Ibert Factoid

At dinner in St, Andrews, Scotland earlier this week, Jean-Marie Londeix related an interesting story about the Ibert - Concertino da Camera, probably the most famous saxophone concerto.

Jean-Marie Londeix used to practice and sight-read music with his sister on piano.  One day they were playing the Ibert Concertino and M. Londeix's sister mentioned that he was playing a wrong note.  He was playing an F-natural (as notated in the score of the earlier editions, mm. 2 and 4 in the excerpt above) and his sister pointed out that it should be an F-flat.  Later that week he played the piece in his lesson for Marcel Mule.  M. Mule insisted that it should be an F-natural, as in the part.  After some discussion, Mule said he'd ask the composer.  Jacques Ibert cleared up the misunderstanding and reaffirmed Londeix's sister's observation.  From then on, Marcel Mule also played the F-flat.

Daniel Deffayet and Jean-Marie Londeix collaborated on the corrections to the part that is being published today.  They fixed some inconsistencies (wrong notes) in the saxophone part, and they added Marcel Mule's articulations. The articulations as published in the earlier part were those of Sigurd Rascher.  The articulations that were originally written by Jacques Ibert were published in the original 1935 part, and are still in the orchestral score as published today.  Ibert did not call for ANY articulated scales in the entire piece.