 The Fingering Forum
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2004-02-26 19:36
Some time ago, I posted a message on here (perhaps somewhat impertinently) titled, "What an oboe <i>should</i> sound like."
I have also mentioned from time to time that in my opinion the only saxophone which is truly suited to play anything but jazz/pop is the alto. I have yet to hear a player produce a tone with sufficient refinement on any other size saxophone to justify its presence in any "classical" genre, though I haven't entirely given up hope--especially on the bari sax.
Anyway, all of that being said, I have after a good deal of searching found a sound file which demonstrates what I think a good alto saxophone sound is like. To me, this guy's vibrato is a little over the top, and his middle D momentarily drifts just a little bit on the sharp side about midway through the excerpt, but besides those minor issues, his tone is just perfect. Plus this is just a beautiful song period.
And yes, that is an altissimo G he hits seamlessly in the second phrase. Very nice.
Here it is:
<a href=http://www.threetwo.org/sullivan/sounds/villa-lobos_clip.mp3>Aria from Bachianas Brasilieras</a>
This is a link to an .mp3 file from his website. If you cannot access it that way, then you can get it from his sound page here:
<a href=http://www.threetwo.org/sullivan/sounds.html>Sound page</a>
Let me know what you think. I'm also curious to hear your opinions on the efficacy of non-alto saxophones in classical music genres. Enjoy.
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Author: richard
Date: 2004-02-27 14:10
The saxophone sounds very good and impressive with the guitar playing in the background. I seldom hear saxophone playing classical style music. In a recent concert I saw an alto (might be a tenor) playing the "Picture from an Exhibition" in an orchestral concert.
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2004-02-27 15:08
Yeah that's an alto sax solo in the "Il vecchio castello" movement of that piece. Was it any good? Most of the time when you hear an orchestra play that piece, the person playing the saxophone is doubling, and usually really doesn't sound all that great. I heard my local orchestra do it last year, and it was honestly painful to listen to. I also have a recording of Philadelphia doing it from the 60's that is equally gross. I do however have a more recent recording of Montreal doing it in which the sax player actually sounds pretty good.
The saxophone is like a box of chocolates...
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Author: JfW
Date: 2004-02-27 16:07
Good topic. Actually, it's an area of interest of mine, though I'm hardly an expert.
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I have also mentioned from time to time that in my opinion the only saxophone which is truly suited to play anything but jazz/pop is the alto. I have yet to hear a player produce a tone with sufficient refinement on any other size saxophone to justify its presence in any "classical" genre, though I haven't entirely given up hope--especially on the bari sax.
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Well, what does 'refinement' really mean? I guess it depends on what one expects to hear. I would venture to say that one issue the classical saxophone faces is that it's constantly compared with other instruments tone when gauging it's appropriateness, but it's tone is unique, just like other instruments.
Personally, I like Todd Oxford's work on Baritone. He studied for awhile with a cellist, supposedly, and from what i've heard from him, the cello influence shows.
Tenor is a bit harder to pin down. Like Oxford, Rodger Greenberg worked with the Harvey Pittel Sax Quartet and I appriciate his work.
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2004-02-27 18:29
Well, it really is a matter of taste. I guess what I mean by refinement is several things:
First would be clarity in the tone. If you listen to the excerpt I put above, his sound rings very clearly. You have the basic note and then a nice set of harmonics on top of it which to me sounds almost like they way a wine glass sounds when you run your finger along the top. Other saxophones seem to lack this trait; they either have too many extra or not enough harmonics in the right range and thus sound "buzzy" or nasal to my ear. If you listen to a good alto sound next to something like a tenor or soprano, it's easy to determine which one sounds more nasal and which one sounds more resonant.
The other quality that I ascribe to a refined tone is evenness. By this I mean that as you ascend the scale, each note sounds more or less like the notes which preceded and the notes that follow it. On oboe this is a big issue when it comes to the contrast between the middle C and the D just above it; the timbre difference between those two notes must <i>must</i> be minimized in order to make the instrument sing as opposed to just simply making tones.
On the saxophone it's an even bigger issue since it seems like there are even more notes which try to stand out. Tenor sax is especially bad about this to me. Just about every tenor player I've ever heard has a huge difference in the timbre of his middle C and C# and his middle D. Then as you go up the tone starts to sound really strained beginning somewhere around the high B and up, and on the opposite end of the range, the low B and Bb honk in a most unsettling fashion. Bari and bass saxes aren't nearly as bad, though it is noticeable at times.
