Stockhausen: Gruppen and Helicopter String Quartet

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Gruppen, for three orchestras (1955-57)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Gruppen ("Groups") for three orchestras (1955-57)is "a landmark in 20th-century music . . . probably the first work of the post-war generation of composers in which technique and imagination combine on the highest level to produce an undisputable masterpiece" (Smalley 1967, 794). A large group of 109 players is divided into three orchestral units, each with its own conductor, which are deployed in a horseshoe shape to the left, front, and right of the audience. The spatial separation was principally motivated by the compositional requirement of keeping simultaneously played yet musically separate passages distinct from one another, but led to some orgiastic passages in which a single musical process passes from one orchestra to another.





Karlheinz Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet (Salzburg Festival 2003)

The Helikopter-Streichquartett (Helicopter String Quartet) is one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's best-known pieces, and one of the most complex to perform. It involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians. It was first performed and recorded in 1995. Although performable as a self-sufficient piece, it also forms the third scene of the opera Mittwoch aus Licht ("Wednesday from Licht").