LE REGARD DROIT for Saxophone Quartet（2020）

I composed this work in 2020 in response to a commission from Bunkyō-ku Academy to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Bunkyō Civic Hall. My intention was to create a celebratory piece，but since I worked on it in the middle of the Covid pandemic，the dark feelings that enveloped me at the time inevitably found their way into the piece.
There’s an expression in Japanese to the effect that a samurai should maintain his honour and dignity even when experiencing dire poverty and not knowing where his next meal is going come from. I’m no samurai，but I hoped by analogy in writing this piece to be able to maintain a sense of dignity without displaying any weakness，but it was precisely because this was not possible that I felt attracted to the notion of self-respect inherent in this approach. What we regard as important differs from one person to the next，but we need to continue focusing on what we consider important no matter how difficult the situation we find ourselves in may be. The French word droit，meaning ‘law’，encompasses the varied meanings of the English word ‘right’ as well as meaning ‘straight’ and it was this multiplicity of meaning that inspired the title Le regard droit. The piece itself is characterised by a sense of flaying around while at the same time maintaining this aspiration to self-respect and pride. My original idea was to create a work in a single movement，but I felt that I wanted to maintain a greater distance，leading me to revise this idea by creating two-movement work，the first movement in a fast tempo and the second in a slow tempo followed again by a fast tempo. By the time we reach the end of the piece there is not so much a sense of having arrived at a final destination point as of providing a glimpse of a sketch. I hope that performers will convey a sense of how this approach might be extended further away into the distance.