Suspense

While composing my opera Hamlet I realized, more than ever, how important the inherent channels of suspense are for new music theatre. These are realised by dramatic impulses which are usually introduced in purely instrumental passages in increasing intensity but which eventually erupt in the course of events on stage. Suspense is a purely orchestral realization of such forces, which aims to set in train dramatic events with no visual stimulus, that will eventually pull the open-minded listener into the tonal structure of the work and its development. (Christian Jost)