What’s it like to write music for fifty (50) pianos? Georg Friedrich Haas’s work 11000 Strings is currently being presented in New York. It is written for 50 pianos (and a corresponding number of pianists, of course…) with a twenty-person musical ensemble also performing alongside them. The idea for this particular work did not originate with the composer but with Peter Paul Kainrath, artistic director of Klangforum Wien and a pianist, who was captivated when he was in China and accidentally found himself at the Hailun piano manufacturing factory. There, he saw 100 pianos (!!) being played simultaneously by machines for 24 hours to certify that they had no problems and were ready for sale. The sound, he says, enchanted him, and he spoke with Haas to create something similar, but which would also convey some musical meaning.

Haas, a composer known for his inclination towards microtones, decided it would be a good idea to write a piece for 50 pianos, each tuned differently. So, what did he ask for? He divided the tone (a good example is the distance between the C and D keys on a well-tuned piano) into 50 “moments,” essentially creating fifty subdivisions with a minimal—but existing—sonic difference. The pianos had to be tuned with this specific subdivision to sound distinct from each other, and then he “married” the sounds. The result is certainly noisy but at the same time melodic and mysterious. Search for it on YouTube and you’ll understand what I mean.

The work has a beginning, middle, and end, and the sounds are constantly intertwined. In fact, as the New York Times described it, “you feel as if you are entering a beehive or being surrounded by invisible spirits constantly moving.” The title 11000 Strings comes from the number of strings of all these pianos.

The whole experience must be unique, as the spectator sits in the center of the hall, surrounded by all these pianos and the musical ensemble. But is this experimentation worthwhile? How easy is it to perform this work? Was it ultimately created just to be filmed with an impressive drone video and then promoted? Is it a promotional stunt by Hailun, which provides all these pianos?

Certainly, performing it is difficult and requires special conditions, and Hailun will definitely use it. Hailun has not managed to find the place it would like in Western concert halls (between us, rightly so, I don’t like their pianos because they have an excessively crystalline sound, but these are matters of taste). What concerns me most of all, however, is that music seems to be turning into a gigantic project of sensationalism, perhaps sidelining its fundamental characteristic: music itself. How will the listener be able to distinguish the subtle melodic lines amidst so many similar sounds? Probably not, but that’s not the point in this particular case. The point here is to be enveloped by sound. This is also an approach… I would like to observe it as an experiment, but as a concert? Probably not…