Thoughts on Saxophone Composition with Rodney Rogers

Paul Snyder

Rodney Rogers has firmly placed his name on the list of extraordinary contemporary composers with his many compositions for orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, and a wide variety of chamber groups. Rogers's honors and awards include three BMI Composition Awards, an ASCAP Foundation Grant for Young Composers (highest awarded prize), a Tanglewood Composition Fellow, residencies at both the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Artist Colony, and the Distinguished Composer of the Year award from the Music Teachers National Association for his composition Riffing in Tandem. His recent orchestral work, In Whitest Light, was selected by the American Composers Orchestra for the Whittaker Reading Sessions in New York in the spring of 1997. Among his commissions are two works premiered in Carnegie Recital Hall, a National Endowment for the Arts Consortium Commission, a large-scale work for the College Band Directors National Association 50th Anniversary concert, and a quintet for the Palo Verde Brassworks (premiered at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in 1995).

Rodney Rogers is on the faculty of Arizona State University's School of Music, teaching courses in composition, theory, analysis and counterpoint. His compositions are published by Associated Music Publishers (G. Schirmer), Margun Music, and Hal Leonard. Three of his works for solo wind instruments are currently available on CD.

In the Fall of 1996, the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music Saxophone Studio commissioned Rodney Rogers to compose a piece, later titled Two Views, for six saxophones (sopranino to bass), piano, percussion, and double bass to commemorate the sesquicentennial anniversary of the patent of the saxophone as well as the sesquicentennial of the founding of Lawrence University. This interview stems out of that commission. The interview took place on February 28, 1997.

Paul Snyder: How and when did you start writing for the saxophone?

Rodney Rogers: I started writing for it when I was commissioned to do a piece for the National Endowment of the Arts. This was a commission done through Steven Jordheim and two other saxophonists. That was the beginning, in the mid-1980s. The piece was the Nature of this Whirling Wheel.

PS: Why compose for the saxophone?

RR: I'm interested in composing for all sorts of instruments. The saxophone is particularly good at agility and volume control and has a nice range, so it's an easy instrument to write for, in that sense. And there's also an interest in new music for that instrument. Those are the main reasons for writing for it.

PS: What does it offer that you want to exploit in your compositions that other instruments can't provide?

RR: Well, I don't know if it has things that are exclusive to itself, but it has aspects that I particularly like which I've mentioned (range, agility, volume control, etc.) to some degree. Woodwinds, especially upper woodwinds, will tend to have a wide range, rhythmic flexibility, and a lot of tonal control. Instruments that have less of that just require more restrictions in terms of composition. Whether or not you can exploit all the possibilities, if they're there for you, [it] just makes writing easier. Because of [the saxophone's] agility and dynamic flexibility, it makes it a more expressive instrument to write for.

PS: In regards to your past compositions, how does nature play a role in your pieces? [Note: Nature of this Whirling Wheel, Lessons of the Sky, april hello]

RR: The answer to that is pretty simple: everything, in a sense, revolves around nature and I think the basic things would be the sense of growth-that in nature, all things are growing or that there is a growth process in all things and sort of a seasonal aspect to things.

PS: You also combined a quote from Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorrit when composing Nature of this Whirling Wheel. Do you think that literature and nature can be combined together well in a composition?

RR: I think that composers get their form of expression from whatever their interests are. Just as people have different personalities types, certain things will be of interest to them and evoke a kind of response. I can certainly read things and have no particular response in terms of musical ideas, but that particular quotation was interesting to me because it had elements of nature in it, to one degree, but also of motion in it with this idea of a wheel. I found that it stuck out as a passage in the book by Dickens and was something then that, because it just happened to stick in my mind, was something that I thought would be useful material in writing a piece. It's nice to have certain kind of focus. That's also what nature provides-it's a sense of things growing in a sort of a cellular process. Usually there are building blocks in music: there are motives that you can generate or transform those ideas. It's so basic to anything that we try to use in terms of communication that I think that's the reason for it reflecting those kind of elements or quoting from other things that might reflect those elements, say literature or some other form of art.

PS: In many of your pieces, there isn't a specifically marked tonal center. What liberties does this afford you? What is your approach to pitch organization?

