wgah'nagl fhtagn (2017) for piano four-hands & toy piano
duration: ca 9'

commissioned by HOCKET

first performance: May 23, 2017 - HOCKET - Piano Spheres in Los Angeles, CA

program note:
Cthulhu is a mythical sea creature of great power that lies in a death-like slumber beneath the Pacic Ocean in the sunken city of R’lyeh. He is described as “a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face [is] a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”  

At the proper time, “the secret priests [will] take great Cthulhu from his tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would ame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.”  

His worshippers chant “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” (“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”)  

— quotations from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu