«Reality plays a role in my music»

Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber (born 1973) is a breathtaking conversationalist. When reflecting on music together, she stimulates thoughts that go beyond music itself. A single question, a simple prompt, is enough to trigger a fireworks display of associations, sounds, memories, images, colours, and literary references in the versatile and highly educated musician and composer—as well as new, intriguing questions.

For more than a month, she has been in Ernen, where she is working on a piece commissioned by the Musikdorf. She says she feels very much at home here. Since she reacts very sensitively to her surroundings—to space, light, or noise—where she composes plays a significant role. Even as a child, she reacted physically to notes, tones, and sounds. In Ernen, she experiences herself opening up and absorbing everything like a sponge. «The soundscape is new, unfamiliar, and therefore very stimulating for me».

A Concerto is Taking Shape

She is working in the Musikdorf on a Concerto for piano solo, flute, clarinet, percussion, and five string instruments. Why will the piano be at the centre and not the flute, the instrument she masters to a concert-ready level? The piano fascinates her, and she had long dreamed of writing a concert piece for this instrument. Added to this was the fact that she met the musicians of the Chamber Music Festival in Ernen in the summer of 2025 and heard the pianist Alasdair Beatson play.

«I was overwhelmed by his artistry and knew instantly that I would write a concert piece with him as the soloist!» What kind of piece is she thinking of? «Music cannot be put into words,» says Sinnhuber. To be able to talk about it, one would have to resort to metaphors. «Caution is advised here, especially with a work still in progress.» Therefore, she prefers to talk about transparency, clarity, tempo, and duration. Or about the sound of bells, the noise of gravel, or animal voices. These are vivid terms that visualise sounds.

The Tonality of Ernen

The composer works with «études», musical thought-cells that last between ten seconds and a maximum of one minute. Sometimes one stands out that she finds particularly interesting, which she then returns to. Then it happens that she pauses, leans back, and reconsiders what she has written. This was also the case here. «I was astonished to realise that I had composed many F-sharp sounds. Why? There must be a reason!» It suddenly dawned on her: these F-sharp sounds came from the ringing of the church bells. «Isn't that crazy? I unconsciously adapted to the tonality of Ernen! Such coincidences move me deeply and give me the chills.» These feelings are a sign for her. «That's when I know why I am a composer! I had to make something of it.»

The Same is Never the Same

About fifteen years ago, Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber travelled to the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto for a writing residency to explore the commonalities between her music and traditional Japanese music. «The fact that noise and tone belong together in the Japanese understanding of sound fascinated me.» And she was truly electrified by the fact that there is no unison in traditional Japanese music. «The intervals are always slightly shifted when the musicians play the same thing, because the individual never loses their individuality.» This means: they play the same thing from a shared gesture, but with personally coloured deviations. She was almost a little shocked, says Sinnhuber, when she realised that the foreignness of Japanese music was totally familiar to her: in her aesthetic experience, too, noises and tones are not opposites but equally valid parts of a harmonious whole. This is just like the song of the Whinchat, the first bird she heard in Ernen: «In its song, it mixes tones and noises.»

The Mystery of Polyrhythms

She enjoys composing in polyrhythms—that is, in different speeds layered on top of each other. She recalls a fascinating passage in Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time. The narrator is sitting in a carriage and watches the two church towers of Martinville disappear and reappear outside the window during his journey. It is about an optical phenomenon, says Sinnhuber, but it is comparable to the church bells. «Each has its own rhythm. And that is how a polyrhythm is created.»

She likes the fact that reality bursts into her études without her being aware of it. «They are found objects. What is wonderful in this case is that the bell tones are not tempered. The A is not exactly 440 Hz. Thus, one also finds the sheep and goats, which belong to Ernen just like the splashing of the fountain on the village square, in the untempered sounds. Noise and sound are parts of a whole. C'est magnifique!» Sinnhuber intends to expand the temperate soundscape of the piano by altering some of the piano's tones using Patafix, a type of adhesive pad that she sticks onto certain strings. «This way, I can produce a bell tone at will.»

The Search for the Title

Sinnhuber does not want to tell stories with her compositions. «Even if my pieces carry literary, botanical, or other titles, my music is not illustrative.» She clarifies this by referring to Correspondances by Charles Baudelaire. In his famous volume of poetry, the author tells of how the world reveals itself to us through mysterious signs and symbols. «I can only agree with that!» She tells of a special experience in Paris.

While searching for a piece title, she was strolling absent-mindedly through the Jardin des Plantes after taking her son to school. Suddenly, she felt something light and airy in the palm of her hand: the seeds of an Impatiens plant, also known as Touch-Me-Not. «I knew the plant from my childhood in the Vosges. We often went for walks with our parents and amused ourselves by touching the stalks and making the seeds pop.» In French, the plant is called «L’impatiente de Balfour». «That was the name I was looking for. Balfour! After the botanist who discovered the plant.» Her hand, which had stroked the flowers as she walked, picked the memory with the plant from the past. «My nonchalant hand corresponded to my creation: reviving old sensations to make a work of today out of them.»

Composing, an Eternal Continuum

When she immerses herself in a composition process, it is a mystery every time for her, and it seems almost unbelievable that the piece will eventually end. Yet she intuitively knows the path she is taking—«it leads through the fog into clarity, into the light.» For her, composing is an eternal continuum. «If I haven't been able to realise an idea, a dream, or a wish in one piece, then I continue to work on it in a new composition.» In the fluidum of her multi-layered worlds of sound and noise, everything is thus connected to everything else. This is likely to remain the case with the new work: after its premiere, it will carry a piece of Ernen out into the wide world.

Buy your ticket for the world premiere of the new work on 8 August

All concerts with music by Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber

Written in November 2025, by Marianne Mühlemann