Calendar

Soundwalk (meeting at 6 p. m. at reception desk)

On a soundwalk the main goal is to listen to the sounds of our surroundings. In today's relatively noisy urban landscape, people have learned not to listen. Moreover, the world puts a lot of emphasis on visual stimuli, so that sound ones are often neglected. A soundwalk will help participants "open their ears and discover a new world." They may then find themselves letting such a walk into their daily lives. After all, it is possible to listen intensively anywhere - at home, in a shop, on the street, at the station or in the forest...

The terms soundwalk and soundscape were coined by Raymond Murray Schafer (1933 - 2021), a Canadian composer, university teacher, and environmentalist who has been working on the phenomenon of sound pollution since the 1960s. In the 1970s, he also began systematically mapping and documenting the soundscapes and disappearing sounds of Vancouver and other places and cities (WorldSoundscape Project). He has many followers (Peter Huse, BarryTruax, and Hildegard Westerkamp, among others), and his activities led to the emergence of the field of acoustic ecology.

Poème symphonique by György Ligeti

Listen to the ticking of a hundred metronomes and meditate on the passing of time...

This famous composition for 100 metronomes by composer, experimenter, and musical inventor György Ligeti is a testament to his brief encounter with the Fluxus movement. Each performance is original and leaves a deep impression on the listener. The premiere in 1963 caused a small scandal, and Dutch television eventually broadcasted a football match rather than recording the event.

The BERG Orchestra gave the Czech premiere of Poème symphonique in 2011, almost fifty years after its creation. It is challenging to collect so many metronomes when and mechanical metronose have gradually been replaced by those digital and in mobile apps.

DID YOU KNOW...

Ligeti's music is known to a lot of people today without even acknowledging it? It appeard for example in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.

Are you looking for an original experience? Join the orchestra!

You can also be a performer—the piece's concept requires you to trigger all the metronomes at once. That's why we are looking for volunteers to become familiar with the metronomes and join the orchestra for a while. You can bring your metronome and join in with it or lend it to the large piece.

We will keep the information for volunteers updated.

Bookings will be made through the GoOut booking system. (We will add link in a week starting 14th April).