Helikopter-Streichquartett

A long series of negotiations started with the Festspiele and the Austrian army, who were to lend the helicopters, as well as various TV channels who were airing the piece.

[4] The first performances of the piece took place in Amsterdam on 26 June 1995, as part of the Holland Festival, with Alouette helicopters from the Royal Dutch Air Force display team, the Grasshoppers [nl].

For example, the interpenetration of macro and micro dimensions, found in earlier compositions such as Kontakte, where Stockhausen compresses rhythm into pitch, or in Hymnen, where he slows down the sound of geese until they are revealed as the shouts of a football crowd.

[11] Another is the way in which the scenic character of the Helicopter Quartet forms one of four "serial variants": The first and fourth scenes of the opera represent the idea of communication and cooperation, first when World Parliamentarians meet to debate the topic of love, and then when interplanetary delegates consider cosmic problems, while the second scene and this one revolve around the idea of community music making.

This was expressed by Stockhausen in a text written in 1953: Evidently, self-contemplation and the awareness of a universal, planned order exist today "more than ever".

[13]In Licht generally this is seen in "scenic contexts that are not tied to a single, linear, teleological narrative, but as the compositional events in multi-dimensional, process-independent, run in folding, intersecting, or parallel layers and yet are held together by the principle of uniformity".

The piece focuses on Stockhausen's dreamed idea of a string quartet playing tremolos which blend so well with the timbres and the rhythms of the rotor blades that the helicopters sound like musical instruments.

[18] The descent lasts five minutes, with the decreasing sound of the rotor blades acting as a background as the quartet re-enter the hall.

[19] Writing for The New York Times, Alex Ross called the premiere a "memorable spectacle" citing the virtuoso performances by both the Arditti and the Grasshoppers.

[21]In his review for The Times, Paul Griffiths discusses how the piece comments on the chamber music mentality and hints that the piece has a richer life as a concept: Helikopter-Streichquartett says things about quartet psychology the placing of oneself at risk, the trust that others will come in on time (isolated visually and aurally, the players could get directions only from a click-track heard on headphones) and the devotion to duty...this is a work that can be just as well imagined as experienced.

Indeed, the Helikopter-Streichquartett of the imagination is probably to be preferred, since the one big disappointment of the Amsterdam performance was that one had so little sense of the musicians the Arditti Quartet being up aloft: the monitors just showed us four guys in cramped conditions, bowing away.

The influential NRC-Handelsblad found "the hot-tempered music" from clattering aircraft disturbing and said the "noise of the rotorblades created tension" in the audience.

But Yannis Anninos, a Greek composer who had flown from Athens to attend the concert, said the Helicopter Quartet was the "superb work of a genius."