A Second Chance

Elise Coolidge Hall was among America’s first prominent female saxophonists.

Second Chance

Woollett’s Octet is resurrected over a hundred years after it was composed

School archives, amidst documents and pictures pertinent to the school along with random odds and ends, sometimes turn up unique and unusual gems of pieces that never got a chance. New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, has many such of these pieces as part of the Elise Coolidge Hall Collection. Saxophonists know this name immediately, but the rest of the performance crowd might not know just how influential and important Hall actually was and the legacy she left behind for the development and propagation of the saxophone as a serious instrument. It was in this collection that I found one excellent but unknown piece for an unusual instrumentation, and over time I gave it a second chance at life: Octet for oboe, clarinet, alto saxophone, and string quintet by French composer Henry Woollett.

Radnofsky-Couper Editions published the Woollett Octet in 2020.

ELISE HALL

Discussion of this piece cannot come without discussing the woman for whom it was written: Elise Coolidge Hall, arts patron and among America’s first prominent female saxophonists. She was a daughter of the elite Coolidge family from Boston. Born into wealth and passionate for the arts, a change in her life pushed her into active performance. While away from Boston in Santa Barbara, California, after marrying noted surgeon Richard Hall, Elise Hall began to suffer hearing loss, and her doctor recommended taking up a wind instrument in order to blow out the tubes in her ears so that her hearing would not degrade further. While in Santa Barbara, Hall began her musical training; she could only find one musician in the area, however, and he played an instrument seen as only a novelty at the time: the saxophone.

Upon her husband’s death, Hall and her children returned to Boston and performed in amateur socialite music circles. She began studying the saxophone with prominent Boston-based

oboist George Longy, who was principal oboe for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (now most known as the namesake of Longy School of Music at Bard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts). Longy founded a group of musicians in Boston known as The Longy Club, which gave performances of newly commissioned and previously established French music throughout Boston (although their programs consisted of French and non-French music). Hall used her wealth to further the arts, and she especially used this opportunity to commission new works for the saxophone. She worked with both The Longy Club and an organization that she herself founded, the Boston Orchestral Club, to cultivate a library of serious music for the new instrument.

THE ELISE HALL COLLECTION AT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY OCTET

viola, violoncello, and double bass. The piece follows a symphonic structure of a sonata-allegro first movement, an adagio second movement, a scherzo ternary form third movement, and a rondo-like fourth movement. The first movement echoes Beethoven in its use of C minor to establish an intense mood followed by a more lyrical and less intense second theme that develops progressively throughout. The second movement reduces the instrumentation to the string quintet with small solos from the alto saxophone, using major seventh chords and other harmonic extensions to create a beautiful yet aching melody. As the alto saxophone enters, Woollett contrasts the material with melodic fragments that play with the difference between C major and C minor, harmonically Elise Coolidge Hall used her wealth to further the arts, and she especially used this opportunity to commission new expanding the piece without the works for the saxophone. need for chord extensions. The third movement returns to C

These compositions represent a breadth of Boston-area minor and contrasts it with A-flat major, creating a relatively basic composers that Hall was friends with along with the music of but harmonically adventurous ternary structure; it also represents European composers, both minor and major. Arguably the most some of the most active material for the woodwinds compared to famous of all these pieces is Rhapsodie for Orchestra and Saxophone the other two movements. The last movement, after starting very by Claude Debussy. Although Hall never performed this piece (it quietly and intensely with the alto saxophone, clarinet, and viola, premiered 18 years later to mixed reviews), it entered the standard accelerates into a dance-like allegro, occasionally recalling earlier repertoire for saxophonists. Several of these other works, however, movements to give the piece a sense of completeness and finality received only one performance and then were shelved. before ending rather abruptly. Woollett was the most harmonical-

Among these pieces was one by a lesser-known composer ly adventurous in this movement, exploring whole-tone scales as named Henry Woollett. Woollett was both a composer and a method to move between distant keys and delineate changes in musicologist that founded a satellite school of the Schola Can- the form. torum in Le Havre, France. He studied piano with Raoul Pugno Woollett delivered the score and The Longy Club performed it and composition with Jules Massenet, but primarily, but we know for the first time on New Year’s Day 1912, in the heart of Boston him today primarily for his pedagogy and his articles on music at New England Conservatory of Music’s Jordan Hall. According during his lifetime. Hall commissioned him to write a piece for to the program, the large newly commissioned work opened the her and The Longy Club for a performance in Boston during the evening concert and joined Five Pieces, Op. 83 of Max Bruch for 1911-1912 season. Woollett composed a lengthy four-movement clarinet, viola, and piano and 3 Aquarelles Hollandaises by Chrissuite for eight players, representing three woodwinds and a string tiaan Kreins for 10 woodwind players and tubular bells. Reviewers quintet: oboe, clarinet in B , alto saxophone in E , two violins, generally took favorably to the new piece, especially praising the

lyricism and expressiveness of the second movement. Interestingly, one reviewer for The Boston Globe published on January 2, 1912, described the piece as having “nothing ‘ultra’ in it, but…[having] a way of avoiding the commonplace, which is at once stimulating and restful.”

