Ken,

I received the book as a Christmas present, and enjoyed it very much. I'm a jazz guy, so I don't know if the classical school infighting thing is real or not. I was, however, very impressed with the way a relative "newbie" got into the jazz sax culture.... pretty darn perceptive compared to a lot of stuff out there.

Right now, I'm reading "Thinking in Jazz" by an ethnomusicologist from Northwestern who spent 15 years writing it .... it deals with how the greats learned to improvise.... it's almost 900 pages long, and fascinating. His well-supported conclusion is that the music schools have got it backwards by promoting theory first. His study concludes that virtually all the well known jazzers first learned by ear by transcribing (by ear) from records, and through extensive jam session experience; the theory was then added as they went along. Interesting book, although not specifically about the sax.

Al

 

"Thinking in Jazz" by Berliner is brilliant. Must reading for any jazzer.

 

Legit...

I read the book after my saxophone professor and I were discussing it. We both agreed that the chapter Legit is largely uninformed and one sided. The like of Rascher and Mule are made out to be villains, as if they actually hurt the saxophone. We all as saxophonists know this not to be true. Rascher and Mule pushed the saxophone and got a lot of music written for it and performed all over.

He especially seems to talk down about Rascher saxophonists. He included at quote from Don Sinta that pokes fun at the Raschers, calling they outdated like the hand crank on a car. He also has incorrect information on the all Rascher are "required" to play on horns made before 1920. There are plenty of my fellow students who play on modern horns and Rascher or Caravan mouthpieces. I myself play on a horn from 1939 and my professor plays on one only a few years younger. The reasons for the choice are numerous. The bore size is one, but the mechanics of the horns are less complicated and simply work better and make less noise.

Another quote that I completely disagree with is this. "The problem, despite Rascher's and Mule's efforts to commission new works, was the quality of the literature." For one thing, the person who wrote this book was an armature jazz saxophonist, and another he's a journalist, who is he to judge if music is good or not? We have a lot of new sounding music out there, that's what was available. There are a lot of great compositions out there written for us and that is the truth. Plus, if you have and new instrument you want to become more accepted in the classical light, then you need music! Saying that Rascher and Mules were wrong in getting music made is bunk.

Later they even took a cheap shot a Rascher by saying for someone who invented the "German" sound he wasn't even a true German, but Danish. He even calls out the Rascher schools (SUNY Fredonia, Syracuse University, University of Louisville, and Florida State, but no mention of the other schools in the country...) as being isolationists like Rascher wanted. Also John-Eward Kelly is misquoted as saying "I don't like squeaks, noises and farts, so I try to avoid composers who write squeaks noises and farts." For anyone who knows of John Kelly's work, we know that he has many modern compositions written for him. He isn't trying to support the restriction of the rep.

Overall, I feel that the chapter is quite misinformed. Perhaps more information to the writer would have been appropriate.

 

Haven't read the book or chapter, but if he refers to Rascher's "commissions" that's a serious error right there. My understanding is that NONE of the works dedicated to Rascher were commissioned.

Also, Rascher was indeed born in Germany. Early in his career he taught in Sweden and Denmark and this apparently lead to him being mistakenly identified as Danish in some cases.

 

You're right. Rascher was born in Germany. I also am in the understanding that all of the works that were written for him were dedications, not commissions. He never paid a dime to a composer. That speaks very emphatically towards how much he inspired the artists around him.

Angel

 

NPR Interview with The Devil's Horn author

I just found this audio interview on NPR with Michael Segall about his book.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4991482

 

Kind of an ironic side note: That interview on NPR with Micheal Segall was done on Adolphe Sax's birthday, November 6th.

 

Hmm.

I'm just getting back into this book - there's a lot of detail to cover; the guy's a classic reporter. But I suspect some of the disappointment in "Legit" stems from it being the first acknowledgment in book form that there is a schism in concert saxophone playing.

First pass: yes, there are mistakes. Understandable. Very little of this knowledge is widely held or easy to research except by a lot of very personal involvement. Even being a reporter-saxophonist might not unearth some of the more recherché academic detail. And yes, some of Segell's conclusions are unfair. Eg: I know John Moore, at Louisville, and he's not a setup Nazi. And concert saxophonists of ANY kind aren't nearly as parochial as they used to be. But who's to say Kelly really didn't say "I don't like burps and farts"? And who's to say he really didn't snub Delangle backstage?

Also, it's a little jarring to see all these players called by first names. Concert music is one of the few bastions left where decorum still demands the use of titles.

 

All of these things are examples of why books like this are to be taken with a grain of salt, but unfortunately, many people will take it as absolute truth. I'm from Fredonia, and Wildy Zumwalt is by no means a set-up nazi either. There are more inaccuracies to point out, but not enough time in my day to do so...

 

I, too, have been reading this book and it seems to be more opinion than fact. While I applaud Mr. Segell's efforts on attempting to write about the complex history of our instrument, he does not do it in a very flattering light. His bibliography is extensive, containing some very important documents about the saxophone, but I believe that many of the interviews he conducted he either misquoted, or "read between the lines" when he shouldn't have. I know that he in fact contacted my teacher, but after one or two emails, felt satisfied with their communications and didn't inquire again. On a subject such as this, one needs to be as comprehensive as possible and conduct repeated interviews, not just one with each person. This, unfortunately, has provided us with the literary work in question. I cannot speak for the jazz side, as I don't know all of the particulars there, but again, it seems to be more opinion than unequivocal fact.

I am tempted to write to the author with my historical documents in hand, to clarify a few points. It is unfortunate that works like this get out to the public, but texts like Horwood's and Kool's are forgotten. This is something that needs to be rectified.

