I am near the end of Book 2 of Guy Lacour's 50 etudes faciles et progressives, and I now wonder what to tackle next. I would prefer 20th-century music. Two possibilities are the Karg-Elert caprices (some of them, anyway) and the Twenty Modern Studies by James Rae. I have enough 19th-century music, and anything before that I prefer to listen to.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Sorry can't asssit explicitly, but I'm fascinated by the Karg-Elert as I like his organ music.... I shall go a-hunting....
Alto: Elkart 100AS Selmer 80 C* Tenor: Hanson ST8 silver Vandoren Optimum TL4
Attempt to blow and scrape assorted bits of brass and wood at assorted pitches in various genres.
Enjoy your music, whatever the style.
That's an angle about Karg-Elert I didn't know about. BTW, there is a lot of good saxophone music by French composers, but French publishers don't make it easy to find out what level a book might be.
In my experience French music publishing is expensive and poor quality - ask any organist! As a trite example. The Fauré Requiem vocal score, published by Novello is about £5 and the Oxford edition is about £12. Both good editions, and inexpensive. The Duruflé Requiem (similar sized piece and popular, albeit it doesn't ge the Classic FM exposure that the Fauré gets) is only available in a French edition by Durand and it cost me over £25 10 years ago. The paper quality is dreadful and the binding worse.
Alto: Elkart 100AS Selmer 80 C* Tenor: Hanson ST8 silver Vandoren Optimum TL4
Attempt to blow and scrape assorted bits of brass and wood at assorted pitches in various genres.
Enjoy your music, whatever the style.
I just looked at various Ferling editions of the 48 studies available on sheetmusicplus in the US. BTW, I have no intention at the moment of learning them. The Leduc Editon is $31.05, the Billaudot one $21.95, and the Universal Oboen edition $24.95. The first two are French, the third presumably German. OTH, you can get Alfred for $6.99 and SMC for $8.50 (both of them are American).
I don't know how they differ in detail. Leduc is arranged by Marcel Mule. Billaudot has high legibility. I would want to look at both these before making a decision.
If you are an oboe player also, the bargain is Carl Fischer which gives you the text and two CDs of piano accompaniment. For those not aware of it, the oboe and the saxophone have the same written range, but the oboe is of course in C.
In the end I went for the 20 Modern studies by James Rae. At the same time I bought his 12 modern etudes. They are quite different to the things I have tackled up to now, but they are enjoyable, and they will require me to learn some new techniques.
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