Traditional Folk Music Influences in Classical Saxophone Repertoire: 1910–2018

Abstract

This dissertation identifies and presents four works for saxophone, each featuring folk elements from a different culture. The introduction to this document outlines the historical development and implications of the term “folk music.” Rather than an art set in stone, folk music is the result of a continuous process of change. It is influenced not only by a culture’s own people, but also by other cultures and other styles of music, including music of the Western classical tradition. The remainder of the paper explores how Leoš Janáček, Fernande Decruck, Dorothy Chang, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate incorporate folk music into their classical compositions and their motivations for doing so.

Leoš Janáček’s Pohádka, composed for cello and piano, was arranged for baritone saxophone by Paul Nason. Janáček was an early ethnomusicologist who collected thousands of folk songs from his native Moravia. By the time he wrote Pohádka in 1910, Janáček no longer used direct folk melodies in his works; rather, the folk style had become part of his musical language. Fernande Decruck’s Sonata in C# is a saxophone standard. The main theme of the work’s second movement is based on the French carol “Noël Nouvelet,” and the third movement contains motives based on the French children’s song “Ainsi Font, Font, Font.” In her piece New Stories, Dorothy Chang uses an all-embracing compositional approach, combing all of her musical influences as a second-generation Chinese American who has lived in both North America and Asia. Composing the piece helped her to express an important layer of her self-identity. Jerod Tate is a Chickasaw classical composer who is trained in the Western classical tradition and incorporates American Indian elements or subjects into all of his works. His goal is to express through music how he feels about being a Chickasaw Indian person.