Matthew C. Saunders--Chamber & Solo Music--www.martiandances.com

Solo & Chamber Compositions

This section contains some of my very favorite compositions, but also some that I wish I had never even attempted! I leave it to the reader to decide which is which. I adore the act of composing for a small ensemble, and love interesting combinations, as you will find below. I have yet to attempt many of the classic combinations—you will find no wind quintet and no brass quintet, but I hope those are on the way some day soon. Many of these pieces were written on a very personal level, either on commission or by the suggestion of friends, or with friends in mind… as it should be.

Twenty Views of the Trombone for unaccompanied trombone (in progress)

Movements premiered as they are complete, given opportunities

A composer should play his own music, and the positive reception for my pieces Let Everything That Has Breath Praise the Lord and What It’s Like have inspired me to keep writing for trombone. This piece will eventually be a similar piece to Messiaen’s Vignt Regards Sur L’Enfant Jesus, but also a meditation on the theme of What It’s Like, which will be the opening movement. Subsequent movements will include, “What It’s Not Like,” “What It’s Really Like,” “What She Thinks It’s Like.”

If Only It’d Rain for clarinet, percussion and piano (6 minutes)

Commissioned by Sara Jane Richter

Anticipated premiere Spring 2010, Guymon, Oklahoma

This piece, in three short movements, is incidental music for Sara’s play of the same title about Black Sunday, the day in April 1935 that saw the worst storms of the Dust Bowl. As the play is in two scenes, the music consists of a prelude, interlude and postlude. The percussion part inclues vibraphone, rainsticks and tam-tam. I have long wanted to write incidental music, and I’m very pleased with my first foray in this direction.

Passacaglia for Flute and Cello (3 minutes)

Winner, 2009 New Music Hartford 60/60 Composition Contest

Premiered August 2009 by New Music Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut

It was a visceral thrill to sit down at the computer, log in to see the available instrumentation, begin writing and submit a finished piece by email an hour later. It was even more of a thrill when the piece was chosen as a winner! Thanks to Ashley Addington and Rachel Arnold for a fantastic premiere! I chose the form of the passacaglia because its continuous variation format allowed me to wrap it up easily when it was time to be finished. My inspiration for the piece derives from my long-standing interest in continous variations (especially Bach’s C-minor Passacaglia) and Elliott Carter’s Enchanted Preludes for the same ensemble.

Piano Trio (10 minutes)

Commissioned by Orieta Dado

Anticipated premiere Summer 2010

Orieta and I went to school together at Cincinnati, where we did not know each other well, but have reconnected via the Internet. This commission fills a long-held desire to write for piano trio. Work is coming along well, and I hope that I will be able to complete the piece soon!

What It’s Like for solo trombone (1 minute)

Premiered February 2009 by Matthew Saunders, Goodwell, Oklahoma

Anticipated performance March 2009 by Matthew Saunders, New York, New York

The first composition assignment that most of my students receive when they begin studying with me is to write a one-minute piece for their major instrument with the goal of explaining to the audience what it feels like to play (or sing) that instrument. We investigate models such as Varese’s Density 21.5 for flute, “Abime des Oiseaux” from Messian’s Quatour pour le fin du temps for clarinet, and Bernstein’s Elegy for Mippy II for trombone. I realized recently that I needed a more specific model for the completed assignment, because most of the pieces by master composers are significantly longer than a minute. The result was What It’s Like.

Starry Wanderers for solo piano (17 minutes)

Premiered November 2009 by Dianna Anderson, Minot State University

This cycle is now complete! I wrote this cycle for solo piano for the winners of the contest celebrating the launch of www.martiandances.com. Each winner is the dedicatee of a piece, and each piece is a reflection on one of the planets. Even though Pluto is no longer considered a planet by science, it remains part of popular culture. The tenth piece is devoted to Earth’s Moon, which was once perceived as a planet. Rather than focus on each planet’s astrological character, I have based my music on the scientific and social conceptions that seem most prevalent in American society. In case you were wondering, I find astrology to be offensive to both my spiritual and intellectual sides. The premiere performance, which I was unable to attend, went very well, and Dianna has decided to keep the pieces in her repertory.

