Sunday morning music

 

I don't know that "music" is the right word to describe this morning's offering.  It's more industrial than tuneful - but it was designed that way.  The BBC reports (from last year):

One hundred years ago, a 36-year-old Russian composer named Arseny Avraamov climbed on to a specially built tower in Baku, Azerbaijan, then part of the USSR. Surveying the urban landscape before him, he lifted two red flags and began to wave them from side to side. What happened next was one of the most extraordinary musical events of the 20th Century. One which, until recently, remained almost completely forgotten.

The event was the Symphony of Sirens, a musical work incorporating the city of Baku as its orchestra. It was staged on 7 November 1922, to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the October Revolution, and included the entire Caspian flotilla, cannons, locomotives, artillery regiments, hydroplanes, factory sirens, bells, foghorns, brass bands and a massive choir. Avraamov wasn't just conducting an orchestra, he was conducting a city.

The flag wave signalled the first cannon shot, which cued the sirens of the industrial plants. The fifth cannon shot cued the sirens of the docks. The 15th cued the sirens of the flotilla, while a military brass band began playing and marching towards the harbour. Soon locomotive horns appeared, along with machine gun fire, followed by the melodies of the magistral – an instrument invented by Avraamov for this performance, consisting of 50 steam whistles attached to pipes, which could be operated independently like the keys of a piano.

Avraamov waved his flag. That was the cue for the hydroplanes to take off as a choir of thousands shouted "Hurrah!" Another cannon shot cued silence, except for the haunting melodies of the magistral. Suddenly, a faint chorus of voices could be heard singing. More voices joined in, and the unmistakeable hymn of the Internationale rang out. As the choir grew, the sirens began again, and the hydroplanes swooped back down over the harbour. The brass band was back, playing another familiar tune: La Marseillaise. Cannons fired into the sea and machine guns unloaded into the sky. Church bells – until then silent – began chiming as the noise reached its climax. Then silence, more renditions of the Internationale, before the sirens, the magistral, the brass band and the choir all returned for one final ecstatic chord that washed over the city.

There's more at the link.

Here's what's described as a "reconstruction" of that 1922 performance.  I don't like it at all, but it's considered a part of musical history.  You make the call.

Oy...

Peter