After that, there were no more recorded performances of the Woollett Octet. The piece’s manuscripts and parts entered the Hall’s private collection and never were performed again to the best of our knowledge. After Hall died, her heirs placed her manuscript collection on loan to New England Conservatory, intending on retrieving it after an untold amount of time. Eventually, however, New England Conservatory assumed ownership of the manuscripts permanently, establishing The Elise Hall Collection of Saxophone Music by 20th-Century Composers.

THE PERFORMANCE EDITION

Come 2018, I, as a student of New England Conservatory, enter the picture. As part of a class assignment, I had to appraise the quality of a manuscript from the NEC Archives that had a modern-edition score to compare it with. This assignment introduced me to the materials that were part of the Elise Hall Collection, for I appraised Ballade Carnavalesque for flute, oboe, alto saxophone, bassoon, and piano by composer and turn-of-the-century Boston Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Charles Martin Loeffler. While perusing the archive listing, I happened across a piece near the end of the listing that appeared to never have had a modern score created. I began to investigate and discovered a copyist score and seven of the eight parts for Octet; interestingly, the saxophone part was missing in its entirety, while thankfully still being represented on the score. I examined the copyist manuscript and determined that, at least by the quality of the first movement, this piece would be interesting to explore further. I then requested and received a PDF copy of the manuscript.

From there, I worked diligently to engrave about half of the first movement in a notation software to get an idea of whether or not I should continue with this unknown piece. Pressing play on the notation program’s playback software confirmed my suspicions: Not only was this wild card manuscript good, it was really good. I then completed the first movement and began the first half of the second movement before unfortunately having to put the piece down to focus on my own compositions and studies.

Then came COVID-19. All of our musical responsibilities collectively ended overnight. Suddenly, I had as much time as I wanted, in between reduced intensity classes and a loss of commissions that freed up my composition time. I had the chance I did not exactly know I wanted but deep down knew I needed. Within a week, I spent night after night meticulously engraving the remaining second movement and the entireties of both the third and fourth movement, even as the copyist hand changed and became quite messier than the initial copyist. Before I knew it, I had the whole piece engraved, and after purchasing a license for NotePerformer, I listened to the piece that had not been heard in more than 100 years. Suffice to say, it was a magnificent experience. I am proud to say that out of the dustbin of history, I was able to give the work another chance at life.

Once complete, I communicated with the archive curator and saxophone professor at New England Conservatory, Kenneth Radnofsky, and showed him the final product. Radnofsky then offered to publish this newly created performance edition with his publishing company, Radnofsky-Couper Editions, which he did in 2020. Now, 109 years after its inception, Octet by Henry Woollett can receive performances by a new generation of saxophonists. By the time of publication of this article, it will have had its online premiere as part of saxophonist Megan Dillon’s second doctoral recital at New England Conservatory supported, in part, by the Boston Woodwind Society. After all this time, it will finally receive the audience it so richly deserves.

To hear this piece and purchase either a digital or print copy, please visit the Radnofsky-Couper Editions website at rceditions. com.

Ian Wiese (Lambda, Beta, Boston Alumni) is a multi-faceted composer based out of Quincy, Massachusetts, whose works are a “captivating mix of busy and sparce,” according to Boston Musical Intelligencer. Ensembles including loadbang, Imani Winds, Box Not Found, Kalliope Reed Quintet, and Sputter Box have performed his music. Recently, Wiese was awarded prizes in the 2021 NEC Merz Trio Competition, Nightingale Ensemble Young Composers Commissioning Program, 2020 Mu Phi Epsilon International Convention Call for Scores and Musicological Research Competition, 2019 Mu Phi Epsilon Original Composition Competition, Ball State University Xenharmonic Music Alliance Call for Scores, and Ithaca College Jack Downey Vocal Composition Prize among others. He is currently working on commissions and collaborations with Les Nons Triolets, Jamaica Plains Saxophone Quartet, and trumpeter Daniel Venglar. Wiese’s music has been heard at EPCOT Center at The Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. His works are published by Radnofsky-Couper Editions, TrevCo Music Publishing, and North Star Music Publishing. He is currently working on a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in composition at New England Conservatory with composer John Heiss. Visit ianwiese.com.