RR: I think that in any art form, when things become too predictable, both the person who is making the music and the person who is performing it and the audience - I guess all three - can lose interest. I think that over a period of time certain styles become too predictable, certain kinds of phrasing or shapes or methods of building music in tonality with a method in building music [become expected]. I think that certainly everyone experiments with it to some degree or another because they don't want it to have the predictable patterns of the past. Yet if you completely avoid tonality, you tend to risk losing a sense of communication to the listener. What I do is consistent with what many people do, which is to try to use it to some degree and find a way that makes it seem fresh and interesting rather than abandoning it completely. In terms of my own music and tonal centers, I think when I want to establish a sense of repose or more rest, then I am most likely to stabilize a certain set of pitches. When I want more activity or restlessness, then I'm less likely to do that and I'm more open to constantly shifting the focus from one pitch to another. So it's of the advantages, and I think most people perceive music in those terms that if you have a lot of pitch information, it tends to sound more restless. If you have less pitch information, and there may be pedal points or repeating patterns that are kind of restrictive in a number of pitches involved, it just tends to sound less active. Depending on what part of the piece you're in or what you want at that point, you either then rely on something that sounds more tonal or you abandon it in order to get that sense of movement.

PS: There are also usually many different meter markings in your works. What do you feel you enhance in your music by altering the meters?

RR: I suppose there are three elements to music: rhythm, melody, and harmony and any of those can be expanded upon and certainly in the twentieth century, all of those elements have been dealt with in different ways by different people-some people focusing on color or on certain organizational patterns, others on highly evolved rhythmic ideas. What I tend to use rhythm for is to energize the music in certain ways. If I'm dealing in fast music and I'm shifting either the accent patterns or the meter, often the goal is the same. I may just put it in a different meter to help to enforce a shift in accent pattern or I may try, if it's a little easier to read for the performer, to keep it in the same meter but shift accents, if that gives me the result that seems successful. It's really to keep things animated and to energize things. Again, to a certain degree, there is a less predictable element when you keep making these shifts. When the patterns become more and more obvious or recurring, it tends to make the listener feel more at ease, I think. There is less expectation then in what they have. You're playing off that psychology, I suppose, of when you want to surprise them. There are areas in the piece when you might want to use quick shifts and accents or meter in order to keep the listener more curious as to what the next event may be. In a slow passage you can still get the same affect. You can have meter changes in slow music, if you want, to just keep from having a very predictable sort of phrasing. You may have a very steady pulse in it but you just either elongate or shorten phrases so that the patterns don't become, say, eight-bar phrases. [There is] something in [the] nature of recurring patterns that people, once they're aware of them, would begin to become less interested. Although, I don't think I'm thinking directly of the listener. I'm thinking probably of my own response to music. Since I've performed and I've listened to music, I'm constantly switching roles just as anyone does. And therefore, at some points you're creating things, sometimes you're listening to them, and sometimes you're imagining what it's like to perform them. You have different ways of responding to it and that's what's causing you to make certain decisions: whether to shorten or lengthen something, or add an element of surprise, or slow down the information so it seems more restful.

PS: Concerning Lawrence University Saxophone Studio's commission, what energies, emotions, etc. did you want to express in the commissioned work, Two Views.

RR: I'm always telling my students this: you have to be careful not to be too specific in what you intend the response to be because music tends only to generalize emotion. That's why it's very good in things like film because it's very supportive of emotion, but it's very hard to evoke very specific things. You could, for instance, make it feel joyful, but a specific kind of elation that you might feel that if you knew the specific setting that the person was in that caused it, is not possible for music to do. It can only suggest certain things in general. I think that when people have too programmatic an element in their music, there's a danger in that you need either a visual or literary source in order to understand what's going on. I don't think that you should need that. I'm always attempting to give only a general feeling. Those are plenty for somebody listening to music - they don't need a specific story line or a real specific emotion to go with. I think there's either a kind of energy that causes anxiety or joy, something of that nature. Those can probably be differentiated in musical terms, I think. And there can be slower kinds of musical ideas that will perhaps suggest sadness or just rest or meditation but specifically it gets more and more difficult if one is really targeting a certain emotion to be sure that the listener can pick up on that exactly.

