The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - Kevin Clark
Written for and premiered by Zach Herchen in 2006, revised 2009
live performance by Zach Herchen
1. Groove
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2. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
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Program Notes:
This piece was originally written for saxophonist Zachary Robert Herchen, hence the title. He asked me for a piece that would make him want to die, and I gave him this. The piece has a consummate technical challenge, and then what he was not expecting - acting. The T.S. Eliot poem is about the breakdown of language, about anxiety, and about the impossibility of meaningful action, but others have written better about the poem. I just set it to music for saxophone. Whenever a solfege syllable, such as ‘do re mi’, or a chromatic syllable, such as ‘di’, ‘ra’, and ‘ri’, that syllable is set on that note in the saxophone, with some modifications, and some exceptions. The text that appears without notes should in fact be read, this is a performance of poetry. The epigraph, which is in Italian and comes from Dante, should be read. The performer would be well advised to look at some criticism about the poem, some information on T.S. Eliot. The ‘harsh’ and ‘smooth’ notations denote two different attitudes one finds in the poem, though the attitudes in the music and the attitudes in the text do not always line up. The ‘harsh’ attitude is angry at the human condition, frustrated with existence, and is expressed through a more assaulting timbre. The ‘smooth’ attitude is passive, functioning in the world, verging on resigned, and should be played with a cleaner, more relaxed timbre. The low A-naturals and A-flats are played by covering the bell of the instrument with the knee, usually the left, to varying extents.