Bobby Ge - To Speak As One, for saxophone quartet
Completed Feb. 17, 2023
Premiered Mar. 7, 2023 by ~nois in Taplin Auditorium, Princeton University
This is a C Score. For transposing score or parts, visit murphymusicpress.com... or visit my website, bobbygemusic.com!
The more people I’ve spoken with, the more I have come to cherish moments of shared understanding. For me, language often feels rather insufficient as a means of expressing thought - like trying to portray a three dimensional image on a flat surface. Understanding someone’s words is a delicate process of reconstructing the ineffable depth and interiority of their thoughts, and quite frequently, much is lost in translation.
These ideas provided the seed for To Speak As One. To me, the saxophone quartet as an ensemble naturally contends with such questions of mutual understanding and communication. It is conversational in scale; its instruments share much in common both registrally and timbrally; virtually any technique that can be done on one instrument can be done on any other. The result is a collection of instruments that very easily behaves as a hyperinstrument, able to blend and move with uncommon unity.
Over the course of the piece, I sought to shift throughout between treating the quartet as a singular entity versus four unique players. The resulting work scatters its lines across the group, assigning disparate notes and rhythms to each musician as they discover the composite together. Players enter and peel off constantly, and even in moments of stasis, there is an element of confusion - it’s not always clear which instrument is playing which sounds. Even with all its raucous sounds and lurching instability, though, To Speak As One is intended to be an intimate piece, ultimately focusing on how a small ensemble - with all their cuing, breathing, and eye contact - can discover ways to nonverbally find shared understanding with one another.
This piece was begun while in residence at Copland House, Cortlandt Manor, New York, as a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award.
Пікірлер: 68
Very cool. Love the harmonic chords and other extended sax techniques. Wonderful qt!
"Raucous sounds and lurching instability"--yes, that seems right for a sax quartet ;) love this
@bobbycge
6 ай бұрын
omggggg thanks for reading and listening colin wow
So refreshing, totally fresh, outside the box, but with actual intent!!!
Awesome piece! I love how you contrasted the multiphonics with growl!!! Such an interesting texture! Also an incredible performance, kudos to the performers, they killed it!
@bobbycge
5 ай бұрын
wow thank you so much! glad you enjoyed - ~nois played the piece so so so well!
멋져요! 많은 도움이 되요!!!!!😻😻😻
This is incredible!!
YESSSS SO GOOD. Reminds me of the Evan Williams Saxophone Quartet 1. I'm drooling.
Absolutely amazing.
This is SO cool! The attention to detail is insane.
this is incredible! wauw!
Love it!
So Amazing!! Wonderful!! I want to play
Fantastic piece!
sounds awesome!
this is stunning
To play such a piece, you need very advanced players to say the least.
this is so cool
This is the weirdest piece I've ever heard. You thought completely differently. The notes feel more like stage direction than music cues. I'm in actual awe
Hell yeah!
Heat 🔥🔥🔥
Impressive!
Great work. It gave me a couple ideas for my wind quintet
Wow. Well done, I just picture this sense of pure unfettered emotion in both the writing and the actual performance. I want to play this, now to find 3 other saxophonists 😂
@bobbycge
2 ай бұрын
thank you !!! glad you enjoyed :D
Enjoyable 🎉
Y o Bro thats very good
sodelicious................
Pretty interesting Subbed
Ge’ezus this is unearthly! Goals! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Просто жестоко)) Класс!!!
OBRA MAESTRA
This is fantastic!
@bobbycge
5 ай бұрын
thank ya! nois killed!
Really interesting, the opening has some notes which sound exactly like a reversed recording. Not a sound I knew could be achieved live, let alone on a saxophone! I believe these are the "flair dramatically! sharp cutoff" notes - was there any additional technical instruction you gave to the players for that?