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Resonating Quicksilver—for Evan Dye

Venus—for Felix Wetzel

Earthly Hope—for Sophia Saunders

We Were There—for Donald Harris

Martian Meditation—for Lupita Sanchez

Jupiter—for J.P. Thompson

Rings—for Michele Diehl

No Names, Please—for Sylvia Smith

Neptune—for Jan Radzynski

Stillness at the Edge—for Daniel Perttu

South Africa for horn and marimba (10 minutes)

Commissioned by Nancy Joy

Premiered June 2009 by faculty of New Mexico State University Music Department at the 41^st International Horn Symposium

Anticipated performance Spring 2010, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Nancy Joy and I met on New Year’s Eve 2007 on a plane from Columbus to Albuquerque when my wife noticed Nancy’s horn case and struck up a conversation. She and my father have the same alma mater, Wittenberg University, which may seem a casual connection, except that in October 1986, when I had been playing trombone for about six weeks, my parents took me to a recital there by the Empire Brass, in beautiful Weaver Chapel. I may have been marginally interested in my piano lessons, but that concert lit a fire in me that has never gone out—that passion for music that has brought me to where I am today. At any rate, on the airplane, Nancy and I traded ipods, and I got to hear her gorgeous sound, while she heard something in my trombone concerto that she liked, and we agreed to be in touch. The result has been this commission, inspired by the music of South Africa. The premiere at the International Horn Symposium was a fantastic experience, and I met a lot of interesting people during the time I spent in Macomb, including having the chance to speak with one of my idols, David Amram. What a great life I live sometimes!

El Piano de Genoveva for mariachi and electric guitar (5 minutes)

Poem by Ramón Lopez Velarde

Premiered September 2008 by Mariachi OPSU

This is a piece that I wrote with my students in mind. When I came to Oklahoma Panhandle State University, I knew very little about the tradition of mariachi, other than clichéd tunes such as La Raspa and Cielito Lindo. In a year of directing the fantastic musicians in Mariachi OPSU, I learned a great deal, including much about what it means to really love a type of music. This piece, then, is for them.

Quintamorous Fantasy for oboe, trumpet and piano (7 minutes)

Commissioned by Carly Johnson

Anticipated premiere Spring 2009 by faculty of Alabama State University Music Department

This new piece, my latest for what I consider to be a slightly odd combination, was commissioned by Dr. Carly Johnson, the trumpet professor at Alabama State University for a recital program of just this combination. Carly plays wonderful Baroque trumpet, so I knew that she would fulfill her role well. “Quintamorous” is, I believe, a neologism meaning “five-loving,” another expression of my belief that division of time into fives will turn out to be the favorite rhythm of the 21^st century. I have placed fives both rhythmically and metrically throughout the composition. Ironically, another piece of mine involving trumpet also has this sort of mathematical basis—Sevens (see below).

Sonatina Series (2003-present)

Sonatina for Alto Saxophone and Piano (forthcoming)

Sonatina for Oboe and Piano (10 minutes)

Anticipated premiere 2010

Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano (7 minutes)

Premiered May 2007 by Alisha Miller and Young-jin Jeon, Columbus, Ohio

Performed April 2008 by Patricia Card and Elizabeth Goodenough, Society of Composers Region VI Conference, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

Sonatina for Flute and Piano (10 minutes)

Premiered November 2005 by Katria Kuzmowycz and Lukas Swidzinski, Columbus, Ohio

Sonatina for Bassoon and Piano (7 minutes)

Premiered October 2003 by Oleksiy Zakharov and Andrew Bertoni, Oberlin, Ohio

In 2003, when I was building a portfolio of pieces for submission to potential graduate schools, I wanted to compose a piece for solo instrument with piano, and somehow hit on the idea of a sonatina for bassoon. Little did I know that this piece, modeled on the Sonatina for Trombone and Piano by Kazimierz Serocki, would lead to a series of pieces that look to last through most of this decade. The bassoon sonatina was intended to be a lightweight piece that would demonstrate my command of motivic development in the first movement and my ability to construct meaningful melody in the second movement. I rounded it off with a transcription of a movement I had written a few years earlier for bass clarinet and piano, called Toccata (see below).

Two years later, I began writing a piece for Katria Kuzmowycz, a flutist who has the distinction of being the first person I ever heard practicing my music! During the time we were preparing for the premiere of Martian Dances, I walked by a practice room at Ohio State and heard my music coming out. If Kat and I were both not morning practice people, the series may not have been continued. As I wrote the piece, showing drafts to my teacher, Donald Harris, he pointed out that the scope didn’t seem quite large enough to be a sonata, as I had been calling it. It became, then, my second sonatina, and what had been a single piece became a series of pieces.

