BREACH 2021

Swiss Tour | Tournée suisse
Tournée svizzera | סיבוב הופעות בשוויץ

Project Description

The saxophone is a relatively new instrument that is still finding its place in the music world. While it is currently still predominantly found in classical music, it is gradually becoming one of the most explorative instruments in the contemporary music scene. It is both through the creation of new repertoire for the instrument and collaborations with composers that drive this development. The Ensemble du Bout du Monde takes as its mission these points of view and is dedicated to performing contemporary music and developing new works that have been written specifically for this chamber ensemble. It is this idea and concept that is paramount for EBM, because it is essential to the creation of new music.

To breach something means to consciously violate norms, be it the given path, or the social behavior between people. While in the visual arts the concept of "breaching something" is a natural part of exhibitions and galleries all over the world, in music one usually still follows a fixed status quo.

The concept of "Breach" is interpreted through the individual and personal experiences of the ensemble members, as well as through the collective. Every member of EBM has swam against the tide at some point, for example studying abroad or developing careers as contemporary chamber musicians and soloists. Along the way, each member has developed their own voice - through their experiences abroad, as well as their experiences back home. These different personalities come together in EBM and together they pride themselves on breaking through the normative ideas in society, as well as breaking through the boundaries of music artistically. This concert tour does exactly what musicians usually avoid - taking the risk of adding new commissioned works to a program and expecting the highest level of artistic achievement.

The composers Xavier Dayer (Bern) and Paul Clift (Basel), with whom EBM is collaborating on this project, both represent a different style, as well as each having their own significance to the ensemble. EBM believes that it makes sense to bring these composers together in one concert, presenting a unified image of the ensemble: four people with an independent, artistic self-image meet and reinvent themselves, this coming together is a task that only works collectively, detached from each individual member.

ProgramME

XAS (1987) - Iannis Xenakis (GR/FR)
Jalkin (2012) - Ramon Lazkano (ES/FR)
Ornement ou Crime* (2021) - Xavier Dayer (CH)
RGBA* (2021) - Paul Clift (AUS/CH)
ZERUAN (2020) - María-Eugenia Luc (ARG/IT/ES)

* - indicates Swiss premiere

Programme Notes

XAS - Iannis Xenakis

XAS by Iannis Xenakis, commissioned by the Rascher Saxophone Quartet was composed in 1987. The title is an anagram of SAX: S (the single unbalanced letter of the title) is written backwards, in order to create a mirror image. One also might note a play on the name of XenAkiS (i.e. highlighting the outermost letters and the center of his name). since Xenakis never wrote for sax before, giving part of his name and reversing the inventor's name in the title is a kind of appropriation of the saxophone for his own use, for the use of his own music. This is also the only piece Xenakis wrote for the saxophone, since his concerto project was never composed.
The work exudes a sense of power mixed with rudeness, despite a small instrumental ensemble. The composer only briefly uses new techniques: some quarter tones and simple multiphonics punctuate the piece; on the contrary, most "attack modes" and tone colors (aside from extreme dynamics) are absent, evaded, or left to the performer's choice. However, we note that he adopts the principle of a very extended high tessitura (a minor sixth on soprano, a minor ninth on alto and tenor, and up to an eleventh on baritone above the theoretical limits of the respective instruments).
Years after its creation, XAS by Iannis Xenakis is (or has become) one of the most compelling pieces for saxophone quartet. Over time, one might even consider it as the first “serious” piece that was written by a major composer for this type of ensemble. This was often previously considered as ridiculous or in bad taste (similar to the brass quintet), as the saxophone was limited to its role in popular music and jazz by most major composers of the twentieth (as well as the nineteenth) century.
We can therefore thank Xenakis for his laudable non-conformism, which certainly contributed to the current passion for saxophone quartet. In fact, since the publication of XAS, the saxophone repertoire has been enriched with other prestigious and valuable pieces by Donatoni, Cage, Dufourt, and Aperghis, to name a few. These composers have also "dared" to confront the many unexplored possibilities of this rich formation of chamber music.

Jalkin - Ramon Lazkano

In Jalkin, the sound that shapes the work is not constructed as a study or an elaboration of a circumscribed material, but as an exploration of the sediment or an examination of the decantation. A conventional and polysemic element, with symbolic extensions that mark our memory as musicians, is deposited unconsolidated; attacked by erosive agents, stark and pauperized, it shows itself only as an emotional trace of the unspeakable. In the same way that an unexpected perfume revives an involuntary memory or an unusual vision awakens the conscience of the forgotten, Jalkin is an attempt to capture the dregs of a sound that binds us to our memory and inscribes us in time.