As much as I dislike the soprano saxophone, I will say that to its credit, I don't usually hear too many problems with evenness in its scale. Sometimes the notes from middle A to C# start to sound a little on the thin side, but it's usually nowhere near as bad as the tenor. My reasons for calling the soprano "unrefined" predominately stem from the first attribute I mentioned, clarity. Same goes for sopranino.
From what I have heard, only the alto is capable of overcoming the saxophone's dogged predilection for unevenness in the scale. Now of course, every woodwind instrument, by virtue of the physics involved, it going to have some timbre change as you move from the low to high registers. In my opinion however, there is a certain range of variation whose borders define the edges of "refinement", and anything outside that range needs more refining to sound good in "classical" music. To me, the alto is the only saxophone whose timbre variation falls within that range.
It is of course a matter of taste as to where you actually draw that line. Some people might not really be bother by the fact that a tenor's middle C sounds nothing at all like the D, but I just can't ignore it. At any rate, I don't really think that I'm basing what I call "refinement" on any sort of comparison between the timbre of the saxophone and other more traditional orchestral instruments. Rather, I prefer to outline some general guidelines by which we can determine whether or not what we hear lies within the boundaries of good taste. I suppose fortunately everyone's guidelines are different, otherwise we'd probably have a lot less to talk about. 
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Author: JfW
Date: 2004-02-27 20:21
C# can be a hollow sounding note on alto as well. The middle D on most saxophones has notable intonation problems, including the Alto.
The Tenor has, from a perspective of tone, been likened to the voice of the Bassoon, and in my opinion the Bassoon itself doesn't seem to have the most even sounding of scales (and it is among my favorite orchestral voices). But perhaps you are correct about the tenor, and if so, it sounds like a question of the standard of playing for tenor hasn't been developed nearly to the extent of that of the alto.
I'll try to post more later...
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Author: johnsonfromwisconsin
Date: 2004-02-27 23:37
Torus, check out Anders Paulsson:
http://www.tidsrum.com/paulssonmusic/
what do you think of the clips on that site?
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Author: Carolyn
Date: 2004-02-29 12:53
I'm a tenor player, and I think I'm coming to the same realization that Torus talks about. I'm taking "Divertmento" by Mozart to contest next week, and everytime I practice it, it sounds 'wrong'. I'm not sure if this is because i play so much jazz that tonguing almost every not sounds odd to me, or if it's because tenors simply shouldn't play classical music....hmmm...
Very interesting discussion topic, torus!
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2004-03-01 03:36
Johnson, those are indeed nice. His playing is especially even, and I enjoyed hearing a player with such good intonation. But, despite this, it is still a soprano saxophone, and even with one played as well as that, I still cannot help thinking how much fuller all of that would sound were it played on an alto. As I said, the reason I don't much care for soprano sax doesn't have to do with with unevenness; I simply do not like the timbre.
It's really sort of ironic that while I have spent the most time lambasting the tenor sax and other saxes on down the line, in actuality I regard the soprano and sopranino as the most hopeless cases. Sopranos, even curved sopranos, sound thin to me, and I don't think there's anyway to get around it, no matter how good the player. I don't know exactly what physical principles are at work, but there seems to be a big timbre change between alto and soprano. Something happens when you increase the size of the horn, and a lot of that nasality and thinness in the sound seems to magically disappear.
It makes sense in my mind that once you start to decrease the size of the tube beyond a certain point, the sound is going to start sounding thinner and thinner and become less resonant overall. This is why I still have hope for the larger non-alto saxes, because you'd think with all that room to resonate, you could generate a deeper, more complex tone than what would be possible with a smaller bore. So really, why it is that tenor saxes do end up sounding so nasal is really a mystery to me, though admittedly my exiguous knowledge of the physics at work here is probably reason enough for me to comment no further.
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Author: JfW
Date: 2004-03-01 16:20
Yeah Torus, I really wouldn't know the phyics of the situation either, though I'd assume it's probably the width of the bore than makes the difference as well.
But to me, it's not an issue wrt classical saxophone. I actually like the Tenor voice here
;)
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Author: Jax10RSax
Date: 2004-03-03 23:49
I do believe that if we look at the sales of records and CDs over the years the tenor sax playing big band and swing will far outsell any other sax playing classical. Sorry about the jealousy.
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Author: Couer
Date: 2004-03-26 03:44
I prefer playing the more classical music on my saxophone. I mean, when someone says oh I play sax most people would say oh in a jazz band. but I like playing something different. We played a fugue last year in my symphonic band that was very beautiful. This year we are doing more jazzy pieces and i'm kind of disappointed. I can't listen to the clips right now otherwise i would post on those. But on one of my altos my normal fingering C sounds very very hollow. It's like someone has put their hand over my bell. I never had a problem with that note on any others.
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