The video features Henry Cowell‘s Aeolian Harp (1923) played live to tape by Ulrich Löffler. This early composition was one of the first piano pieces to use extended techniques on the piano that included plucking and sweeping the pianist’s hands directly across the strings of the piano.

An aeolian harp (also wind harp) is a musical instrument, which essentially consists of a wooden box with a soundboard the strings of which are stretched in the longitudinal direction over two bridges are. The aeolian harp is placed in a place where the wind blows over the strings and thus can produce so-called aeolian tones through air vortexes.