Music for toy instruments and electronics by Karlheinz Essl, performed by Isabel Ettenauer. 10th Anniversary Extended Release (col legno 2023)
https://www.essl.at/records/whatever.html

Whatever Shall Be

Sequitur XIV was written for the Hamburg-based pianist and performer Jennifer Hymer and sets the thumb piano in focus. This instrument, named ‘Mbira’ in Africa, was discovered in the middle of the 20th Century from the British ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey, who developed out of it a standardized western instrument named ‘kalimba’, and let it be produced industrially. In contrast to the African original, this western new construction is tuned diatonically.

First I tried to approach the instrument like a child in that I pushed away all knowledge about the high art of Mbira-practice to the side. What did I see before me? A trapezoidal shaped wooden box with metal blades of differing lengths that were fastened over a sound hole in the middle. After I examined the sound possibilities of the kalimba’s body through rubbing, scratching and knocking, I attached a contact microphone to its surface and sent the sounds through the same computer program that I had developed for the other “Sequitur” compositions. Suddenly everything became enchanted: the canonic layering of my knocking and scraping noises compressed themselves into a polyrhythmic layering and I felt myself being transported to the south of Africa where the African musicians play this instrument in ensemble and thereby produce a highly complex polyphony which the Viennese musicologist Gerhard Kubik described as “inherent patterns.”

Only later I dedicated myself to the metal tines and through the help of live electronic manipulation found means and ways to dig out an ongoing diatonic. After many months of free experimenting, I was finally able to write a concisely written score for Jennifer Hymer, which turned my summing-ups of this instrument into a sound journey.

https://www.essl.at/works/sequitur/sequitur-14.html

Sequitur XIV

Info

Sequitur XIV (2009) for kalimba and live-electronics

On September 15, 1945, Anton Webern was shot by an American occupation soldier in alleged self-defense in Mittersill, where he had taken refuge from the approaching Red Army. Thus ended the life of one of the most influential composers of the modern era in an inconceivable and tragic way.

60 years later - on September 15, 2005 - two commemorative events for Anton Webern will take place within the framework of the 10th Composers' Forum Mittersill: for an event in public space, Karlheinz Essl has created the algorithmic sound installation WebernUhrWerk for computer-controlled Carillon. For the subsequent commemorative concert in St. Anna's Church, he wrote WebernSpielWerk for Toy Piano, which is a kind of projection of the Carillon music onto a toy piano. The pervasive character of the carillon, which filled the whole place in the afternoon, is reduced to the "poor" sound world of a toy piano, whose sound produced by struck metal rods resembles that of a bell - but is much more restrained and intimate.

This composition was written in the last days of August 2005 and is dedicated to Isabel Ettenauer, who premiered this work on September 15, 2005. It consists of four movements:

I. espressivo – mit einem gewissen sprechenden Ausdruck
II. molto rubato
III. Gemessenen Schritts (wie Totenglocken)
IV. sehr frei – molto intenso

https://www.essl.at/works/webernspielwerk.html

WebernSpielWerk

WebernSpielWerk (2005) for toy piano and ringmodulator

Concert version of Pandora’s Secret, a sound performance that Karlheinz wrote for Isabel Ettenauer's "Circus Lebasi", a music circus for the festival Linz09, when Linz was the European capital of culture. Scored for punch-tape-controlled music box and live electronics.
https://www.essl.at/works/pandoras-secret.html

Pandora's Revelation

Pandora's Revelation (2009) for music box and live-electronics

Palindromic-canonic variations of the most famous Christmas carol "Silent Night"; the score was punched into a tape that could be played in different directions on a mechanical musical clock. It has been adapted for toy piano and organ. It contains four parts, the titles of which are anagrams of the name "Silent Night":

