Jonathan Newman

The lyrical, silky, “French” sound of the saxophone quartet is nowhere to be found in this work. Instead, I needed to hear the quartet as one loud single instrument, much like banging one’s fist on a hypothetical saxophone stop on an organ. The starting point for the piece was a painting by Edvard Munch titled “Self-portrait in Hell”, and in the spirit of that (terrifying) work, the music is often anxious, incessant, and shifty—and occasionally obnoxious: elements of a Lullaby well-suited to the painting … one hopes Munch finds solace in it.

(to the 2006 published edition)

• m.176, tempo is Meno Mosso.