In this piece, I think I was interested in the fast movement in it having a lot of energy, which fast music of course would have. I think the energy comes from the interaction of the ideas and the rhythmic figures in it. But as the piece progresses, certain ideas will get extended and developed and other ideas will be compressed and then these different ideas will interact in different ways as characters might on stage in a play. I'm not so concerned with the specific character that I might have or the series of characters, but rather what I'm going to do with those characters. For instance if I put it in purely musical terms, I'm more interested in what I do with the theme than I am in the theme itself. I think that what you do with it is what energizes it. In fast music there is, if I want not only a fast tempo and fast rhythmic values, but perhaps fast interaction between the parts so that it gives it an excited or animated quality to it. That's what I'm aiming for in the fast movement. I very often will have one or two fast movements and a slow movement.

The slow movement would involve a more relaxed kind of tempo, of course. However, it may not have a relaxed mood-there might be a lot of be anxiety in it or whatever. In this movement, which is called "An Unfolding Quiet," the idea is that there will be these short phrases that get elongated and phrases will be tossed back and forth by the different instruments in the saxophone family and interspersed with little things from the percussion. It will never have the kind of energy level that the second movement will have and will always be somewhat evocative - something without quite reachingit. Those are the two general things. In a way, it is less goal-oriented than the second movement is, where there are very strong, climatic things where you take quite a bit of time to reach a certain point and you have varied, discrete sections in the fast movement. In the slow movement, things just sort of melt together. It's more impressionistic. There are two movements: slow and fast. The first movement will seem more improvisatory with a sort of soloist alternation between the instruments. For example, the baritone saxophone will do something, there will be a response in the tenor, then there will be a little interjection of the percussion, and then a response in the alto saxophone, something of that nature. And it keeps moving along, hopefully kind of mysteriously. Most of the motivic ideas are veiled references to what happens then in the second movement, the fast movement.

In contrast, the fast movement has more focused or precise kind of ideas that happen over a period of time say, maybe a twenty-bar idea that's very clearly a certain motive being used in a certain way and then it will suddenly shift to a new idea and then those ideas begin to interact or overlap in different ways. The structure of that would be easier, for instance, to write down on some sort of chart. You could see that there is a little A idea and then a B idea and then a C idea and then maybe part of A returns and then part of C and then B is overlapped with A so that you this kind of a mix-and-match relationship which is something that interests me through Stravinsky's music. Those are the general ideas behind the piece.

PS: What advantages did the usage of the entire saxophone family give you? What kind of qualities does the saxophone family possess when combined in larger settings that aren't available in the solo format?

RR: One of the interesting features, and I suppose it's in way the designer intended, is that you get a relative equality across a large range with that many instruments. That's a little closer in equality than a brass quintet where you get a nice blend with the entire group, but the tuba is so distinctively different sounding than a trumpet that they can't share materials very easily unless they're of a certain type - maybe a slower kind of idea. But if there is a quick, agile thing in the trumpet, it's not going to carry over too easily into the tuba. It'll be quite transformed just by the fact that it is so much lower.

There is a little less of that with the saxophone family. I think that when you get down to the bass saxophone, it's not transferring that well from the higher instruments. But overall, the advantage to me is that you have this kind of equality, so that if you have a kind of motive, it doesn't have to be relegated to a single register, much like the piano is very agile that way. Obviously you could play a motive in any register in the piano and it's discernible by that instrument. If you give something to the sopranino, a little high idea or you can simply just present the material very high on that instrument or very low on a baritone, it's still very recognizable if that idea can be played at the same speed. It will obviously have a color difference and be perceived differently, but it's also understood as the same idea.

With some instruments, there's just no way to go from, say, the oboe to the contrabassoon and maybe even have it be performable on the lowest instrument at all. It just means that much like Bach's contrapuntal writing, your ideas can be very equal and you don't have to relegate the lower instruments to simply harmonic support. You may still do that quite often because acoustically it just works best to do that-those instruments sound good when they're just allowed to resonate and not be extremely agile all the time-but you have this flexibility where you can do things.

