Aurelia Saxophone Quartet
Fugue in C of dog
Bach, The art of the fugue
Johan van der Linden - soprano saxophone / Niels Bijl - alto saxophone
Arno Bornkamp - tenor saxophone / Willem van Merwijk - baritone saxophone
Interesting confrontation of traditional fugues of J.S. Bach with fifteen new fugues.
All new fugues are dedicated explicit to the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet and are
World Premiere recordings!
Challenge Classics CC72148 2 CD-Set 608917214826
Compact Disc 1:
J. S. Bach: Kunst der Fuge arranged by Willem van Merwijk
Compact Disc 2:
1. Lessons of the Master (2005) - Perry Goldstein
2. Imbroglian Fugue (2005) - Peter van Onna
3. Fugue in C of Dog (2004) - Dimitri Nicolau
4. De Meesterfout (2005) - Guus Janssen
5. Dream Fugue (2004) - David Rowland
6. Ensemobile II (2005) - Theodor Burkali
7. Inventie over Bach’s (2004) - Wijnand van Klaveren
8. Punctus Einz (2005) - Ruud van Eeten
9. Stretto Fugue (2005) - Shane Fage
10. Windows II (2005) - Erich Stem
11. Als,een,scha,duw,heen (2002) - Ab Sandbrink
12. La Fugasita (2005) - Juan Pablo Dobal
13. Fugue State (2005) - David Dramm
14. Contre Bruit (2005) - Katarzyna Glowicka
15. Fading Fugue (2005) - Joey Roukens
Notes by composers that participated in the 'Fugue in C of Dog' project.
DIMITRI NICOLAU : Fugue in C of Dog (2004)
The proposal of Aurelia to participate with a composition in their original project, it has given birth to me a pleasant great surprise and contemporarily it has aroused me some difficulties. A Fugue today!?
With the mind I am left me to travel to the history of the big fugues, of the great work of those composers that they have decided to entrust their imagination to the schemes of geometric and mathematical character, but also to those particular searches - always rational - like for example the magic square, automatisms etc. Too rational for my character and my way to think the music. I am always inspired me for every composition to the human relationships, especially from the relationship man woman. Certainly in very different way from like it was intended by the historical Romanticism.
But I liked idea for a musical fugue. I liked the challenge for a composition completely out of the schemes historically and formally imposed but that she can recreate a run of narration musical sort of sonorous and melodic tensions in hold harmony between them.
A day it happened however that I was observing out of the window of my home to see a rather nice scene between a male dog and a dog female that they flirted between them. I observed that the evidently enamored male was firm and with the ears in down. It was sometimes drawn near to the female and it jumped her above for a pair of minutes, then as if nothing had happened, him if it removed some, it stayed firm for some spellbound time of his lover and then unexpectedly it jumped above to her for other a minute. All this for a whole afternoon, indeed a fascinating show of loving constancy. I thought that perhaps the dogs have some imagination unlike the Leo for example that he assaults the female and in in minute he has completed the copulation.
Well, at that time she has come me the inspiration for my Fugue. A construction that it doesn't follow the rules of rationality (that it is also always predictable when it feigns to not be it) but that it proceeds simply for emotions, freely. Sometimes a melodic line in a whole melodic lines that they are woven freely. Sometimes a resumption of some phrase distributed freely between the four saxophones, in a game of joints that they not have origin from a rule of predestined construction or rigorous but from an emotional coherence and of imagination without dissociation.
This way, unlike the others my compositions I have taken to loan a loving behavior between dogs and not between human beings. I hope that at least for this turns the women they are not become angry with me, but I am sure that at least I will have the sympathy of the animal's friends.
© Dimitri Nicolau 2004