Dance from Kafka's Chimp (harp)

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Length / year

5' - 1994

Instrumentation

arr. for harp by Elinor Bennett and the composer

Performance history

European Premiere
Vagnera Sale, Riga, Latvia
22nd September 2001
Catrin Finch - harp

Programme note

The literary fragment 'A Report to an Academy' by Kafka is one of his most capricious yet powerful inventions. It tells the story of a man who only five years ago was an ape and who in that time has raced through the evolutionary process. Inspired by this idea I wrote the 75 minute opera 'Kafka's Chimp' which received its premiere in 1997 in Canada. In the opera the principal character goes out for the evening with a woman and at the end of the evening while they are both dozing on the sofa of her apartment he dreams of his jungle past . . .

I have transcribed this short dance from the opera for the harp with typically generous technical and imaginative help from Elinor Bennett.