Classical saxophone

Sometimes art music gets tedious because of all the rehearsing involved with getting it off the ground. There's looking for a practice room, finally finding a practice room, getting kicked out said practice room because an ensemble had the room reserved, and then there's the joy of spending an hour on one three-measure passage so that you can get it up to a speed that's still ten clicks below the tempo you actually need to play it at.
In my orchestration book, there is the following quote:

To err is human, to forgive is not our policy.

Talk about anal retentive.

Aside from brain surgery, I don't know a field that demands as much consistent precision as music. Sometimes it's tedious, because when you look at the kind of money musicians make (and by "musicians" I don't mean most pop stars you hear on the radio. No offense, Britney), it tends to make you scratch your head and wonder why all the effort. Why not just get a job as a mailman? At least it's steady income.

And then a night like tonight happens.

My quartet got together for the first time and we rehearsed tonight, and it was seriously off the hook. We dug into Glauzunov's Quartet for Four Saxophones, and my word, it was gorgeous. It's not even anywhere near performance tempo, and it's gorgeous.
The Rascher Sax Quartet has a recording of this piece that you'll love; look them up on amazon. The cover looks like this:

The quartet is made up of myself, two of my professors, and another guy who teaches Middle School Band up in North Broward, which means that rehearsals move pretty quickly, but that's not the best part. What I loved tonight was that point in the middle of the second movement where we stopped sight reading and were just grooving, following each other, moving the speed and the dynamics of the piece forward and back, up and down, each person just feeling it out. It was a conversation without words, and it reminded me of the gift that I have in being able to produce the sounds that I do on my horn. Saxophones, played correctly, blend well with almost any instrumental combination you can think of, but there's nothing like experiencing a quartet of them playing in one accord. Difference tones flying around everywhere, the vibration through your whole body as you feel your sound fitting hand in glove with the guys across and next to you, that point where suddenly the four of you are like one instrument...it's pretty flippin' sweet.

Anyway, all that to say that I am floored when I remember that those harmonies, all the sync of those moments, all of that is an invention of God's. It's designed. That it moves us the way that it does is a gift, and it makes me wonder what it will sound like on that day when we're all finally home, standing in the presence of the creator of harmony. Way too much to properly take in right now, but definitely something to sit and think about later.