In view of the enormous upswing in popularity that the accordion has experienced as an avantgarde instrument in the last decades of the twentieth century, a systematic elaboration of the latest instrumental techniques and forms of expression, as well as detailed instructions on how to employ the accordion have been sorely lacking.
This book explains all the playing techniques, registers as well as tonal potentials and expressive possibilities of the accordion. It demonstrates the distinctive elements of these techniques and in addition, gives composers valuable information concerning notation.
A CD with examples of sound techniques and excerpts from the repertoire is included. An extra fold-out chart presents a full-sized layout of the treble and bass sides, helping composers to check fingering possibilities. This long-awaited book will be an essential tool for composers, performers and teachers.

- Comprehensive description of all relevant playing techniques on the button accordion
- Practical notation suggestions for composers
- Music examples from important contemporary works
- CD containing examples of all registration and playing techniques and excerpts from the repertoire
- Full size, fold-out chart giving the arrangement of the buttons on the instrument
- Text in two languages (Ger/Eng)

?This book by Bettina Buchmann is a real boon; it gives not only a representative overview of the latest instrumental techniques and forms of expression on the accordion today, but paves the way for composers and accordionists to compose and perform idiomatically on the instrument. The author and publisher deserve the highest recognition for this.? (Teodoro Anzellotti)

?The accordion has enjoyed a revival in popularity in recent times ? numerous composers have discovered it as a solo instrument, in chamber music and also for its orchestral sound. I?m really happy to have this exceptionally clearly laid out book by Bettina Buchmann by my side as a guide and incentive for my further explorations into the instrument.?
(Beat Furrer)
/ [Les Techniques du jeu d'accordéon] / Méthodes

Looking On Darkness for Accordion solo was composed by Bent Sørensen in 2000. Programme note: It is in the attempt to recreate a lost world without any illusion of its feasibility that we find the Danish composer Bent Sørensen's beautiful and melancholic music. Sørensen one of the most frequently performed contemporary Scandinavian composers has taken the title Looking on Darkness from Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 27. The thematic and intellectually clearly constructed form in which the inherent emotion is centrally placed and which characterises the sonnet also forms the basis of Sørensen'scomposition which is dedicated to Frode Haltli. As in Shakespeare's sonnet the past memory arises in Sørensen's music as it were out of nothing out of the darkness the silence; the concrete rattle of the accordion buttons and the sensitive dripping notes in the opening section vibrate on the borderline between the concrete and the hereafter. Loss and mourning for that which is lost and will never come again flow into the fleeting and poetic tones and meld together; the music oscillates lingers holds tightly to the absence slackens its grip tries again moves carefully onwards like the fragmentary memories in Samuel Beckett's late prose before the sorrowful voice of the piece just as beautiful and unobtrusive withdraws again and leaves us to the silence to what used to be.