David Sampson

Breathing Lessons

Breathing Lessons for saxophone quartet is a seven-movement composition lasting about twenty minutes, written in the spring of 2002. The work was written for the Amherst Saxophone Quartet and made possible through the Commissioning Program of Chamber Music America, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and the Chamber Music America Commissioning Endowment Fund. The inspiration for "Breathing Lessons" comes from the novel of the same name by Anne Tyler. Written in 1988 and published by Alfred A. Knopf, the book had been one of my favorite works for many years. When I was asked to compose a work for the Amherst Saxophone Quartet, it seemed only natural to me to create musical scenes and interludes based on a book I admired so much. "Breathing Lessons" begins with a scene, followed by an interlude, and then alternates continuously between these two forms. The scenes are extroverted depictions of events from the book, while the interludes are introverted reflections on memorable quotes. For me, this reflected the power of the novel—its sparkling energy on the surface and the underlying sad darkness. The musical result is a seven-movement journey through a wide variety of timbres and playing techniques on the saxophone, written to highlight the extraordinary technical and, above all, expressive qualities of the Amherst Saxophone Quartet.