String and helicopter quartet
What do you know about unusual pieces? Perhaps they are performed on a strange instrument or the composer has encrypted a secret meaning in it? And what if not only musicians, but also helicopters take part in the piece? How do you like this turn of events!
Such a shocking at first glance, the idea came to mind a wonderful composer, a representative of musical avant-garde Karlheinz Stockhausen. He immediately stood out among his contemporaries with his extraordinary thinking and bold, innovative ideas. Musical-acoustic tasks - that's what worries him the most. That is what prompts him to various experiments with sound sources.
In 2002 in Amsterdam for the first time they performed the String-helicopter quartet. All the action took place at a military airfield, not far from the city limits. Four helicopters climbed into the sky, in which not at all officers were sitting, but musicians! The members of the Arditti string quartet dared to have such an unusual and spectacular show. The pilots of the air team Grasshoppers also participated in the performance, they had a similar party with the musicians. What did it all look like? The helicopters followed exactly the picture of the musical composition, they then rose to the heights, then they descended rapidly downwards, increased their speed or froze. With the land communication was carried out through radio and video messages. The whole unusual concert was broadcast in the assembly hall, where the audience gathered. The composer was also present in the hall, he was behind the sound engineering console, located right in the center of the hall. and mixed the sound of strings and the roar of helicopter engines. Actually, this was the very brilliant idea of Stockhausen. At the end of the work, the cars sat on the airfield and the musicians, taking off their helmets with headphones, headed to the hall, where enthusiastic and stunned spectators waited for them.
Surely we should not say that the premiere was just great. Each printed edition of Europe hastened to highlight this grand event in the art world. And what is all the same performed? This is just a part of the composer's huge intention. As he himself admits, all his work is aimed at working on this one piece. Of course, this is an opera cycle, designed for a seven-day performance, for orchestra, ballet, invisible choir, electronic music, soloists and other participants. Such a large-scale and grandiose plan was not yet in the entire history of musical art, but perhaps we will tell about it next time.
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