Ornement ou Crime - Xavier Dayer

Ornamentation has an essential place in music. One of its strong characteristics is that it allows one to easily localize the work. The composer, Swiss-born Xavier Dayer, thought for example of oriental ornaments which immediately transport us to the East or of those of the "blues" which lead us to the West or even to those of flamenco. In European written music, it is also the place where the interpreter has a preponderant place, going beyond the authority of the score. Let's think of the ornaments in concerto cadenzas or the ornaments in baroque music. When the Ensemble du Bout du Monde, with the multitude of the origins of the musicians who constitute it, as well as by its very open approach stylistically proposed to Xavier Dayer to compose this work, he was very naturally directed towards this ornamental dimension. He also had in mind the role of the ornamental in the music of the second half of the 20th century, think of the immense volutes of the music of Pierre Boulez, for example. Moreover the ornament is also the place of an aesthetic judgment, one could see there the expression of an art which would be superficial compared to a non-ornamental art which would be essential and stripped. The famous book Ornament and Crime by the Viennese architect Adolf Loos came to the mind of the composer and the word play in the title proposing to replace the "and" with the "or" tries to relativize this vision.
In this piece, in addition to a very free play on ornaments (in my case, all precisely notated), Dayer thought of the formation of duos solos, trios dialoguing within a quartet with an important attention given to the general curve of the registers.

RGBA - Paul Clift

Generally speaking, the acoustic instrumental music of Paul Clift actively pursues the “synthesis” of timbres and effects which are traditionally associated with electronic music. He makes great effort to simulate processes such as filtering, delays, granulation, frequency shifts, etc. using purely acoustic means. For example, his other works for chamber ensemble which prominently feature woodwind instruments make heavy use of combinations of multiphonics, with the goals of exploring timbre polyphonically, and of creating microtonal textures whose densities seemingly exceed the sonic limitations of the ensemble. The saxophone, with its unmatched palette of multiphonics, as well as its versatility in terms of tessitura and timbral sculpting, is ideal for further exploration of these notions which have been at the heart of his musical style for several years.
In a more abstract sense, this work (RGBA) makes a strong conceptual reference to the work of Thomas Barrow, an American photographer (b. 1938) whose work—notably his series entitled Cancellations (1973–81)—is characterized by the intentional defacement of film negatives by various means (e.g. scratching with a knife, the use of spray paint or a hole punch, etc.) to disrupt the pictorial representation. Such a process is highly ambiguous; does this process merely draw attention to the medium itself, or are the distortions in the images a form of commentary on the subjects that they portray?

ZERUAN - María-Eugenia Luc

As we ascend from earth into heaven, our listening now leads us to another very recent creation: Zeruan (In heaven), completed in 2020 and dedicated to the saxophone quartet Ensemble du Bout du Monde. Here, Luc explores the specific sonic potential of the saxophone with the aim of giving shape to an initial conceptual idea: the image of the sky as infinite, an unfathomable space of unlimited possibilities. The piece begins with a single pattern made up of three types of sounds with contrasting timbre characteristics: a low and short attack (tongue ram) on the lower instruments of the quartet, a high-pitched sustained note on the soprano saxophone that gradually begins to fade into a bisbigliando, followed by an aeolic sound on the baritone saxophone. This pattern will be repeated in various forms during the first part of the piece, though its three elements will eventually become independent later in percussive sounds (slap, tongue ram, key strokes...), harmonic sounds (bisbigliando, trills, tremolos, multiphonics, arpeggios...) and blows. Zeruan thus evolves through deconstruction, breaking down the timbre characteristics of the original pattern "in order to make each component independent and give them a life of their own". After a brief but forceful cadence of the baritone saxophone, improvised creation of Don-Paul Kahl (saxophonist of the EBM quartet) drawn from a pattern proposed by the composer, the score concludes with an extensive coda in which noise takes centre stage again. It must be noted that, the piece, when heard live, takes on an additional dimension: that of space, thanks to a choreography by the four saxophonists that widens or narrows the acoustic space, giving it movement and direction. (program note written by Mikel Chamizo)

Sponsored By

Sulger-Stiftung
UBS Kulturstiftung
Kanton Basel-Stadt Kulturelles
Schweizerishce Interpretenstiftung

Link to Events