About this Piece

The title for this piece comes from a 2019 oil painting by Salman Toor. It’s a tall, thin canvas, a whole-body portrait of a naked man in introspection. The painting has always struck me as unusual. Toor’s work of that time usually features characters in the midst of dynamic, domestic scenes, his distinctive protagonists (ciphers for the painter himself) finding themselves in quiet moments at crowded bars, at parties with friends, enjoying quiet reveries in the glow of a smartphone. The central character of Man with Limp Wrist, however, is a single, posed figure, standing alone against a gray wall, one arm raised with a dangling hand, his gaze averted.

Toor’s style inspires the whole set as well as the eponymous final movement. The preceding seven parts of this piece concentrate on other paintings by the artist, each describing single fleeting moods or scenes, domestic settings. And as Toor references the old masters in his composition and subject matter, so does my music navigate historical foundations, drawing upon melodies and harmonies from centuries-old hymns, breaking down and reassembling them into fragments that repeat, meditate, and unravel.

As I whittle away at these old songs to make something new, their remnants spread throughout my work in a tangled web of musical inheritance. Their rigid stanza structures collide and interfere with their new forms. In “Ghost Story,” unmoored elements of a Bach Passion hymn drift forwards calmly before taking abrupt, startled leaps. The tune in “Bar Boy” loops and drunkenly scrambles over its accompaniment, while “Family Photo” weaves its disparately sourced melodies and bass lines into a new, harmonious whole.

—William Marsey