Three Frescos, for Alto Saxophone

Duration: 13:00
Completed: 2003
Instrumentation: Alto Saxophone
Dedication: for Mark Egge and William Rice

Program Notes

Frescos are created by painting on and in wet plaster. The great epoch of Fresco creation was the Renaissance, which coincided with the end of the Black Death ravaging Europe. Certain cities were wiped out and others were seemingly untouched, and the threat of death was constantly around. The character of Three Frescos is a reaction to death. They approach death in the way that one regards a Fresco: It is an object or an image that we contemplate. Our emotional state is seldom so focused that it could be truthfully described in a broad stroke like ‘sad.’ More often we are simultaneously several different things. For example, we might be victorious and haughty but slightly melancholy. Likewise, the characters of this work are reacting to death in different ways and from different perspectives, but always equivocally.

The Danse Macabre lies at the emotional heart of the piece. It is a meditation on the experience of dying, which arose from reflecting upon the Renaissance danse macabre frescos and from accounts of various deaths that I know. In the danse macabre, we see figures of all walks of life (children, masons, physicians, emperors, popes) being led away by a merry corpse to a dance. It reflected the sentiment that death is inexorable, unexpected, and catches us at any time, unawares.

This piece originally appeared in a longer version as Suite for Alto Saxophone. This version is still performable, but the composer prefers the shortened version, Three Frescos