Japan Large Saxophone Ensemble Summit 10 Holst Mars 

It's mainly because not many standard orchestral works have saxophone parts simply because of how young the instrument is. In modern orchestral music there almost always are saxophone parts.

Considering that this comment is 4 years old you've probably already seen it, but David Bruce Composer has a great video on this topic.

yeah you cant hear shit from 11 strings with one alto in sight, let alone a single bass distinct from hundreds of saxophones

Huh? Ooh i get it violence and ykyk.

That's actually a double bass, and I believe it's there because it has a lower range than the bass saxophone does. Looking at the score, the bass part goes almost an octave below the range of the bass sax--so low, in fact, that a specially extended double bass is required to play it.

@@staratmidnight7 it’s only a fifth lower, and with contrabass saxophone, it can reach the same range as a double bass.

@@jacobbass6437 "Only a fifth" is all the difference in the world for playing a score as written, particularly when it comes to the bass notes. Further, while the contrabass sax does exist, it's fairly rare and extraordinarily expensive. While they might have been able to procure one for this group, a competent player would be very difficult to find. A double bass--and a skilled bassist--are both reasonably easy to find.

@@staratmidnight7 A good contrabass isn’t much more than professional bass sax. The bad sax I use is $27,000 and the contrabasses I’ve seen out there range $27,000-30,000. Second, if a person can play bari sax, they will find it not much trouble to play bass, and same for contrabass. They take more air, but as a dedicated and strong bari sax player, tackling bass and contrabass were not that terribly difficult. And all of this is without saying that there’s this thing call “arranging” and if your good at it, you can make due with a little off the bottom. I’ve done so many times and I’ve yet to find a person who got angry because “the baseline moved up an octave for a couple notes”. As well, you’d be hard pressed to be able to pick out the double bass among a sea of almost 200 saxophonists.

@@jacobbass6437 Certainly they exist, and certainly people play them, but still: expensive and rare. It's not unreasonable to suppose that, when the call went out for saxophonists, no contrabass or contrabassist was available. As a composer and arranger, I *wouldn't* take a little off the bottom. The root progression is of fundamental importance, and you can change the feel of an entire section by altering the bass notes. Here in particular, that low C is meant to be played by the low winds, low brass, and low strings; if you omitted it, you would notice--and I *can* hear the double bass playing that C where it's written.

Shut up

+Grudgin 1 well that's the kind of comment I would expect from a non creative moron

+Human Alien • Terence Kelly thinks I'm a dunce lol :)

"Saxophone Ensemble lacks the pure power that is needed" - no it doesn't. It sounds great.

I think he was "holding" them back. There is plenty of power and punch for this piece.