Jonas Lie Skaarud - I Had Wanted A Quiet Testament (2025) Hi-Res

I Had Wanted a Quiet Testament (2024) is the result of a close collaboration between performers Kalle Moberg (accordion) and Håkon Thelin (double bass) and composer Jonas Lie Skaarud. The piece explores unique playing techniques and timbres specific to both instruments and originates from Moberg’s doctoral project Extended Expectations (2021–2025) at the Norwegian Academy of Music, which pioneers new accordion techniques.

The 50-minute work reinterprets Guillaume de Machaut’s Kyrie (c. 1360) as performed by Ensemble Organum, incorporating Corsican singing techniques. Skaarud translates these vocal qualities into accordion techniques like "stifled tones", microtonality, split-tone multiphonics, and extreme bending. Thelin’s double bass is retuned to clash with the accordion's tuning, generating psychoacoustic effects like beatings and combination tones, whilst the techniques mimic the accordion, merging both instruments into a "super instrument."

With no clear dramaturgical progression, the composition embraces stasis and repetition, suspending harmonies
in a continuous, immersive soundscape, merging medieval echoes with radical contemporary techniques.