Graham Waterhouse composed Der Handschuh in 2005, as a kind of melodrama in the tradition of spoken narrative to instrumental accompaniment, such as ballads by Robert Schumann and Richard Strauss, a crucial scene of Weber's opera Der Freischütz and 20th century settings by Schoenberg, William Walton, Henze and Poulenc's L'Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant.

[7] In 2007 he wrote Das Hexen-Einmaleins (The Witches One-Times-One),[8] again from Goethe's Faust and published by Heinrichshofen's Verlag in 2009.,[5] the dramatic monologue Aases Himmelfahrt from Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt,[9] Gruselett after Christian Morgenstern's nonsense poem for three speaking voices and string trio,[10] and Belsatzar on Heinrich Heine's Romanze.

[11] In 2010 he composed Der Werwolf after a poem by Morgenstern, and a different setting The Banshee on its English version by Max Knight.

[15] In 2008 he performed it in Cambridge in a program "Melodrama revisited – new compositions for cello and speaking voice", while he was a "Musician By-Fellow" at Churchill College.

[6][18] On 12 December 2011 he performed it with speaker Peter Weiß (in German) in a family concert in Gilching, together with Flohlied and Der Werwolf.