John Burge

Commissioner: Chris Dawes (organist)

Dedication: For Chris Dawes

Premiere: Daniel Rubinoff, alto saxophone, Chris Dawes, organ, St. James Cathedral Cathedral, July 7, 2002.

Duration: 10 minutes

Program Note: The Blues of a Chagall Window, for alto saxophone and organ, is dedicated to organist, Chris Dawes.  Chris has been a long-time performer and supporter of Burge’s music and he rightly guessed that Burge would be very interested in writing a new work for a recital Chris had scheduled with saxophonist, Daniel Rubinoff.  Both musicians premiered the work at St. Jame’s Cathedral, Toronto, ON, on July 7, 2002.

The resultant composition is a single movement work that is somewhat rhapsodic in nature.  The idea of a saxophone playing in a cathedral, seemed to the composer to be somewhat akin to the great pointer, Marc Chagall (1887-1975), producing his extraordinary stained-glass windows for churches and synagogues located around the world during the last 30 years of his life.  Picasso said of Chagall that he was the only 20th-century artist who truly understood colour, and this statement is easily observed when viewing the vibrant depth of colour in Chagall’s windows.  The background in many of these windows is often predominantly blue with perhaps the most famous example of this being the Dag Hammarskjold Memorial Window in the United Nations in New York.  Measuring 12 by 15 feel, this window was presented to the UN by Chagall and the United Nations staff in memory of their second Secretary-General who died in a plane crash in 1964. Having been conceived and executed on such a large scale, to be in the presence of this window is to be immediately overcome by its beauty.

In the composition itself, the blues of the title is also a reference to the musical genre of, “playing the Blues,” which is of course something that the saxophone traditionally does well.  While the harmonic language of this composition is far removed from the Blues, the sense of improvisation and the occasional “blue” note will be apparent to most listeners.  The harmonic vocabulary of the work is actually more influenced by a French sensibility that can be traced back to Debussy and Messiaen.  Although Chagall was born in Russia, much of his life was spent in France and, like the artist, it seemed appropriate to colour this composition with a French aura as well.

The performance materials are available for purchase (printable pdf or mail order), library loan or non-printable pdf for review purposes from: The Blues of a Chagall Window [CMC]

Also available from the Canadian Music Centre is recording of this work as made by Daniel Rubinoff, saxophonist, and Chris Dawes, organist on a CD entitled: Dance of the Blessed Spirits