 

I recommend 'The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone' ISBN 0-521-59666-1 Cambridge University Press, edited by Richard Ingham. There is an awful lot of well informed writing in it about legit sax by some of its foremost british exponents (including one of the best discussions of quartet repertiore I've seen) as well as other very interesting stuff.

 

It is unfortunate that works like this get out to the public, but texts like Horwood's and Kool's are forgotten. This is something that needs to be rectified.

In a way, Brian, it was ever thus. The lay reader (even the educated one) demands an intelligible narrative that reduces fact to engaging gist. The scholarly calling doesn't respect the reader, only the facts (or the scholar's preferred take on the facts), so such works (rarely even intended for hardcover print) are dense, tangled, and full of tantalizing loose ends.

You can probably reach a happy medium in a discipline like mainstream history, where enough laypeople are educated enough to make an audience for a book that's both highly accurate and highly accessible. But in a field like ours, the specialists are always going to be behind a kind of invisible wall. The Cambridge Companion is one book that bridges the gap very nicely - but a lot of it is written from a British perspective and emphasizes British artists probably more than is appropriate.

 

I understand what you're saying Paul, I just don't like it when another document comes out describing the "bickering" between various groups of players. It doesn't portray us well, and it makes us sound like a bunch of unruly children. It's unavoidable, animosity between players will always be there, but it seems as if it's magnified more with the saxophone. I don't preach my views/opinions of the instrument as absolute; everybody is entitled to their own approach. Do I think some approaches are better than others, yes, but so do musicians like Kelly, Delangle, Londeix, etc.

Books such as this will continue to perpetuate the saxophone's reputation as a "bastard" instrument, undeserving of playing a role in anything but jazz. I highly respect what jazz musicians have done for the instrument, just remember that there are others in non-jazz idioms that have elevated it as well.

I don't mean to be overly critical of his work, but this is the sort of ill-informed thing that angers me...

 

Point taken Paul but it makes a refreshing change for us non American readers. Most literature from the States about saxophones and players is written as if the rest of the world simply doesn't exist apart from some brief mention of some guy from Belgium called Adolph something or other.

 

"Legit" is such a misnomer for classical saxophone. Is jazz not legitimate music as well???

 

I've always assumed that it was jazz players who started calling classical saxophone "legit." From there, I assume that the "legit" name was a reaction to the "deviant" image of jazz and the jazz musician throughout the first few decades of jazz's life - an image which I think was as common among the musicians as it was among non-jazzers. In this context, I've always felt that "legit" was very slightly pejorative - closer in meaning to "boring" than "legitimate."

Or maybe I should think of "legit," in this context, as meaning "sanctioned." That would work very well if you consider the position of jazz saxophonists in university music programs up through the 60's or so. They'd likely have seen classical music as being "sanctioned" by the musical community, whereas their genre would have been "illegitimate" or "deviant."

 

I agree, Brian. The term "legit" always sounded to me to be an insult disguised as an arguably positive expression. I understand that many who use it do not mean such offense. It just never struck me as a positive reference and techically makes jazz sound illegitimate, which could not be further from the truth.

 

As Paul said, this is not intended to be a scholarly work. That said, I do think the writer is MUCH more empathetic to the jazz world than the classical world, and is a self confessed jazz sax wannabe. He basically looks at saxophone players as "hip", and is, I think quite dismissive of the classical world. And squabbling between various schools is certainly not limited to the classical world. Louis Armstrong once referred to bebop as "Chinese music".

In Larry Teal's Book, "The Art of Saxophone Playing", he makes the point that for saxophone artists to be truly accepted in the classical world, they have to raise their playing to that of other world class classical artists. Even when they attain that level, as many have by now, I think there's still a number of very high hurdles to overcome for classical saxophone. It's easy to forget the fact that in the U.S., much of the sax culture came from brothels and speakeasies, not classical music halls. Add a strong measure of rascism because of the association with black American music, and it's no surprise that the saxophone is seen as a bastard child in the classical world. Given all of the barriers to the acceptance of the saxophone as a legitimate classical instrument, I'm not sure this book will have any measurable impact. Just my 2 cents.

 

"Legit" is such a misnomer for classical saxophone. Is jazz not legitimate music as well???

That's something that caught my eye about the book as well. The chapter name alone comes with a huge bias and negativity! And yes, in order to sell books you have to make it interesting for the reader, but now all the readers will be misinformed about classical saxophone. This doesn't help our cause as classical saxophonists one bit.

 

I followed this discussion and then had a copy sent over to the UK from the States. Like others here, I found the book ultimately unsatisfying. It is very journalistic and really rather studied, basing some broad generalisations around limited interviews that the author had managed to achieve as only a journalist can.

The so called 'legit' sections are sensationalist and jar with someone like me who studied history at university and still maintains an acquaintance with the subject. Most disappointing was the failure to check facts; there is some pretty sloppy material here.

And yet, it is a good read in may ways, provided you know how to maintain a critical eye (objective cynicism, if you like) when reading - one of the key attributes of the student of history, in fact.

 

Ironically, I've only ever met "lunatic fringe" types who were set-up Nazis. One guy in particular told me that if he let me in to his school, I'd have to change my horn from a Yamaha to a Selmer. I didn't go to his school.

Saying that Rascher folks or French folks insist on one type of equipment or another is incorrect. The fact is though, if you are in a French school, and you're playing a Buescher Aristocrat with a large round chamber mouthpiece, you probably won't be able to produce the characteristic ideal sound of the French players. (Or, it will at least be much harder). Therefore, many academic players end up having similar set-ups at a particular school. No one EVER told me in all my years of study that I HAD to have a particular set-up, with the one exception above.

The reasons for the schism between the Rascher school and the others are very complicated, but equipment has very little to do with it.