Five-Finger Tower

Composer Barbara Heller has been challenging the artistic imagination for many years by using a limited amount of musical material in her works. An example of this approach can be seen in her work as early as 1984 in Scarlet Letters (Schott ED 8620), which is an entire cycle based on only 7 tones. In Five Finger Tower, Barbara Heller imposes two restrictions: five fingers–five keys. The pieces use only the black keys and are performed (nearly) without “thumb under”. Moreover, the title Five Finger Tower alludes to the Marriage Tower in Darmstadt, the city where Barbara is based. Barbara Heller’s works often straddle the border between composition and concept. While the pieces of this volume can be studied as recital pieces, they should be used primarily as models for your own experiments and further development. In fact, this volume contains suggestions that are designed to help you achieve this goal. Considered from this perspective, this approach is also an appropriate way to prepare the study of longer pieces such as White Keys, Black Keys (Schott ED 9918), Hidden Stream and others.