Les Inventions d ' Adolphe Sax (2004)
(Cantata for choir and saxophone quartet)

When I accepted the commission for this work, I was mainly obsessed with the idea of using the patent application (Brevet d'invention) that Adolphe Sax had submitted to the competent authority in Paris in 1846 as one of the text sources for my vocal composition. I already knew parts of the document, so I was particularly curious about the description of the constructional details of this unique instrument. How did Sax solve his difficult task, which did not allow for imprecise formulation or unclear presentation? Some details did not seem to have been precisely worked out in the illustration at the time, as French and German luthiers plundered his invention for reasons of envy, existential fear or xenophobia. The avalanche of lawsuits over imitations initially dragged on until 1854, with further legal skirmishes following again and again later on.

In 1860, the book Histoire d'un inventeur au dix-neuvième siècle was published in Paris. Adolphe Sax, ses ouvrages et ses luttes. Its author was Oscar Comettant, a long-time friend of Sax's, who witnessed many of the Belgian inventor's high points and almost hopeless moments at close quarters. Sections of this biographical study, which is well worth reading, also flowed into my text. Finally, I wrote the connecting transitions of the “libretto” myself.

Libretto? Yes. I was not at all interested in an objectifying, purist translation of factual information, but on the contrary in the musical-dramatic staging of aspects of a life that had been tried and tested in all kinds of conflicts.

The report on the performance of the saxophone in front of the most famous composer of his time in Paris in 1844 becomes the scene of an invisible situation theater. The duel between two military bands – remember Ives' father! – in May 1845 sounds like a painting in sound, as a chamber music poème symphonique.

Incidentally, one of the bands was equipped with saxophones, the other, for the time, had a normal instrumentation. Although the musical parade ended with Sax's victory, it ended with a shrill “Down with the foreigner!”.

Sax invented and modified over 80 instruments and improved many of them with decisive new design features so that they can still be used in the same form today. I present some of these sound generators in a summary list in the style of a rondo. There are plenty of bizarre inventions in this incomplete list. And even a giant bus (mortier géant), Sax's contribution to the defense of the French Republic, with spherical bombs 10 meters in diameter and weighing 500,000 kilos, which are among the unrealized projects in his catalog raisonné.

Many episodes in music history act like real spark plugs for my compositional imagination. Even if the events are long gone, I don't hear a time-bound musical language in them, but an animated still life with excited exchanges of words in various locations. These are excerpts of the constant tension between renewal and the traditional, between necessary developments and censure, between unsettling effects and the intellectual status quo. Sax never changed fronts.

M.K.
(Translation by Edition Peters)