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| The history of Claude Debussy's Rapsodie pour Orchestre et Saxophone has been severely misrepresented and its construction wholly misunderstood. Dismissed as an indifferent, incomplete, and ultimately inconsequential attempt at a saxophone concerto, Rapsodie has long deserved further consideration. A thorough reevaluation of the historical facts and musical substance reveals an astonishingly imaginative and overwhelmingly complex work, completed in January 1904, and scored in the hand of Debussy himself (not posthumously in 1919 by Roger-Ducasse)!
Debussy's letters and the composition itself (manuscripts and printed edition) indicate he composed Rapsodie in accordance with Elise Hall's wishes. The work was meticulously crafted, using symmetrical forms and unconventional tonal relationships, all within an elaborate mathematical matrix, comprised of summation series, Golden Sections, and precise proportions. Debussy was methodical in his treatment of both orchestra and saxophone, utilizing the tonal capacities of each with great precision. Far from being unaware of the saxophone, Debussy highlighted the peculiar tone colors of specific pitches at structurally important events within the work. Rapsodie, an orchestral work featuring saxophone, has direct compositional relationships to Prelude à L'Apres-midi d'un faune, Debussy's orchestral work featuring flute. The source material and compositional devices for Debussy's masterpiece La Mer appears to come directly from Rapsodie. It is now considered likely that Debussy suppressed Rapsodie in part to avoid critical comparisons with these other orchestral works. Debussy is the greatest composer to write for saxophone. Rapsodie pour Orchestre and Saxophone is now understood to be one of the greatest works of the saxophone repertoire. |
Dr. James Noyes is a former faculty member of the Penn State School of Music (1992-97), where he taught classes in jazz history, music theory, and saxophone. Noyes received his doctorate in May of 2000 from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Dr. Paul Cohen.
Dr. Noyes is currently on the faculty of William Paterson University and the Lucy Moses School of Music and Dance. Noyes has performed with a wide variety of musical groups, including the Juilliard Symphony, American Brass Quintet, MSM Chamber Sinfonia, Susquehanna Symphony, MSM Saxophone Quartet, Safe Sax Jazz Quintet, Doobie Brothers, Box Tops, Sam Moore, and the All-American College Orchestra at EPCOT Center. Noyes has premiered works by Meyer Kupferman, Eric Erwazen, Steve Cohen, Jan Feddersen, Richard Miller, Ruth Mueller-Maerki, and Elijah Yarbrough. |
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