In memory of Ryan Muncy.

Live, St Pauls Hall, University of Huddersfield, 3/11/13.

"Largo calligrafico / 'patientiam'" is a perforated gloss of an absent center.  Ludwig Senfl’s haunting sixteenth-century tenorlied “Patientiam muss ich han” contributes background pitch structures, proportional matrices, formal guidelines, and large-scale gestural shapes, but the fluttering, intermittent, unstably more or less repetitive ornamental marginalia, forced through an instrument not given to fluttering, form a drifting supplement to all of that.  It is not terribly clear, and it is an open question whether it would remind us of the song if it were there.

Largo calligrafico / "patientiam" (2012) for baritone saxophone

for saxophone quartet
Recorded and premiered by the ~Nois Saxophone Quartet in Chicago Il, November 2021.

Murmurs of Motion - for SSAA saxophone quartet

with Kathryn Goodson, piano
Recorded live, April 6th, 2014 in The University of Michigan's Britton Recital Hall

Program Note:

The initial inspiration for Dreams in the Dusk came while walking on my father-in-law’s farm on a cold, snowy evening. Situated in rural Michigan, miles from the nearest city and on the flattest and land I have ever seen, I came the closest I have ever come to feeling real silence. The silence, stillness, and peace that I found in the fleeting moments of daylight while walking in the crisp, fresh snow was one of the ways that I dealt with the passing of my sister-in-law, Julia Hope Voelker, a mere 23 years old, who lost her battle with cancer in January of 2013. Those walks at dusk became a kind of ritual for me during the last few weeks of her life, as our family had gathered together to be with her as she lived out her final days in her childhood home. Searching for a voice for the many emotions I was feeling, I turned to one of my favorite poems, “Dreams in the Dusk” by the American poet Carl Sandburg. For me, this poem captured the essence of that sacred time at the waning of the day in a way that was beautiful and profound.

Dreams in the Dusk

By Carl Sandburg

Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day’s close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day’s loss
Wrote in tears the heart’s loss.

Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.

 Sandburg, Carl. Chicago Poems. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916, 1999.

There are two primary musical gestures that most often occupy the musical foreground of the piece, including a moaning, groaning, or wailing, which is usually manifest in the form of long, slow portamenti between notes in various melodic structures, and sharp, quick crescendi, which are usually orchestrated into either spacious chords or tight harmonic clusters. The melodic groans are a kind of musical mourning, analogues of sung or spoken lamentations. The quick crescendi are used in a variety of contexts in Dreams in the Dusk, but, for me, they represent the musical icon of reverse tape playback effects, which are nearly ubiquitous in popular and electronic music. More important than a genre or technique reference, they take on a specific personal significance within the context of this piece, signifying a desire to turn back time, to start again, to change the diagnosis, to return to a time when all was well.



David Biedenbender's Dreams In The Dusk

Ficken-3000

Live 2015: Kalevi Aho - Quartet for flute, saxophone, guitar & percussion

Exhibition

A music mobile for four saxophones, performed by Ensemble 4saxess during the IGNM Musikfest 2007 at Konzerthaus Vienna. 

Info: http://www.essl.at/works/7x7/7x7-saxophones.html

Info

7x7 fo(u)r saxophones (2006)

Roger Zare - Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano (2015)
I. Drought
II. Petrichor
III. Deluge
Scotty Phillips, saxophone; Lawrence Quinnett, piano
Recorded Live May 2016

This sonata was commissioned by saxophonist Scotty Phillips and premiered at the 2016 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference in Lubbock, Texas. 

While growing up in Florida, I have many memories related to rain, from dodging downpours at theme parks to enduring the lashing from a tropical storm. Rain is, of course, absolutely vital to our survival, and we are extremely sensitive to any changes in the rain pattern. Extended droughts strain our resources, but the excessive rain that often follows is even more damaging, causing floods, landslides, and sinkholes. This composition captures three facets of the rain cycle. The first movement is about the restlessness and aggravation of drought. The rhythms are constantly shifting and asymmetrical, with the saxophone frequently angrily jumping between registers. The piano never uses the damper pedal, so the soundscape is devoid of the comfort of sustaining resonance. Occasionally, the rhythm settles down into a steady beat, imitating a Native American rain dance and offering a glimmer of hope as a respite from the restlessness. But in the end, it is the rain dance that frantically and desperately accelerates out of control to close the movement. 

Many times, as the dry winter gave way to the wet spring, I remember the refreshing smell that would emanate from the ground as the first raindrops began to fall. This scent is called "petrichor," and offered relief from the preceding dryness. Every time I smell this today, I feel a bit nostalgic for those days in my youth. Finally allowing the use of the damper pedal, I evoke this nostalgia as well as comforting relief as the drought is now over. The disjointed and panicked cries of the first movement are replaced with lyrical and delicate melodies; the biting dissonance is replaced with diatonic harmonies. The discovery of the damper pedal allows for a glorious swelling of sound that leads to the climax of the movement, but a cadenza by the saxophone returns to the poignancy of the opening bars. 

The third movement, deluge, returns to materials from the first movement, leading off with the forceful piano gesture that opened the sonata. Instead of the clarity and desolation of the first movement, there is an almost constant flow of running notes, and the sonic density increases steadily as the movement progresses. The saxophone alludes to a flowing melody from the second movement, but it is inundated with descending arpeggios in the piano. A scherzando section references some of the rhythmic shifting of the first movement, and it leads to another barrage of arpeggios and running notes. The rain dance returns, but this time it is submerged, with the incessant damper pedal rarely letting the music come up to breathe as it gets more and more restless and panicked. Excess is often not the solution to the problem of absence. One final return to the lyrical melody is little relief, as it drowns in a flash flood of tone clusters and glissandos.

Roger Zare - Sonata For Alto Saxophone And Piano - I. Drought

"Sonata for Saxophone and Piano" by Will Healy, performed by Connor James Mikula, alto saxophone, and Will Healy, piano. Commissioned by Novus New Music and Connor James Mikula, recorded and produced by Adam Abeshouse. 

I. Overture (0:00)
II. Sarabande (5:55)
III. Toccata (11:30)

This score is available for purchase at http://willhealymusic.com/merch/sonata-for-alto-saxophone-and-piano

Much of this piece was written at the Brush Creek Foundation, Saratoga Wyoming, October 2017.

David Biedenbender's Dreams In The Dusk

Jonathan Hulting-Cohen