A further two years, and I found myself at work on my DMA document, a study of Donald McGinnis’ Symphony for Band. In the midst of interviews with the composer (a highlight of my graduate studies), I realized that a creative response was needed in addition to my analysis and errata sheet. Dr. McGinnis himself provided the inspiration, suggesting to me at lunch one day that the hymn-tune “Picardy” had been unjustly neglected over the years (the most common lyric to this tune begins “Let all mortal flesh keep silence”). Using the hymn-tune and 12-tone rows from McGinnis’ symphony, I created the response to this wonderful and astonishing man that I needed to complement my work.

The oboe sonatina is the rare piece that I have composed without a commission and without a specific performer in mind. By the time I began teaching at Oklahoma Panhandle State University, the series of sonatinas was in full swing, and I had talked about it to many people. With time to compose but no immediate commissions at hand, I determined to keep busy by pushing ahead. Since then, some possible performers have appeared, but no firm commitments, and I am submitting the piece to contests.

The cycle as I originally envisioned it will be complete with the saxophone sonatina, but I have decided to wait at least until 2009 to begin work on this piece. I had originally hoped to have it complete for my father’s 60^th birthday in 2008, but reconsidered this choice because it seemed more fitting to spread the pieces out a little bit more. I would one day like to present them all on the same program. It is also possible that I will expand the series to other instrumental families, but I haven’t decided to do so yet. I will most likely depend on my encountering the right musicians.

Listen to a sample of the Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano—the transition from first to second movement

Listen to a sample of the Sonatina for Flute and Piano—from the second movement

Listen to a sample of the Sonatina for Bassoon and Piano—the complete second movement

Piece for Flute and Harp (6 minutes)

Anticipated premiere 2009

This is also a piece that I wrote in the fall of 2007 when I had lots of time and no pending commissions. While I am glad that situation has changed, it is also nice to just write a piece sometimes. Again, I have been shopping the piece around for a premiere.

Pastorale for Flute, English Horn and Trombone (5 minutes)

Premiered April 2007 by Suzanne Shonkwiler, Emily Sheets and Joel Shonkwiler, Columbus, Ohio

Here is a piece that just didn’t make the cut. Literally. I composed it specifically for a competition, but it did not advance to the finalist phase. I did, however, get to write a piece for Joel and Suzanne Shonkwiler, two of the most in-love people I have ever seen. I suppose the key to two people being in love is that each feels that he or she is lucky to have found the other. I hope people say that about Becky and I. At any rate, the piece just couldn’t compete with what I freely admit were better pieces—especially David Nelson Tomasacci’s powerful piece about the Trail of Tears, which was the eventual winner.

Three Bookish Bagatelles for string quartet (9 minutes)

Commissioned by Matthew Specter

Premiered November 2006 by the Superstar Quartet, Columbus, Ohio

In repertory Summer 2009, Lake String Quartet, Yellowstone, Wyoming

Matthew Specter is an old dear friend, and the father of four beautiful children. When this piece was written, only the first two, Faith and Marisol had joined us. Matt asked for some music based on children’s books, and suggested three of the girls’ favorites: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon and Some Dogs Do by Jez Alborough. Each piece translates the story into music, in a Ravel- or Debussy-like style that is not particularly characteristic of my writing, but for children, it is perfect.

Listen to the second movement.

Sevens for four trumpets (4 minutes)

Premiered November 2006, Erika Svanoe, conducting, Columbus, Ohio

Performed February 2007, Ohio State University Contemporary Music Festival, Erika Svanoe, conducting, Columbus, Ohio

Winner, 2007 Ruth Friscoe Prize for Composition

Performed March 2009, University of Central Missouri New Music Festival, Faculty Trumpet Ensemble, Warrensburg, Missouri

This is another of my more experimental pieces, and I’m not sure what led me to it. I have long been intrigued with rhythmic patterns involving fives and sevens, and this fanfare incorporates every method I could think of to bring the number seven into play, including the natural seventh partial of the harmonic series, a pitch that is somewhere “between the cracks” on the piano. Only a brass instrument could play this note effectively, and when trumpeter Mark Wade asked for a piece for his trumpet quartet, this is what he received. At the first performance, all four trumpet players stood on stage, but at subsequent performances, they were placed antiphonally in a darkened hall to great effect.

