Synopsis
On today’s date in 1995, the four members of the Arditti String Quartet entered four helicopters warming up their engines at an airfield in Holland. Followed by video cameras, each player’s image and audio was relayed to huge video displays and loudspeakers on the ground for the mid-air premiere of a work titled — what else — Helicopter Quartet by avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Guided by click tracks, the Arditti Quartet coordinated their performance, which was mixed on the ground by the composer for an audience gathered in a concert auditorium during the 1995 Holland Festival.
This music, like all the music Stockhausen wrote in the last years of his life, fit into his cycle of seven operas, collectively titled Light. Like Wagner’s Ring operas from the 19th century, Stockhausen’s operas attempted to synthesize world mythology into a visionary program for world salvation.
Speaking of Wagner and helicopters automatically calls to mind the scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now, in which helicopters blare Wagner’s Ride of Valkyries from loudspeakers as they attack.
By a bizarre coincidence, Wagner’s opera, Die Walküre, also had its premiere performance on June 26, 1870!
Music Played in Today's Program
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007): Helicoptor Quartet; Arditti Quartet; Discques Montaigne Arditti Edition CD-35
On This Day
Births
1747 - Bohemian composer Leopold Kozeluh, (Kotzeluch) in Welwearn. He was the cousin of Johann (Jan) Antonín Kozeluh, who was also a composer.
1928 - American composer Jacob Druckman, in Philadelphia
Premieres
1870 - Wagner: opera Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), in Munich at the Hoftheater, with Franz Wüllner conducting; The opera was performed at the Bavarian King Ludwig II's request, but against the composer's wishes
1912 - Mahler: Symphony No. 9, by Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter conducting
1986 - Zwilich: Piano Concerto, by the Detroit Symphony with Günther Herbig conducting and soloist Marc-André Hamelin
2000 - Robert Kapilow: D.C. Monuments, by the National Symphony
Others
1788 - Mozart finishes his Symphony No. 39 in Vienna
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About Composers Datebook®
Host John Birge presents a daily snapshot of composers past and present, with timely information, intriguing musical events and appropriate, accessible music related to each.
He has been hosting, producing and performing classical music for more than 25 years. Since 1997, he has been hosting on Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Service. He played French horn for the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra and performed with them on their centennial tour of Europe in 1995. He was trained at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy.