SAXIFRAGA
2001

Composed as part of my MA Musical Composition portfolio, Saxifraga was written for the Firebird Ensemble (alto flute/flute/piccolo, bass clarinet, clarinet, piano, cello, and percussion). Initially conceived without a soprano voice, a final section incorporating soprano was added after reviewing an earlier performance—though the available recording does not include this extended portion. The piece takes its name from the saxifrage, a delicate yet resilient flower that thrives on limestone crags and emerges from ancient masonry. Its name, derived from Latin (saxi = stone, frage = fragments), translates to ‘stone splitter’—an apt metaphor for its unsuspecting strength. With vibrant purple petals, ascending rosettes, and opposing pairs of leaves, the saxifrage operates in a David-and-Goliath-like scenario, gradually destabilizing stone, splitting it into fragments, and eroding the past. In Saxifraga, this transformative process unfolds within a musical landscape that appears fragile yet undergoes profound structural shifts. Forces are filtered and fragmented into increasingly smaller portions, propelled upward by a counter-process of ‘flowering,’ where intricacy erodes yet prevails. Unlike Lithos, where instrumental contrasts were set in opposition, Saxifraga was driven by a desire to unify the ensemble’s diverse timbres rather than place them in antiphonic contrast. This ambition soon shaped a composition in which surface sound quality took precedence much earlier in the creative process, reinforcing a strong sense of detail. The work is structured around a single twelve-tone phrase—not dodecaphonic—which is transposed twelve times and staggered according to a geometric rhythmic design. In the final version, the piano part offers a simplified interpretation of this process, while the soprano line is guided by the intervallic properties of the original twelve-note phrase.