The audiovisual project Beethoven Recomposed commissioned by german broadcasting company WDR is a unique approach to make the music of Ludwig van Beethoven tangible for people with and without hearing impairment.
Client
Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Contractor
SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER
Year
2020
Role
Technical direction & software architecture, custom MIDI timeline tool, realtime 3d motion graphics, stage design
In order to let the whole audience experience a classical concert with their eyes, the symphony was translated into a visual journey through three generative worlds following the melodic motion, rhythm and changes of mood. These visuals were projected on a large monolithic canvas hanging above the orchestra. On each side of the canvas three LED strips were added to open up the stage scenery in form of the orchestral pit. While the projection aimed at telling a coherent story and reflect the narrative and emotional aspects of the music, the lower resolution and different light intensity of the led strips was used to convey the music in a rather didactive way.
To ensure an extremely accurate translation of the music, the realtime rendered visuals and light impulses were not only based on the live audio signal, but the complete musical score for all 27 instruments was digitalized beforehand. A custom built tool made it possible to use every single of the 30.000+ notes in the score to trigger forms, motions, lights or colours. In this way the generated visuals could be based on musical parameters like rhythm, pitch, note length or polyphony for every single note played by any musician on stage. To guarantee that visuals and music stay in perfect sync over the course of the whole concert, the 50-piece orchestra was synchronized via click track.
Every single note of all instruments can be played back in perfect sync. To add custom data to it, users can group individual notes in a selection to only act upon certain notes in the software. To enable the designers to reuse components of their visuals, the same name can be applied to many selections in order for the same visuals to be shown. In order to not be limited to the notes only, custom clips can be inserted into the timeline as well.
Orchestra
WDR Funkhausorchester
Musical Direction
Wayne Marshall
Composition
Stefan Behrisch
Direction
Annechien Koerselmann
Software, Visuals & Stage Design
SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER