The print edition of “Serpents of the Red Roof Valley” is printed on high quality 100-GSM paper at a fine 600dpi print resolution and is bound with a thick outer cover. Download code for the PDF-Version included!

Serpents of the Red Roof Valley was composed in 2024 and premiered at the Clariphonics charity concert in 2025. There it was first performed by Luis Plunien (Saxophone), Gertrud Edwards (Piano), and Markus Schuster (Percussion)

Listen to the recording of the premiere here

While composing the piece, I had the image of a small town with cottages built with red tiled roofs in my mind’s eye. There was a viaduct bridge cutting through the town, on which steam trains traveled, but everything was inhabited and run by some kind of serpents. The piece is an exploration of the many odd scenes I imagined involving those snake-like creatures, though the imagery I experienced for this was rather abstract and strange, so there is no concise story behind the piece.

Notice about the percussion part

The percussion part is intended to be performed by a single player.
You will need machine castanets and a machine triangle (like those built by Miller Machine), and the tambourine should also be mounted on a stand. It makes sense to play everything with the same xylophone mallets, but try using your fingers for the tambourine while holding the mallets, as to not give the tambourine too much of a drum sound.

Percussion instrumentation

• Xylophone (4 octaves including low Eb!)
• Snare drum
• Tambourine
• Castanets
• Triangle

Details