Composed during UNCOOL Artist in Residence
Switzerland 2022
In the spring in Switzerland, I also worked on three "Spectral Waltzers 1.-3." for piano, organ or any other keyboard instrument ad lib. Because in Poschiavo, where I stayed, a few hundred years ago there were witch trials (there is even a museum for this), I also called these little waltzes "The Witch Waltzers 1.-3".
They can be played solo or in an ensemble in any number of keyboard instruments simultaneously - if they are played in an ensemble, they may not be played in rhythmic unison, but in what I refer to in the score as "individual rubato", slightly asynchronously.
When the organizer of the Creative Residence, Cornelia, who herself looked a bit like a witch, invited me to dinner at an ancient restaurant (we drank a beer called Delirium Tremens) on the first evening after arriving, she told me that she was writing a book about these trials. I immediately offered her that we could do it for them as a multimedia work, a sound object or an opera-installation. However, there was not enough time to realize the idea and get musicians so quickly.
I've worked with the waltz genre before. Two Mephistophelian waltzes appeared in the score of my composition "To the Xylophony of Obscene Over Consciousness in Agony" for a chamber ensemble from 2018.