Zane Merritt - Sonata No. 4 in D Minor for guitar, Op. 46

I had released a recording of this sonata under the title Light in the Tunnel for the Unplugfish Volume 1: Solo album (under the name Lungfish3000) prior to this edition. I always viewed this piece as my fourth guitar sonata, but for the sake of that particular album, which was for a predominately non-classical music listening audience, I wanted a less abstract title. While I prefer the bare-bones Sonata No. 4, I think my alternate title facilitates a helpful, quasi-programmatic listening of the piece. In an old-school “fast-slow-fast” formation, the piece’s first movement, while keeping true to the tenets of a classical sonata’s first movement, the first theme group is almost atmospheric, like the echoes in an empty subway tunnel. The second theme group gives way to more melodic corporeality that looks ahead to the eventual “light” in the third movement. The second movement is very lyrical but has some features that rhyme with the first movement to lend an over-arching formal clarity that exte