Soliloquy

Soliloquy (2024) is a work for narrator and six voices.

This piece received the Second Prize of the Jury, the Audience Award, and the Carus-Verlag Award at the 2024 Nocturne Composition Competition, organized by the German Choir Association.

The piece is based on the short story The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, which tells the story of a murder from the first-person perspective – from planning to execution. In the plot, the protagonist is possessed by the eye of an old man. As the protagonist lives under the same roof as the old man, he decides to visit him every night at midnight without the old man noticing. As soon as he catches him with his eyes open, he would kill him. My composition uses contrasting aesthetics and techniques to emphasize the psychotic state of the protagonist. The accompanying vocal sextet thus becomes a kind of extension of the thoughts and feelings of the first-person narrator, who experiences both moments of fear and sarcastic amusement during his discourse in a nocturnal and eerie environment.

The narrator is asked to use his acting skills and artistic freedom to construct a convincing character along a score that presents him with equal challenges in terms of rhythmic precision, Sprechgesang and singing.

The story takes place entirely at night and is characterized by moments of digression of the protagonist's perverse thoughts, contemplation, and, above all, darkness. It is precisely this association between darkness and fear – so characteristic of the human psyche – that runs like a red thread through the work. In the popular imagination, the night is usually the backdrop for the most macabre crimes – as is the case here.

The work lasts around 15 minutes and is structured in three parts or movements, which develop up to the execution of the crime. The first part, "Thoughts", contains the psychotic thoughts of the protagonist. The second part, "Voices", takes place in the old man's room, surrounded by absolute darkness, in which whispers and voices can be heard that accompany the euphoric feeling of the murderer, who is ready to commit the crime. The third movement, "Actions", is the denouement, in which the beating of the old man's heart is omnipresent – until the moment it stops beating.

Soliloquy offers musicians an interesting chamber music work and places the value of the theatrical element in the concert context. Its content, based on an iconic text from gothic fiction, takes us on a dark and macabre journey, but also invites us to reflect on the psychological fragility of human beings and the consequences that can result when mental balance is lost.

Performed by Voktett Hannover.

Narrator: Sebastian Knappe.

Recorded live on September 28, 2024 in Hannover.