pleased, actually, to be asked to only use strings. I'm very fond of writing for large orchestras. I love, for example, the sounds of percussion instruments. But I was rather pleased to have to write a piece where I couldn't fall back on putting in percussion colours or brass colours or whatever, just having to rely on a more limited sound world. Consequently I've looked for ways to elaborate and embellish the web of sound just using the strings. Quite frequently, for example, they're divided into 15 parts, there being 15 players in the orchestra. I did see it as more of a challenge - and a good one for me - that I had to pare down certain orchestral expectations, shall we say."
By strange coincidence, he has also been commissioned to write a second concerto for wind instrument, for Michael Jones, principal bassoonist of the National Symphony Orchestra. Here, with a smaller-sounding instrument he will - if he chooses - have all the colouristic resources he wants. Whether to use them all or not is "a question that's exercising my mind quite a lot at the moment". But he has decided to leave that commission rest a while, because he doesn't want to write two wind concertos back to back.
He's also working with the sculptor Vivienne Roche for a sculpture and music exhibition in about a year's time at the Hugh Lane Gallery. He's thinking in terms of pre-recorded music with "several outlet points, as it were, which would, perhaps, respond to somebody entering the room, or might come on randomly". He expects to be mixing electronic sounds with recordings of acoustic instruments, and laughs as he says: "I certainly see the percussion instruments which I didn't have for the Saxophone Concerto playing quite a big part in this." His work on the concerto has meant that the sculpture in the project is currently more developed than the music (the concerto, the biggest piece he has yet done on a computer music typesetting system, was hampered by a computer virus). The intention is that sculpture will evolve out of the music as well as the music evolve out of the sculpture. And although Buckley is a man whose work often takes flight from a wide range of imagery, he says that he has no plans for the representational or illustrative in this project which takes its inspiration from aspects of the coast. Earlier this year, Buckley sat on the international selection panel for the World Music Days, the annual festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, which is due to be held in Manchester next year.
"I had never had such access to so many contemporary scores in such a concentrated period of time in my whole life. There were 600 altogether, which varied from the absolutely banal to the superb." Every score was read by at least half the jury before being voted on, with single-person special pleading allowed whenever particular works that individual panel members felt strongly about seemed to be losing out.
What struck Buckley about the exercise was the sheer diversity of what was on offer. The openness of access yielded submissions from pieces in scribbled pencil to published scores accompanied by CDs featuring major orchestras. From his trawl of this four-day, 12-hour-a-day marathon, Buckley says he's glad to have encountered the "tremendously exciting" Dispelling The Fears by Mark Anthony Turnage, quite a lot of interesting Scandinavian music, some fine Korean pieces, and a lot of good pieces by unfamiliar names. The single biggest surprise, however, seems to have been a piece for amplified solo mandolin and tape, Tantrum, by an American composer, C. P. First.
"I think it was the only piece we were unanimous about. Everyone felt that this was really exciting, that we'd never heard a mandolin piece like this before - tremendously virtuosic, drawing out characters and colours from an instrument that up to then I had really only thought suitable for Vivaldi concertos." It sounds like the time is right for any budding young Irish virtuoso of the mandolin to fire a challenge in Buckley's direction rather than keep him waiting another 10 years.
John Buckley's new Saxophone Concerto will be premiered tomorrow night at a concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of the University of Limerick. Information from: 061-202917.
