To Speak As One

ensemble saxophone quartet
written spring 2023
duration 9-10 minutes

for ~nois

The more people I’ve spoken with, the more I have come to cherish moments of shared understanding. For me, language often feels rather insufficient as a means of expressing thought - like trying to portray a three dimensional image on a flat surface. Understanding someone’s words is a delicate process of reconstructing the ineffable depth and interiority of their thoughts, and quite frequently, much is lost in translation.

These ideas provided the seed for To Speak As One. To me, the saxophone quartet as an ensemble naturally contends with such questions of mutual understanding and communication. It is conversational in scale; its instruments share much in common both registrally and timbrally; virtually any technique that can be done on one can be done on any other. The result is an ensemble that very easily behaves as a hyperinstrument, able to blend and move with uncommon unity.

Over the course of the piece, I sought to shift throughout between treating the quartet as a singular entity versus four unique players. The resulting work scatters its lines across the group, assigning disparate notes and rhythms to each musician as they discover the composite together. Players enter and peel off constantly, and even in moments of stasis, there is an element of confusion - it’s not always clear which instrument is playing which sounds. Even with all its raucous effects and lurching instability, though, To Speak As One is intended to be an intimate piece, ultimately focusing on how a small ensemble - with all their cuing, breathing, and eye contact - can discover ways to nonverbally find shared understanding with one another.

This piece was begun while in residence at Copland House, Cortlandt Manor, New York, as a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award.

Available for purchase from Murphy Music Press.