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Anyone who is familiar with the work of Edgar Allan Poe or has read even a few of his creepy short stories may not be able to underline these texts, which often deal with human abysses, in their inner spirit with the harp sound that is clichédly associated with the angelic. The fact that two composers and one female composer nevertheless became involved in this connection is evidence on the one hand of their great joy in experimentation and indispensable search for new musical expression, and on the other hand of the almost infinite richness of the harp's sound spectrum. Two of the first to set works from Poe's horror literature programmatically to music were harp virtuoso Henriette Renié (1875-1956), who in 1912 used the text "The Tell-Tale Heart" as the model for her "Ballade fantastique", and the likewise French composer André Caplet (1878-1925), who 12 years later musically traced the short story "The Mask of the Red Death" with his work "Conte fantastique" for string quartet and harp. The Swiss composer Thüring Bräm (*1944) refers to the world-famous poem "Annabel Lee" in his composition "A Wind Blew Out of a Cloud" for harp solo written in 2016.
Julia Wacker