Quartet For Four Saxophones by Alexander Glazunov: On Tradition and Renewal

Abstract

The article considers one of the first pieces of music for an academic saxophone ensemble through the aspect of the correlation of the traditional and the renewed in it. The article aims to analyze this work from a variety of angles, namely, the identification of the distinctive features of the composer’s style and also the demonstration of how various principles and tendencies belonging to different periods of musical art correlate in the work in question. The author employs the systematic approach and the principle of historicism which make it possible to reach the purpose of the research. Additionally, the author focuses on the quartet as it plays a special role both as part of repertoire for the saxophone and for the genre evolution as a whole. The main literary sources are archival data related to A. Glazunov’s creative activity and woks on the analysis of musical pieces. Based on textological analysis, the author reveals the complexity of different processes of the musical art of the 20 th century, i.e. the influence on non-European musical cultures, the new principles of intonational development, the return to the origins (the revival of some old forms and genres), the use of traditional interpretations and, simultaneously, the renovation of the genre. The main factor of renovation is the composition of the ensemble, i.e. a saxophone quartet of different tessituras. Consequently, in his Quartet for four saxophones , the composer both accentuated the common moments with the string instruments and emphasized the timbre peculiarities for the new instrument of European music which led to changes both in the images and in the structure of the cycle and the interpretation of the genre.