Recitation Book - David Maslanka
Commissioned by the Masato Kumoi Saxophone Quartet of Tokyo, Recitation Book is one of David Maslanka’s most intimate and spiritually charged chamber works. The title recalls a collection of lessons or readings, and Maslanka conceived the piece as a sequence of five “songs” that feel like a modern madrigal cycle. Each movement draws from pre-existing sacred or vocal traditions—chorales, chant, and madrigals—that Maslanka reimagines through the warm, singing quality of the saxophone quartet.
Maslanka described the movements as circling “around the theme of death,” not in despair, but as a recognition of endings that give rise to new beginnings. He quoted two complete historical works within the cycle: Johann Sebastian Bach’s four-part chorale Jesu, meine Freude and Carlo Gesualdo’s madrigal Ecco, morirò dunque. Other movements meditate on Lutheran chorales such as Der du bist drei in Einigkeit and Durch Adams Fall, as well as the Eucharistic chant O salutaris hostia. These sources, bound together by Maslanka’s harmonic sensitivity and contemplative pacing, transform the quartet into a book of lessons read aloud—an unfolding meditation on mortality, memory, and renewal.
The five movements progress from inward prayer to a radiant finale:
Broken Heart (meditation on Der du bist drei in Einigkeit) – a fragile hymn of mourning and consolation.
Prelude or Chorale (meditation on Jesu, meine Freude) – Bach’s setting voiced plainly and reverently, as if intoned by a choir.
Ecco, morirò dunque (Gesualdo) – a searing madrigal of mortality, presented in its raw Renaissance chromaticism.
Meditation on O salutaris hostia – a timeless, chant-infused reflection invoking calm and surrender.
Fanfare/Variations on Durch Adams Fall – a culminating set of variations, simultaneously ritual and celebratory, closing the cycle in affirmation.
At roughly twenty minutes in duration, Recitation Book occupies a singular place in Maslanka’s output for saxophone quartet, alongside Mountain Roads and Songs for the Coming Day. As in his symphonies and concerti, Maslanka here treats the Bach chorales not as relics but as living springs of musical and spiritual imagination. The result is a piece that feels both ancient and immediate, a communal recitation in which the voices of past and present converge.
(Program note written by Don-Paul Kahl, based on texts by David Maslanka)