Listen to a sample.—From the middle of the piece

Pas de Deux for alto flute, soprano saxophone and bassoon (5 minutes)

Premiered January 2006 by Laura Nieman, Steven Alguire and Emily Patronik, Columbus, Ohio

Runner-up, 2006 Johnstone Composition Competition

The 2006 Johnstone Composition Competition specified chamber works including bassoon, and I jumped on the opportunity to compose for a “nonstandard” grouping. The performers did a fantastic job and really brought the piece to life. Emily Patronik was a great help with the bassoon multiphonics, and Laura Nieman made the alto flute into the sensual instrument it truly is. I was once asked to do a version with English horn instead of soprano saxophone, but I can’t separate myself from Steve Alguire’s work here.

Listen to a sample.—From the beginning of the piece

It Is Enough for four clarinets and eight trombones (8 minutes)

Premiered May 2006, Brian Sze, conducting, Columbus, Ohio

During my graduate studies, I made a point of experimenting with compositional techniques and styles that I hadn’t tried before, and this is one of those cases where doing something completely different turned out to be a great boon. This is the first, and so far only, composition of mine to use clock time, aleatoric technique and microtonality on a large scale. The mood in the room at the premiere was fantastic—the piece really worked well. At the center is the Bach chorale Es ist genug, which some readers may recognize as the chorale quoted at length in Berg’s violin concerto. The clarinets are placed onstage, and the trombones surround the audience—quite an experience. I don’t know whether I will ever write so Lutoslawski-esque a piece again, but it won’t be because I didn’t enjoy the result. The worst part was trying to get Sibelius to deal with the “cutaway” score.

Listen to a sample.—From the beginning of the piece

Auguries of the Soul for flute and string quartet (11 minutes)

Premiered February 2006 by Katria Kuzmowycz with the Superstar Quartet, Matthew Saunders, conducting, Columbus, Ohio

Featured composition in online masterclass through the Society of Composers in March 2006, Columbus, Ohio

Performed September 2006, Port Clinton Performing Arts Festival, Port Clinton, Ohio

Runner-up, 2006 Ruth Friscoe Prize for Composition

This quintet grew out my interest of the cognitive and anthropological theories of Julian Jaynes, as stated in his book The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I don’t know that I completely buy into his staggering theory, but it is certainly something that I think about on a regular basis. At any rate, in late 2005, I wanted to work on a piece for strings while I was studying with Jan Radzynski, whose grasp of stringed instruments I can only admire, but I also wanted to write another piece for Katria Kuzmowycz, with whom I had collaborated twice before, and whose playing I was really beginning to understand well. The answer was this piece, inspired by Jaynes, but shaped by the people around me. I rapidly discovered the problems of pairing flute with string quartet, but I think I solved many of them effectively. I conducted the premiere and subsequent performances, but I think with more rehearsal time a conductor would be unnecessary.

Listen to a sample.—From the beginning of the piece

Hilliard Bestiary for oboe and bassoon (8 minutes)

Premiered May 2005 by Melanie Strock and Sean Jones, Columbus, Ohio

A piece written to fulfill a request by Melanie Strock, a spunky oboist who now teaches public school. It depicts some of our neighbors around the apartment Becky and I shared in the Columbus suburb of Hilliard—a less-than-socialized duck, a stray cat, the mascot of the high school across the street. Sadly, I no longer allow this piece out of the house.

Martian Dances for chamber ensemble (12 minutes)

Premiered February 2005, Nathan Muehl, conductor, Columbus, Ohio

Performed September 2005, Daniel Perttu, conductor, Port Clinton Performing Arts Festival, Port Clinton, Ohio

Runner-up, 2005 Ruth Friscoe Composition Competition

I arrived at graduate school in 2004 knowing that the time had arrived to write this piece. In around 1996, I read David Brin’s science-fiction novel Brightness Reef, which is set on a planet that is a galactic no-man’s land—it is the secret home to six species of intelligent life who coexist because they will otherwise attract the attention of the authorities and be forced to integrate themselves into galactic society. The book describes a musical ensemble called the “all-race sextet,” and I immediately wanted to write this music. As I composed, the piece became a septet (flute, clarinet, trombone, viola, double bass, marimba and harpsichord), and the topic morphed into an answer to the question, “what kind of music would be made on Mars after, say, a century of human settlement?” I chose instruments with distinctly uncommon sounds, but that seemed likely to be available—a flute or a clarinet might make the trip, the others could be improvised in situ from spare parts, and let the imagination go. What a release to write a piece I had been thinking about for nearly a decade! The music is in three sections—the tango-inspired Tharsis Bulge, the slow-motion Blues for a Red Planet and the frenetic No Pickles, Please. The title of the Blues is borrowed from the title of a chapter of Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos, which had a seminal effect on me when I was exposed to it at much too young of an age. I will always dream of going to Mars myself.

