Nordic Wilderness Journey

A tough dramatic work with a gruffly joyful sense of humour…

— Absolutely unique in the saxophone repertoire!

This is another work composed to a commission from a noted saxophone virtuoso. This time it's Jay Easton, whose astonishing range of instruments includes the contrabass saxophone — an instrument that looks in his photos to be at least as tall as he is. He told me there was a dearth of quality music for the contrabass saxophone and the tubax*, so there's a corresponding demand, even though the number of players of these instruments is inevitably limited.

Nordic Wilderness Journey falls squarely into the 'wilderness' side of my output. Although its first ideas (in the first movement) came to me during hikes across roughest and remotest Dartmoor (South-West England) and certainly reflected the feel of my staggering and stumbling over that most difficult (blanket bog) terrain, the deeper resonance of the music isn't with Dartmoor nor indeed Britain, but with the boggy moorland and tundra and mountains of Scandinavia.

This work's preoccupation with the chords known respectively as the augmented and diminished triad is particularly significant because although these chords are not harsh discords, they bear a considerable tension. In conventional Western harmony they are among the chords and intervals that a composer was expected to use only at points of tension, to be quickly moved out of in order to resolve that tension.

At least part of this tension arises from their tonal ambiguity, it being difficult or impossible to relate them to one key or another in the conventional major-minor system of tonality. As with the tritone, once one of these chords is dwelt upon, the sense of conventional tonality is dispelled and a quite different and emotionally potent atmosphere with visionary potentialities pervades. Some people refer to intervals or chords used in this manner as 'irritants', but that's a restricted and negative view of what is really an abundant resource.

In the case of the augmented triad, apart from the early obsession of the tenor saxophone in the first movement, the chord does in fact keep meeting its resolution, but it isn't into a comfortable major chord but a minor one, giving a mysterious and intense effect. The diminished triad actually spans a tritone, so that dwelling upon it also colours the music with that interval, giving a potentially dark and brooding quality. It should be no surprise, therefore, that that chord tends to be prominent in much of my wilderness-inspired music.

In emotional terms, in any music the emphasized or dwelt-upon augmented triad imparts a sense of menace, fear or even terror, whereas the emphasized or dwelt-upon diminished triad imparts a sense of disconnection (which in conventional tonality is then resolved into a sense of reconnection), and when it's dwelt upon, the diminished triad can impart an extremely tense or/and brooding effect upon the music (i.e., the listener is — normally unconsciously — getting wound up, waiting for a sense of reconnection to come in and put them at ease again).

Performers of this work need to be clear that all three instruments are equal participants and so it's important for the pianist never to think of the piano part as being just accompaniment, and indeed to be prepared to allow the piano sometimes to be the centre of attention.

The Three Movements:

1. Hike Into the Unknown

A particular focus of this movement is on the augmented triad. Indeed, the tenor saxophone starts off by believing that the augmented triad is the only musical reality, getting the piano rather upset in the process, but the wiser contrabass saxophone manages eventually to wean the tenor saxophone out of its limited view — upon which the tenor saxophone in its new-found freedom leads into the central section of the movement, discovering a broad and hypnotic tune, which the contrabass saxophone picks up from it.

And then, when the earlier, darker, music has returned, the tenor saxophone decides briefly that it's a skylark, soaring into its altissimo range. Despite the humour in the interaction of the saxophones, this is an intense movement full of the poetry and mystery of solitude in the wilderness. Its ending is uncompromising in its build-up to the final crashing exclamation mark.

2. Joys, Sorrows, Struggles

Yes, this title is a nod towards the work of Jehan Alain (title of second of his Trois Danses for organ).

The movement starts with an invigorating rhythmic excitement in which a series of motifs is underpinned by a dogged low B_b on the piano, which creates considerable tension. This is then contrasted with a darker and strongly poetic section coloured primarily with the diminished triad, which makes for some similarity to the feel of parts of the last movement of my 4th Symphony.

Strange flashes of light introduce and intersperse sequences of variations on a short descending melody and a counter-melody derived from the series of piano tremolos accompanying the main melody's first full statement, which get into quite a feeling of urgency and struggle before the return of the opening joyful excitement returns — even with a brief hint of 'What shall we do with the drunken hiker?'.

3. Midnight Sun on Kebnekaise

Kebnekaise is Sweden's highest mountain, with a summit altitude given as 2,117 metres in my atlas and 2,123 metres as given on one of the websites I visited for information on this mountain (perhaps the discrepancy is to do with the depth of snow cover on the summit). It's far north, in Swedish Lapland, and the name is Lappish for kettle top. As far as I could establish, it's pronounced 'Kebnakysa' in my crude Southern-Englander transliteration, with the 's' as in 'sit', not in 'rose', and primary accent on first syllable and secondary accent on the third — but please don't take me as an ultimate authority on that.

The starting point of this movement, after a sombre introduction, is a dreamy and expansively rendered 6/8 ostinato on the piano — just one note in ascending and then descending octaves, taking in the piano's lowest notes as well as the high reaches. This ostinato is periodically halted, punctuated with a major chord, and other types of chord slip in here and there, just hinting at what we've been through to get here.

Against this backdrop the saxophones make their various observations, which keep changing the apparent tonal or modal colour of the piano ostinato. Later in the movement the saxophones take up the ostinato, allowing the piano to bring in strange chordal passages that incorporate a transformation of the music of the introduction of this movement. The dynamics of this movement are for the most part fairly subdued, as befits such a contemplation.

The drama and struggles are past, and now, resting atop the mountain, we're outside time, observing the different colours and shapes of the landscape in the light of this low midnight sun that doesn't go away. We observe memories, thoughts and feelings that arise in the mind, but we now remain the observer, just illuminating and experiencing whatever arises, without getting involved and creating further dramas and struggles. This summit is as good a place as any to realize that we are the sun and are the source from which it has arisen — forever the rugged landscape, the changing light, the shifting rainbows…