« Parcours en Duo »
for Baritone Saxophone, four Kettledrums and Vibraphone

To Jean-Pierre Caens
2001
Duration : 6 minutes 30 to 7 minutes

This piece was composed on Jean-Pierre Caens’s instigation. It is he who suggested the ingenious association of the Baritone Saxophone with Percussion instruments.
The extent of musical possibilities offered by the Saxophones considerably widened during the last decades : the regular international meetings between saxophonists certainly were somewhat stimulating and encouraged very interesting technical progresses, under the influence of ethnic musics, jazz, and electro-acoustic or electronic experimental musics. The parameters of the Saxophone were clearly listed in various publications, notably by Jean-Marie Londeix or Daniel Kientzi.
« Parcours en Duo », while refusing everything of sound effect nature, is composed for a Baritone Saxophone which has really acquired flexibility and lightness, and has enlarged its range towards high pitches, and distanced itself from what teaching used to be in the French classic tradition.
Here it is made use of a wide variety of tone quality and type of attack.
In this music, coloured modal sets arise : they are always invented modes, based on restricted scales.
However from time to time the Saxophone is cast for an expressive role : it concerns short fragments of sentences which evoke a spoken voice charged with emotion. Then micro-tones are used while the music momentarily stops being supported by the tempered chromatic scale.
The piece finds its form through juxtaposed sequences which unfold so as to always explore new horizons. The last one makes the music return quite naturally towards elements already heard at the opening of the piece.
The percussion contributes with imitations, echoes and reverberating sounds. Above all it allows real dialogues with the Saxophone to be established.

Unpublished

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