Karlheinz Essl

Portrait KHE

Listen Thing

Palindromic Christmas Canon in 4 Parts
Versions for Music Box / Toy Piano or Harpsichord
2008


CD | Videos | Score | Making of | Literature | Performances


About

Listen Thing is piece of 4 parts; the titles of each are anagrams of the name Listen Thing:
  1. Tingle Hints - inversion
  2. Shingle Tint - retrograde
  3. Lent in Sight - inversion of retrograde
  4. Silent Night - prime form
When the piece is performed on a music box, a single custom-punched paper tape is used which is inserted in 4 different orientations.

Furthermore, a version for toy piano exists which is basically a transcription of the original music box piece.


Videos

Karlheinz Essl performing Listen Thing on a music box
Recorded by Marian Essl on 30 Nov 2008



Isabel Ettenauer performing Listen Thing on a toy piano
Studio kHz, 27 Dec 2011


Making of

Karlheinz Essl punching the paper tape for Listen Thing


Score

Exerpt of the score of Listen Things (2008) for toy piano


Here you can download the score in two different transpositions (C or G) in order to play it on various toy pianos.


Literature

Isabel Ettenauer: A short introduction to the Music for Toy Piano by Karlheinz Essl
in: Fowl Feathered Review, Issue 4, Summer 2013, ed. by Virgil Kay (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada), p. 74-81.

Rachel Wells Hall, Programmable Mathe-Musical Boxes
in: Proceedings of Bridges 2015: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture (University of Baltimore), p. 351-352.



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Updated: 2 Apr 2016