Tartarus

Tartarus is a piece for four whistling wine glass players.

The spacious quality of the piece gives it the possibility to be used in interdisciplinary performances.

Tartarus is inspired by the myth of the imprisonment of Prometheus. He was attached to a stone for thousands of years where his body was being bitten off by birds. The torture of Prometheus goes as far as his body comes back to life and he experiences the torture again and again.

There are three different sources of sound production in this composition. One is glass sound made by running the wet fingers circularly along the edge of the wine glasses which provides the normal sound of a glass harp. The second is a high pitched harmonic which is produced by fast strokes of one finger on the edges of the glass with a 90 degree angle with the edge and from sides towards the center. And the third group of sounds are the whistles of each glass performer.