snapshot of score of Five Pieces for Saxophone Quartet

Five Pieces for Saxophone Quartet (1975)

1: Anticipation
2: Reciprocation
3: Concatenation
4: Interpolation
5: Precipitation

This is the closest I ever came to textbook 12-note serialism, all five pieces being based on the same row, which is stated most explicitly at the start of the final piece. Stylistically, however, they owe a lot more to post-Rite, pre-neoclassical Stravinsky than to Schoenberg or Webern, and the last piece can be seen as a precursor to my Bebop, which followed eleven years later. The five titles, each a five-syllable word ending in ‘-ation’, are not only a verbal conceit: they do actually have some relevance to the nature of the music.

It’s playable as is, without transposition, as Five Pieces for Inverted String Quartet (violin, viola and two cellos), and I’ve also made arrangements for guitar quartet and brass quintet. The latter, Five Pieces for Brass Quintet is published by Warwick Music.

Score extract (PDF)

Instrumentation

Performances / broadcasts / ‘real’ recordings

Listen to MIDI version (8:02)