Der Demutsahne (“The Humility-forebear”) is the tenth in a series of short works for solo instrument based upon characters in Der Ohrenzeuge: Fünfzig Charaktere (“Earwitness: Fifty Characters”), written in 1974 by the Bulgarian-born British-Austrian novelist Elias Canetti (1905-1994). Canetti’s distinctive studies incorporate poetic imagery, singular insights, and unabashed wordplay to create fifty ironic paradigms of human behavior. This collection, begun in 1997, was inspired by the vividly surreal depictions of Canetti’s characters, and comprises twenty-two solo works to date—composed for familiar instruments such as violin, guitar, piano, and trombone, as well as less common instruments such as ocarina, cimbalom, glass harmonica, and carillon.  In Canetti’s depiction of this character, The Humility-forbear “twists from one submission to another… He knows that a person who is eager to die will practice submission early on, and the trick is to live in the teeth of this insight…. [He] practices bearing up under his hardship… [and] does it so well that he is sometimes pricked by malice; then he succeeds in intercepting a hardship before it properly arrives.”

Der Demutsahne was composed in September of 2008 for guitarist Matthew Elgart, and first performed on 26 May 2012 at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music (Chengdu, China) by guitarist Joseph Mirandilla. It is included on the album Improbable Encounters (innova 873, 2014).