Kunstkabinett, a German term for a cabinet of curiosities (literally "culture room"), is a chamber work by the contemporary classical composer Jeffrey Ching.
It was composed in Berlin on 05-28 June 2007, immediately after the completion of the first draft of the opera The Orphan, with which it shares both compositional approach and musical material (see below).
Kunstkabinett was premiered by the Modern Art Ensemble and the composer's wife, the soprano Andión Fernández, in Berlin on 16 September 2007.
As a discipline, Ching tried to restrict his compositional interventions to the tonal and rhythmic limits of Mozart's already highly chromatic and dissonant language, so that the distinction between "text" and "commentary" is eventually blurred.
A word about the method of reduction from orchestra to sextet should reveal at a glance the contrapuntal plan of the movement: The brief, final movement is an arrangement of the Chinese folksong of the same title (茉莉花, meaning "Jasmine Flower"), best-known outside China through its quotation in Puccini's Turandot, but here sung unadorned by the soprano onto the piano's undamped strings, and accompanied heterophonically by the violin alone, doubling the melody with various distorting effects (e.g. scratch tone, glissandi, scordatura).