Tingle Hints - inversion
Shingle Tint - retrograde
Lent in Sight - inversion of retrograde
Silent Night - prime form

https://www.essl.at/works/listen-thing.html

Listen Thing

Listen Thing (2008) for toy piano

In this piece, Essl uses the inside of the toy piano for the first time. A contact microphone is attached to the instrument and connected to a custom-made computer program which acts as a kind of sonic ‘particle accelerator’. During their voyage through the piece, the performer not only scratches and knocks on the sound board, but also has to stamp their feet (the source of the rhythm is later revealed) and make use of some special gadgets. A spinning top is played on the soundboard, and a thimble produces beautiful glissandos on the metal rods of the toy piano. At certain moments notes are also played on the keys in a conventional manner, but even these sounds burst into explosive glissandos. At the very end, a small music box enters the scene. Mounted on the soundboard, this little instrument plays the melody of the well known song, ‘Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will be, Will be)’, from the Hitchcock movie "The Man Who Knew Too Much". The magic of this piece probably also has to do with the fact that everything that is heard before the entry of this beautiful melody – all rhythmic cells, melodic motives, even the harmonic structures – are in fact derived from this very melody.
https://essl.at/works/whatever.html

whatever shall be

Whatever Shall Be (2010) for toy piano and live-electronics

Since 2005 I have written a number of solo compositions for the toy piano, some of them together with (live) electronics. In my piece "under wood" I am confronting the toy piano with conventional instruments for the first time. It is used as an exceptional solo instrument but also as some sort of exotic percussion. For this purpose I deconstructed one of the two instruments and prepared it in order to produce a variety of interesting percussive sounds. Finally, both instruments are amplified - not only to make them louder, but also to enable the player for creating delicate noises inside the instrument.

The title "under wood" refers to a mechanical typewriter of the same name with its characteristic hammering sound. Besides, it can also be interpreted as the attempt to look behind the surfaces and to investigate the fascinating complexity that one discovers in the woods by changing the viewing perspective from the trees down to the earth: an almost impenetrable cosmos of independent, yet secretly connected gestures and movements of little creatures which one cannot see but only hear.

https://www.essl.at/works/underwood.html

under wood

under wood (2012) for toy piano and ensemble

This composition is a transformation of the original piano piece "Trois Cent Notes", in which the resonances of the sympathetic strings of the grand piano are simulated by electronic means. The toy piano becomes a new instrument with an artificial sustain pedal.
https://www.essl.at/works/TCD.html

Trois Cent Drones

Trois Cent Drones (2021) for toy piano and live-electronics

Karlheinz Essl's first piece for toy piano, composed 2005 for Isabel Ettenauer, became a signature piece for this instrument.

The primary aim of this piece is an attempt to break up the restricted sound world of the toy piano - not by superficial means of additional sound processing, but by the sound of the instrument itself. This is achieved by a sound file which is played back by a small loudspeaker which is hidden inside the toy piano; this creates a perfect blend between the sounds of the instrument and the sounds from the loudspeaker. 

Info and score: http://www.essl.at/works/kalimba.html

Whatever Shall be

Kalimba

Kalimba (2005) - for toy piano and playback

Recorded by Isabel Ettenauer for the CD "whatever shall be - music for toy instruments and electronics" (edition eirelav, 2013)

Having written several pieces for the toy piano before, I dedicated Sequitur V to this interesting instrument which — in fact — has not much in common with the piano as we know it. Its sound resembles chimes or maybe parts of a gamelan orchestra and therefore is not connected to the great history of classical piano music from Bach to Stockhausen; a fact that makes this instrument more accessible for me. Although the toy piano is tiny in every respect, the sound that it produces in Sequitur V becomes incredibly rich thanks to amplification and realtime sound processing.

Info: http://www.essl.at/works/sequitur/sequitur-5.html

Sequitur V

Sequitur V (2005) - for toy piano and live-electronics

Born 1960 in Vienna. Austrian composer, improviser and performer. He studied composition with Friedrich Cerha and musicology in Vienna. Besides writing experimental instrumental music, he performs on his own electronic instrument m@ze°2, develops software environments for computer-aided composition and creates generative sound and video environments. Since 2007 professor of composition for electro-acoustic and experimental music at the University of Music in Vienna.

Karlheinz Essl performs on a laptop computer that he has transformed into a live electronic musical instrument. The result is exciting and musical. You just won't hear these sounds anywhere else. He performs solo and in duets and trios, responding with sensitivity to fellow musicians, producing fascinating sound transformations, creating spontaneous surprises, and moving quickly from loops to cacophony to tiny clips of vocal sounds to all kinds of textures and ideas. He does all this with his m@ze°2(Modular Algorithmic Zound Environment) performance software. (Joel Chadabe, CDeMusic, Januar 2002)
