Polyptoton (2009)
excerpt (Nicolas Prost)
tenor saxophone and drum set
commissioned by Nicolas Prost for Jean-Yves Chevalier
Premiere: January 31, 2009 in L’hay les roses, France (Jean-Yves Chevalier, saxophone and Jean Fessard, drums)
Program Notes
Polyptoton is a rhetorical figure in which words from the same root but with different inflections appear in close proximity. For example, Robert Frost wrote, “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” Of the great Latin poets, Ovid is most well known for his use of this figure. He uses many variations of polyptoton in his works, and one such variation is two pairs of words in symmetric order:
quid, Agenore nate, peremptum
serpentem spectas? et tu spectabere serpens.
(Metamorphoses, iii 97-98)
Why gaze, son of Agenor, at the serpent you have killed?
You too shall be a serpent to be gazed on.
Latin’s flexible word order allowed writers to use rhetorical figures quite liberally; music is the same way.
The piece includes plenty of true repetition, but it also features many musical polyptotons, or slightly altered repetition. The first fast section, when repeated phrases slowly shift their rhythms and occasionally their pitch while still maintaining the same character, and a later section, which emulates a skipping compact disc by varying the particular segment of the phrase that is repeated, are just two instances that embody the work’s title.
The work was commissioned by Nicholas Prost for saxophonist Jean-Yves Chevalier for performance at the 2009 Saxophone en Fête in Paris on January 31, 2009.
Subsequent Performances
Nicolas Prost (saxophone) and Cédric Cyprien (drums), November 10, 2009, in a Yamaha concert in Saint-Maur-de-Fossés, France
Nicolas Prost (saxophone) and Cédric Cyprien (drums), September 25, 2010, in Bourg-Lastic, France
version for tenor sax and electronica
written for Susan Fancher
Premiere: November 13, 2009 at Duke University
Subsequent Performance
Susan Fancher, September 30, 2010, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Program Notes
Polyptoton is a rhetorical figure in which words from the same root but with different inflections appear in close proximity. For example, Robert Frost wrote, “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” Of the great Latin poets, Ovid is most well known for his use of this figure. He uses many variations of polyptoton in his works, and one such variation is two pairs of words in symmetric order:
quid, Agenore nate, peremptum
serpentem spectas? et tu spectabere serpens.
(Metamorphoses, iii 97-98)
Why gaze, son of Agenor, at the serpent you have killed?
You too shall be a serpent to be gazed on.
Latin’s flexible word order allowed writers to use rhetorical figures quite liberally; music is the same way.
The piece includes plenty of true repetition, but it also features many musical polyptotons, or slightly altered repetition. The first fast section, when repeated phrases slowly shift their rhythms and occasionally their pitch while still maintaining the same character, and a later section, which emulates a skipping compact disc by varying the particular segment of the phrase that is repeated, are just two instances that embody the work’s title.
The work was originally commissioned by Nicholas Prost for saxophonist Jean-Yves Chevalier for performance at the 2009 Saxophone en Fête in Paris on January 31, 2009. The premiere of this version, for saxophone and electronica, written for Susan Fancher, was November 13, 2009 at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, USA. All of the electronic playback is derived from a recording of Susan playing her tenor saxophone.
Nicolas Prost and Cedric Cyprien, 9/25/2010
Bourg-Lastic, France