After a happy accident involving a voice lesson and an extremely responsive damper pedal, I had an idea for a piece. I called it Sympathies and let it sit for a bit, and then I changed the name to Studies in Sympathy. After writing a few ideas I didn’t much like, I added a piano part and renamed it Four Sympathies for Five Instruments, which quickly changed to Four Saxophones in Search of a Resonance. This helped. I don’t know why.

After giving the piece its final shape, I changed it again, to String Theory, but it didn’t feel honest to write String Theory, as I have never been a physicist. My next try was How to Play a Piano Without Touching It, but I didn’t like that because I would, in fact, be touching the piano. Titles can be clever, but they shouldn’t be lies, at least in my eyes. But they did help me see how bland my first draft could be, so I added some more notes, and then I felt better.

The next two names weren’t serious, really: The Four Saxophonists of the Pianocolypse was one, and the other was My Piano Has Tinnitus. But the piece wasn’t sufficiently frivolous for such a moniker, so I did better and renamed it Etudes for Four Saxophones and Damper Pedal because at the end of the day, it’s true. And a title should be true. Right?

My thanks to Doğa Çavdır, Julie Herndon, Doug McCausland, and Fernando Lopez-Loscano for their invaluable advice on realizing this piece.

          - Noah R. Fram