by Minin pro
1. The saxophone cadenza.
The beautiful ballad is drawing to a close. The ballads in the standard repertoire have survived for the best part of a century now on the strength of simply being gorgeous tunes. The solos have been taken, we've heard what saxophone, piano and bass (half a chorus for the bass - it's the law) have to say on this tune and as the final statement of the haunting melody draws near, the audience feels like it's coming home. The band hits the penultimate dominant chord... and are cued to stop by the saxophone player.
He repeats the final phrase of the melody on his own, then again at a faster tempo. From nowhere he launches into an incongruous orgy of arpeggiation, squealing harmonics and note clusters that bear who-knows-what resemblance to the beautiful tale of love and loss that has just been told. Higher and higher, faster and faster, louder and louder he goes - spraying notes around the room like an errant tom cat marking his territory.The band waits patiently behind him, the pianist holds his hands over the final chord, the bassist holds down the tonic with his left hand; the index finger of his right hovers over the appropriate string. The drummer has had plenty of time to put his brushes away and select a pair of mallets for the final cymbal roll - in fact, he's had time to nip out to the nearest music store to buy a new pair.
And still the saxophone pours out a torrent of notes like water from a burst pipe. Every possible arpeggiation of every chord and every hemisemidemiquaver scale passage is presented with a dynamic marking of FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.
The audience has long forgotten the sound of the dominant chord that started this cacophony - more than half of it's members have forgotten what tune was being played in the first place.
Finally, from nowhere the sax player hits and sustains a note. The band twitches nervously, unsure whether he's genuinely finished or is merely girding his loins for another efflux of musical effluence. There's no help from the man himself - he stares straight ahead, proudly presenting the final note to the audience with all the self-satisfaction of a cat leaving a dead sparrow inside the cat flap.
It should go without saying that the note is a sharp eleven, so it's impossible for the band to be sure- any hint of cadences or chord tones are utterly forbidden in saxophone cadenzas.
Each musician concludes it's over at slightly different moments and, after all that, the final chord is flammed. The sax launches into one more superfluous spray of arpeggiation and a mere 45 seconds later, with the advent of the final sharpened ninth, the tune is mercifully over.
Song running time: Head and solos 6:32. Saxophone cadenza 8:58.
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