Das wassergewordene Kanon-Buch is a book of 20 canons for six voices composed for the Neue Vocalsolisten in 2016. Each canon is based upon a puzzle canon (Rätzelkanon) transcribed from the early to late Renaissance period with reference to the poetry of Paul Celan. Das wassergewordene Kanon-Buch constitutes part of my opera project Die Geisterinsel and Mirandas Atemwende composed in 2011 and 2015 respectively. Throughout Die Geisterinsel, which is based on Shakespeare’s Tempest (with characters Prospero, Prospero’s daughter Miranda and Caliban), there is the presence of a Geisterchor, a choir of spirits, who belong to and are part of the island where the Tempest is set. Das wassergewordene Kanon-Buch, sung by this same Geisterchor, reveals a history far older than when Prospero arrived, a history whose stewardship and preservation, Miranda eventually feels a responsibility for in Mirandas Atemwende. Most of the canons in Das wassergewordene Kanon-Buch are three-voice Rätselkanons, where three separate voices are forged together into a single line (Miranda: “In Einem will ich drei zusammenschmieden”) that appear and disappear throughout a fairly dense musical texture that is elaborated upon by the six singers of the choir. The textures of Das wassergewordene Kanon-Buch emerge from a noise-bearing musical aesthetics that point to the wilderness of the island, including the spirits and animals of the island, and yet are structured by exact numeric proportions (i.e., proportional canons) as examples of a musica speculativa that points to Proserpo’s “more perfect instruments” of number and proportion. The presence of Rätselkanons refer to J S Bach’s own use of them as symbols of the art of alchemy (of which Prospero was a practitioner) where such base metals as lead could be transformed into gold (alluding also to the kind of alchemy through which Miranda’s language is built from ashes). For Bach, “counterpoint, too, was powerful stuff and to be handled with care” and it is through canonic techniques that the essence of music could be discovered (“canons are the original source from which all these kinds of artistic work flow”). The rhythmic and metric proportional structure for Das wassergewordene Kanon-Buch was derived from poet J H Prynne’s poem “Pearls That Were” which references Shakespeare’s Tempest (i.e., “Full Fathom Five”) and whose poetry I used for Caliban’s text in Mirandas Atemwende.