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Beethoven Recomposed

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.

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.

The art of precision

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.