
Andrew Mark Sauerwein
COMPOSING, TEACHING, WONDERING, EXPLORING...
Choral and Vocal Works
ABC ETA
Soprano and Piano.
My second setting of Grace Andrews' poetry. This one is a zany acrostic poem entitled "ABC" that involves a visitor from the future, a banana, and world domination. The action is presented in a recitative. The harmony features a different chord for each of the 26 lines of text, including harmony based on all 24 major and minor triads.
Line
Voice and piano.
Line is both an aphoristic commentary on Grace Andrews’s lyrics and an embodiment of the creative process her poetry brings so vividly and intimately to life. For the technically-minded, the piece draws on a preoccupation with doubly-chromatic mediants and their intersection with symmetrical scales. The expressive aim of the piece, though, is a distilled evocation of artistic concentration, persistent effort, and surprised wonder.
Sleep Songs
Soprano, piano.
Five folksong lullabies in five languages, rendered as art songs. Composed for soprano Roberta Duhs, based on her Master's research into the charming and fearful ways mothers might sing their children to sleep.
Psalm 29
Choir (SATB), fl, cl, hn, tpt, pno.
Composed in collaboration with Dave Stuntz, music director at Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church (Durham, NC). Premiered by the Blacknall choir during CFAMC's "Forging Links" conference in 2004.
Donne on Good Friday
Choir (SATB), piano.
The first (and, so far, the only) of seven settings of texts drawn from John Donne's seven-sonnet cycle of Holy Sonnets.
"...
Now thou art lifted up, draw me to thee,
And at thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soule."