So why did I name my website after this piece? For starters, www.matthewsaunders.com was apparently bought up by some company hoping to sell me my own name, a speculator in the digital land rush. But the piece represents an important turning point in my compositional life—the first piece I wrote for highly skilled players instead of amateurs; the first piece I wrote after beginning graduate studies, i.e., after I turned my back on public school teaching; the first piece that I thought about for years and years before ever writing a note (although in my sketches from about 1997 is a page headed “Jijoan Dances”). Since that piece, I have endeavored to write in a consciously honest style, to no longer include a single note of music that isn’t truly mine, and it has changed the way I compose.

Listen to a sample—The end of Blues for a Red Planet and the beginning of No Pickles Please

The First Day of Our Life for brass quartet (3 minutes)

Premiered July 2004, Mansfield, Ohio

Performed June 2006, Columbus, Ohio

Arranged for concert band, August 2004

For a full description of this piece, look up the concert band version on the page about band music. This is the original version for two trumpets and two trombones that I composed for Becky’s and my wedding, July 31, 2004.

Rocky Mountain Low for solo tuba (3 minutes)

When I found out that Dale Hildebrand’s son Jeremy was going to graduate school for tuba in 2004, I wrote him this little ditty. I don’t know if he ever played it, but I showed it to tubist Michael Dicuirci, and it made him decide to commission a piece from me (see Out of Doors, under electronic music).

Sinfonietta for double woodwind quintet (10 minutes)

Premiered November 2004, Matthew Saunders, conductor, Columbus, Ohio

This piece was composed in 2002 for the Miami Valley Chamber Winds in Dayton, Ohio. They never played it, but I dusted it off during the first term I was working on my master’s degree and conducted the premiere and an additional performance. You can read about it in Catherine Gerhart’s Annotated Bibliography of Double Wind Quintet Music. I’m right after Camille Saint-Saens, which isn’t bad.

Listen to a sample of the first movement.

Kleine Stücke for solo piano (4 minutes)

Premiered November 2005 by Matthew Saunders, piano, Columbus, Ohio

Arranged for chamber ensemble, January 2002

Along with my band composition, Variations on a French Carol (see band music), these three little piano pieces are my musical souvenirs of my trip to Germany with my family in 2001. I was amazed that in Leipzig, one could go into a department store and buy a little notebook of staff paper, so I resolved to fill the notebook with little pieces inspired by my trip. I only got as far as three pieces. A few months later, I arranged one of the pieces for chamber ensemble—2 clarinets, alto sax, baritone sax, bassoon, 2 trumpets, euphonium, gong, chimes and vibraphone—this was actually the instrumentation of a very small band at a school where a friend was teaching, and perhaps sometime I’ll put the piece in front of part of the OPSU Concert Band.

Listen to the second piece.

Alphabet Pieces for clarinet and trombone (20 minutes)

Once upon a time, I knew a clarinet player very well. In 1999, I wrote a set of thirteen duets for us to play, but we never got around to playing them. Each duet had a title beginning with a consecutive letter of the alphabet, beginning with “Aubade,” “Bagatelle,” etc. A highlight of the set is the clarinet and trombone version of the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Probably not one of my brighter ideas.

Toccata for bass clarinet and piano (3 minutes)

Subsequently incorporated into Sonatina for Bassoon and Piano

This exuberant little piece, which has a Shostakovich or Bartok sort of feel to it, was intended for the same clarinet player as Alphabet Pieces, and like that piece, was never heard in its original form. Unlike that piece, it bore musical fruit (not the kind that makes you toot). In 2003, four years after I wrote it, I turned it into the last movement of my Sonatina for Bassoon and Piano (see above). When life gives you lemons…

In Their Own Languages for handbells and trombones (4 minutes)

For a few years, my father played in the handbell choir at his church, and every so often would ask my to write something. Unfortunately, I detest the sound of handbells. However, I find change-ringing to be moderately fascinating. The result was this piece, which also isn’t allowed out of the house.