''Poème symphonique'' is a 1962 composition by

György Ligeti György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century ...

for one hundred mechanical

metronome A metronome, from ancient Greek μέτρον (''métron'', "measure") and νομός (nomós, "custom", "melody") is a device that produces an audible click or other sound at a regular interval that can be set by the user, typically in beats pe ...

s. It was written during his brief acquaintance with the

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

movement.

Overview

The piece requires ten "performers", each one responsible for ten of the hundred metronomes. The metronomes are set up on the performance platform, and they are then all wound to their maximum extent and set to different speeds. Once they are all fully wound, there is a silence of two to six minutes, at the discretion of the conductor; then, at the conductor's signal, all of the metronomes are started as simultaneously as possible. The performers then leave the stage. As the metronomes wind down one after another and stop, periodicity becomes noticeable in the sound, and individual metronomes can be more clearly distinguished. The piece typically ends with just one metronome ticking alone for a few beats, followed by silence, and then the performers return to the stage. The controversy over the first performance was sufficient to cause

Dutch Television Television in the Netherlands was officially introduced in 1951. In the Netherlands, the television market is divided between a number of commercial networks, such as RTL Nederland, and a system of public broadcasters sharing three channels, NPO 1 ...

to cancel a planned broadcast recorded two days earlier at an official reception at

Hilversum Hilversum () is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes, and smaller towns. Hilver ...

's City Hall on 13 September 1963. "Instead, they showed a soccer game". Ligeti regarded this work as a critique of the contemporary musical situation, continuing: ''Poème symphonique'' was the last of Ligeti's event-scores, and marks the end of his brief relationship with Fluxus. The piece has been recorded several times, but performed only occasionally.

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Overview

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