Die Sternklare (The Starry Woman) is the ninth 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 Starry Woman “shuns the crude light of the sun. [She] sighs in relief when the sun is gone and she wishes it would never come again… Her skin is as pure as the light of the sun. But she does not realize this in herself. Her only mirror is the illuminated night, and this mirror consists of so many dots that it has no unity.”

Die Sternklare was completed in June of 2006 and composed for percussionist Christopher Deane, who first performed the work at the University of North Texas on 20 February 2007. It is included on the album Improbable Encounters (innova 873, 2014).