On the piano, even though you obviously can play below a middle C and have a great deal of agility, it's still, in most piano literature, assigned to the harmonic basis for the music. Certainly that's just a general characteristic of how we perceive music. Low frequencies work better at slower rates than high frequencies do because they sustain longer. You're not going to make any extreme transformation of that concept, but it's very nice to work with a set of instruments where no matter where you present the motive, it can be flexibly used. I found that to be fun and kind of a freeing experience.

PS: What role do you think the saxophone will play in the future of classical music?

RR: Well, that's a hard one. I think, really, that you just can't know what the future holds. I think that in terms of composition in general, if there is quality in the music and it has been written for a certain instrument, it will just live on. As long as we have a kind of music from the past that's of interest to people and it keeps getting performed, then those instruments that played that music will live on as well. And there's no reason to think that the saxophone won't have enough quality literature in store that it can continue to sustain itself. Plus, one thing that is in its favor is that there is a lot of music being written for it and certainly some of it will last. I think that what we forget is that in any given time period, say we go back to the Classical period, there were a lot of people writing music and most of it is just not of a very high quality. Time just sifts it out. But there are always compositions that, for whatever reason-it's actually kind of hard to specify-but we can try to articulate our reasons why we think these pieces last and others don't. Often, when you get right down to it, it's a little difficult to understand exactly why certain pieces seem to have a good track record and others just disappear over time.

I think that as long as saxophonists are interested in getting new music from lots of people, some of that music will have enough lasting value that it'll create a kind of source literature around which they can program. They may always do new music and they may always do transcription music just like brass instruments do, but they'll have a core of their own music that really sustains them and will continue to grow. There's really no guarantee; if they commission works, which ones of those will be those to do it? Perhaps better-known composers will be the more likely to write the pieces that will sustain, but maybe not always. You can't be sure. It's driven by the needs for compositions that are of good quality and as long as those are out there, they'll have something to program that they enjoy playing and the audience enjoys listening to.

PS: What help do you seek from performers in the composing process? Do you consult them during the composing period?

RR: Definitely. I think it's really fun to interact with the performers. I think most of the interaction takes place early in process and then at the end. In the middle ground period, there is not so much that needs to be said. In the first part of the piece, you would really be trying to find out all you could about the instrument to better understand its strengths and weaknesses and to really play off its strengths. And if you want to do anything that may be innovative or use techniques that are not as common to the instrument, then you need to keep referring back to the performer to see what things are really possible. I think early on in the compositional or almost in the pre-compositional planning stage of the piece, you have a lot of interaction with the performer. In the case of [Steven Jordheim], I was talking with him on the phone about certain aspects of the instruments and sending to him certain motive ideas before I really got carried away with using those motives to make sure that they would work in different registers. I would send him transpositions of them and have him play through them.

Once that's done, then there's a period where you just basically work through the structure of the piece and how you want to put it together and, occasionally, you may have questions that come up as you're working on it. The next period in which it really becomes important again is in the process of putting it together because nothing is really chiseled in stone and you can always make changes. As you work through the piece, it's often minor details in shaping and timing and pacing of things; you really rely very heavily on the performer. At that point it's fun to work with them and to reassure them that there can be these changes, that things don't have to be as literal as the score might imply as long as you can go through it together and talk about what the intended affect is and how you can best get it. You can begin to make modifications. Again, it's towards the end of the process as you're doing readings of the piece that you get a pretty good idea of the importance of the interaction between the performer and the composer.

PS: Do you find it more difficult composing for a solo saxophone or a group of saxophones like in our commission?

RR: In general they're different, but I think the group is harder probably because I at least feel you want to have a certain amount of distribution of interest in all of the instruments. It requires you to think about things at a slightly different level than you'd necessarily have to if you were writing for a solo instrument where, obviously, you would be thinking only of that instrument or if it's accompanied by other instruments, of just the dialog between the main instrument and the others. There is always a subordinate role and a more significant role that tends to stay steady throughout the piece. If you have a group of instruments, you're constantly trying to judge not only in terms of the music being interesting, but allowing each of those performers an opportunity, perhaps not be soloists, but to have an equal role in participation in the piece. It gives an added level of concern as you're working through the piece.