Andrew Mark Sauerwein

This is the musical component of a collaboration with choreographer Julia Myers for her Senior Dance Project at Belhaven University.  She titled her setting "Who is the Leader?" to reflect our highly interactive design process.  The whimsical result was performed on the 2025 Senior Dance Concert at BU (February 28 and March 1).

This piece, inspired by Jacob Rowan's artwork Desert, evokes the inner experience of a trek across an arid landscape in search of water.  

A meditation on an ancient melody arranged for the third Sunday of Advent at Redeemer Church in Jackson, MS.

A short meditation on death and life, after John 11:25.

A meditation on the “extraordinary time” brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This short study evokes an image from the first of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.  The violin describes a melodic palindrome centered on the "golden ratio," marked by sparse moments of resonance in the piano.

A Fanfare. A doxology, actually, both introit and benediction.

A tribute to the life and legacy of Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov.  Commissioned by Scott Eddlemon for the Oak Ridge Civic Music Society's Isotone concert series.

This short study for the BU Guitar Ensemble was originally designed as a quintet for four guitars and acoustic bass guitar.  The guitarists in the four corners of a recital room, echoing one another while the bass played a slow melody from center stage.  The ensemble was reduced to three for practical reasons and performed in four concerts at BU in Fall 2005.

Concert version of music commissioned by Bob Hubbard at Northwestern College of Iowa as incidental music for T. M. Camp's adaptation of The Odyssey.

Commissioned for the (outdoor) dedication of the Thea G. Korver Art Building at Northwestern College of Iowa, in Fall 2003.  The soprano begins and ends with a traditional Irish tune, but temporarily shifts to a more strident melody.

Arrangement of two tunes to Away In a Manger, at one point sounding together.

This is a somewhat adventurous arrangement of the tune from the hymn "Come all Christians, be committed...."

This three-movement work sports vivid contrasts, dry humor, brooding dismay, longing, hope and transformation.

This setting was commissioned by Dave Stuntz, music director at Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church.  It has found its way into worship services, weddings, college chapel services, and even a musical mission trip to Peru.

This piece begins with four themes at once, developing each in turn (more or less) and introducing an additional baroque-like theme which later returns with romantic vengeance.

This piece walks the border between sober gravity and eccentric silliness.  This is my third composition for the Debussy Trio, who read it in a UO Composition Workshop in 1994.

This piece presents the old hymn, "If thou but suffer God to guide thee," in the context of colorful, varied musical discourse, not seeking to answer a question as much as wonder about a relationship.

A whimsical etude based on an accompanimental figure from Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.  Performed twice by the UO Percussion Ensemble in the 1994-95 academic year.

A short three-movement work given to abrupt thematic contrasts and a blend of tonal and post-tonal impulses.  This piece won the 1994 University of Oregon Chamber Music Series Competition and was premiered by the Alexander String Quartet in February 1995.

An early, whimsical etude composed for a UO Composition Workshop with the Lydian String Quartet.

In this piece, instrumentalists are widely-spaced on stage to allow for dancers to move around them.  During the piece, the players individually move closer together, causing the dancers to expand their movements outward.  Margo van Ummerson provided choreography (see also For Margo).

This is my second etude composed for the Debussy Trio to read in a UO Composition Workshop.  

This piece begins with energetic dance music and ends abruptly with an awkward but stately promenade: evidently, the princess is young and pretentious. 

This piece has an arbitrary title, inspired by the character of the ponderous opening theme, which sounded (to my youthful ear) like a youth patiently dressing himself.  The music undergoes several tempo modulations as the theme varies and develops, ultimately ending as it began.  None of my friends at the time were named Jeremy.

Three movements, with allusions to a lumbering elephant, a plaintive jazz solo, and a cat-and-mouse chase.

My first composition for a reading by the Debussy Trio in a UO Composition Workshop in 1990.