Das wassergewordene Kanonbuch (2016)
(for 6 singers)

Das wassergewordene Kanonbuch is a book of 20 canons for six voices where each canon refers to a puzzle canon from the Medieval to Renaissance periods using the poetry of Paul Celan. One can imagine Das wassergewordene Kanonbuch sung by the choir of spirits who are native to Prospero’s island in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a postlude to the chamber opera Die Geisterinsel, once Prospero’s influence has disappeared and the spirits can again discover their music. If the ciphers of the puzzle canons require specific solutions, Celan’s poetry accomplishes the opposite by opening this book of canons to some other reality, one in which the numbers, proportions and relations of symmetry that are carefully woven into the music blend together with noise and materials that resist lyrical formation which cannot be easily grasped.