The Whole Horn Curriculum The Saxophone Program Reference

The Saxophone Program · Reference companion

A reference to the saxophone literature of the program

This companion gathers what can be verified about the literature of The Saxophone Program: who wrote each work, when and for whom, who publishes it, what it asks of the player, and where outside sources place it. Every fact links to the page that states it. The program’s own teaching is on the Saxophone Program pages; this reference only describes the music.

The years

Preparatory Year5 works · 6 étude collections First Year10 works · 3 étude collections Second Year5 works · 7 étude collections Third Year10 works · 6 étude collections Fourth Year9 works · 5 étude collections Fifth Year6 works · 3 étude collections Sixth Year7 works · 3 étude collections Seventh Year24 works · 3 étude collections Eighth Year17 works · 1 étude collections Ninth Year6 works · 0 étude collections

The French saxophone school: a short lineage

Selmer dates Adolphe Sax’s saxophone patent, No. 3226, to 21 March 1846; Wikipedia dates the patent to 28 June 1846.12

A saxophone class was created at the Paris Conservatoire in 1857 with Sax in charge. It ran within the Conservatoire’s classes for military students, which closed in 1870 when the students were called up.13

In 1942 Claude Delvincourt entrusted the Conservatoire’s saxophone class to Marcel Mule (1901–2001), who taught there for more than 25 years; English Wikipedia dates the re-establishment of the class to 1944. Selmer calls Mule the Conservatoire’s second saxophone professor and records that between 1942 and 1968, the year of his retirement, 87 of his students won First Prize.456

Mule had joined the Musique de la Garde Républicaine in 1923 and founded a saxophone quartet there, later known as the Quatuor de Saxophones de Paris. Selmer credits him with bringing the vibrato he heard in jazz orchestras of the late 1920s into classical saxophone playing.56

Daniel Deffayet (1922–2002) succeeded Mule as professor in 1968 and held the post until 1988; he had founded his own quartet in 1953. Claude Delangle taught saxophone at the Conservatoire (CNSMDP) from 1988 until 2025.78

Jean-Marie Londeix (1932–2025) studied with Mule at the Paris Conservatoire, taught at the conservatories of Dijon and Bordeaux, and retired from Bordeaux in 2001. More than 100 compositions were written for him. He is credited as founder of the French Saxophonists Association and of the International Saxophone Committee. He also cataloged the repertoire: 150 Years of Music for Saxophone (Roncorp, 1994) and the Londeix Guide to the Saxophone Repertoire, 1844–2012, prepared with Bruce Ronkin (Roncorp, 2012), which documents more than 18,000 works.91011

Alongside the French school, many works came to the saxophone through Sigurd Raschèr (1907–2001), born in Elberfeld, Germany, to whom 208 saxophone works were dedicated, among them Glazunov’s Concerto (1934), Ibert’s Concertino da camera (1935) and Larsson’s Konsert (1934). Earlier, the Boston patron Elise Hall (1853–1924), who took up the saxophone at 47 with Georges Longy, commissioned or supported works by Debussy, d’Indy, Caplet and Léon Moreau.1213

In the United States, Larry Teal became the first full-time professor of saxophone at an American university when the University of Michigan appointed him in 1953. Frederick Hemke (1935–2019) was the first American saxophonist to win the Premier Prix of the Paris Conservatoire, in 1956, and joined Northwestern’s faculty in 1962. Eugene Rousseau studied with Mule in 1960–61, taught at Indiana University from 1964 to 2000, and wrote Marcel Mule: His Life and the Saxophone. Donald Sinta held the Michigan professorship from 1974 to 2014.14151617

The World Saxophone Congress was conceived by Paul Brodie and co-founded in 1969 with Eugene Rousseau; the first Congress met in Chicago on 16 December 1969, and Sinta’s biography calls him its first elected chair. A seven-member International Saxophone Committee was set up in 1981 to help organize it. The North American Saxophone Alliance was founded in 1976 under Hemke’s leadership.181719

How levels are evidenced

A level on these pages always comes from a named outside source: a French publisher’s grading (for example Billaudot’s “Easy (cycle 1)”), a retailer’s grade, the New York State (NYSSMA) solo list, an exam-board syllabus, or a work’s use as a Paris Conservatoire competition piece (morceau de concours). Where no source states a level, none is given, and the year a work sits in is the program’s own placement.

Two American entrance auditions give a benchmark for the upper years. For the final audition, Northwestern’s Bienen School asks Bachelor of Music applicants for “All major and harmonic minor scales (full range), and chromatic scale (low Bb to high F#)”; for the prescreening video it names études by “Ferling, Berbiguier/Mule, J.L. Small, Labanchi, Voxman Selected Studies, or similar” and suggests repertoire by composers including Creston, Glazunov, Ibert, Tomasi, Bach, Fasch, Debussy, Heiden, Muczynski, Rueff, Boutry, Bozza and Milhaud. These lists name composers, not particular works, so they are not quoted as the level of any single piece on these pages.20

Indiana’s Jacobs School asks for “the chromatic scale, all major and harmonic minor scales, and arpeggios” across the full range, études “such as those by Ferling, Lacour, Mule, Voxman,” and a multi-movement work by a composer such as Creston, Desenclos, Dubois, Glazunov, Heiden, Ibert, Maurice, Milhaud or Tomasi.21

The scales, and the whole range

Each year page quotes the scale requirements of the two program documents and shows where each one can be practiced in The Whole Horn. The free app practices the twelve major scales in every key up to two octaves, the tonic and dominant-seventh arpeggios, long tones and vibrato. The Full Studio, a one-time purchase, adds the minor scales (natural, harmonic and melodic), intervals, chords, the chromatic scale, whole-tone and diminished scales, overtones and voicing, and the full and extended range.22

How this reference was made

The facts here were gathered from publisher and library catalogs, composer and foundation sites, university pages and encyclopedias. Each fact was then re-checked against the page it cites, and anything that page did not state was removed, even when it is widely repeated elsewhere. A work appears on a year page only when at least one fact about it could be confirmed; names follow the published editions.

Bibliography

Sources

  1. selmer.fr: invention du saxophone par adolphe sax
  2. en.wikipedia.org: Adolphe Sax
  3. saxophonemes.fr: La classe dAdolphe Sax
  4. conservatoiredeparis.fr: marcel mule
  5. en.wikipedia.org: Marcel Mule
  6. selmer.fr: marcel mule
  7. en.wikipedia.org: Daniel Deffayet
  8. en.wikipedia.org: Claude Delangle
  9. en.wikipedia.org: Jean Marie Londeix
  10. openlibrary.org: 150 years of music for saxophone
  11. juneemersonwindmusic.com: LONDEIX GUIDE TO THE SAXOPHONE REPERTOIRE 1844 2012
  12. en.wikipedia.org: Sigurd Raschèr
  13. en.wikipedia.org: Elise Hall (musician)
  14. en.wikipedia.org: Larry Teal
  15. en.wikipedia.org: Frederick Hemke
  16. en.wikipedia.org: Eugene Rousseau (saxophonist)
  17. en.wikipedia.org: Donald Sinta
  18. en.wikipedia.org: World Saxophone Congress
  19. en.wikipedia.org: North American Saxophone Alliance
  20. Northwestern University, Bienen School of Music: Bachelor of Music saxophone audition requirements
  21. Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music: woodwind audition requirements
  22. The Whole Horn web app (thewholehorn.com/play/), free and Full Studio contents