@bobbycge
26 күн бұрын
lol yeah, good ears! i'm a huge fan of that 'reversed piano hit' sound, and i use it maybe a little too much in my music haha. i didn't need to say any much more than the instructions i gave - i think one thing that helps is that flared crescendo, where the hairpin has those outward curves at the very end that emphasize how dramatic the sound should be. turns out it's a really easy sound to accomplish on a lot of instruments - sounds really great on brass too!
This slaps!!!
@bobbycge
5 ай бұрын
slap tongues, even
@cerronecomposer
5 ай бұрын
literally@@bobbycge
This is what modern classical should sound like, a perfect blend between consonants and disonants. Amazing stuff
This Bobby Ge guy does NOT miss.
@saadhaddadmusic
3 ай бұрын
Someone needs to throw every passage that uses multiphonics in this tune in a textbook and be like “yah that, do that”
@bobbycge
3 ай бұрын
@saadhaddadmusic
3 ай бұрын
@@bobbycge 🤓
Very cool piece, but this looks difficult as hell!
i didnt even know saxophones could make those sounds
@bobbycge
15 күн бұрын
lol still surprises me honestly; can't say i totally understand what the physics of it all is...
If only I could put into words how inspiring your writing is. The detail is unbelievable. Please don't stop writing!!!!!!
@bobbycge
3 ай бұрын
wowww thanks so much for saying that! really means a lot!
Very impressive that you guys can pull this off! I'm just curious about counting in time... Who are you capable to manage these changes!?
@bobbycge
3 ай бұрын
that's a question for the quartet! to be honest, i don't always know how anyone's able to pull off any of the music i write... but i definitely am always thinking about things like phrasing, grouping, and cellular gestures! i think as long as the musicians are feeling the big beat together, staying together is always possible. for the most part, the measured parts of the music don't really go much beyond groupings of 2s and 3s (or quarter notes and dotted quarters, respectively)
I decided to try and learn how to play this but as I started, I realized that my student soprano saxophone might be so out of tune that its 1 step higher than its supposed to be or the song is written a whole step lower than its supposed to be 😭and its kind of messing me up
@bobbycge
3 ай бұрын
ahahhahaa well thanks for giving it a whirl! the score video is in C (meaning every part shows what the sounding pitch is), but if you're interested in learning the piece, contact me via my website! www.bobbygemusic.com
I like what I hear not what I see. Quite interesting. Room acoustics are definitely a factor, too. Quite a leap from Groove Merchant!
this is such a cool peice, but one question. in the middle there are notes that go below where a sax can go on treble clef, how are we expected to play those?
@bobbycge
2 ай бұрын
thanks for listening, and thanks for your question! this is a C score, not a transposing score! which means what you're seeing here are the sounding pitches, and not the written ones. the written parts do not ever have notes below the available range of each respective sax.
Wonderful piece! Both from a compositional and performance standpoint just amazing :) Where are you deriving the multiphonic numbers?
@bobbycge
2 ай бұрын
thank you! the multiphonics are all from Marcus Weiss and Giorgi Netti's indispensable resource on all things sax, 'The Techniques of Saxophone Playing'
@bencurry3111
2 ай бұрын
@@bobbycge I assume thats notated somewhere in a full score we aren’t given haha. Great work!
@bobbycge
2 ай бұрын
@@bencurry3111 hahaha yeah - i put the fingerings in the individual parts and the score's front matter : P thought it'd be a bit cluttered in the full score...
@bencurry3111
2 ай бұрын
@@bobbycge And you chose correctly😂
Ok but why is tenor and bari in bass clef😂
@madeinrobux3344
3 ай бұрын
And the alto part that has low e below the bar?
@bobbycge
3 ай бұрын
lol the score is in C and not transposing! i thought it'd be easier to read since their sounding notes get pretty low, to say the least 😅
@bobbycge
3 ай бұрын
@@madeinrobux3344 this is a C score, so the written note the alto sees there is in fact a C# just below the staff.
@oxmora1178
3 ай бұрын
@@bobbycge ah ok that makes sense
Fantastic piece!