Why the four helicopters in Helikopter-Quartett?
It’s a great idea. It’s a commentary on everyday life: we get our traffic reports every day from a little helicopter flying overhead while the rest of us on earth are stuck in traffic. He likes the idea of flying: read the books and interviews. Then again, helicopters are symbols too of pestilence and war – I call them the Four Helicopters of the Apocalypse. In the Cott interviews Stockhausen recalls a session of intuitive music that lasted until dawn; the players then got into their cars and headed off home in different directions, still playing their music. And don’t forget that in 1968-69, the time of the intuitive pieces, which were all about staying fixed to the earth but training your mind to escape into outer space, NASA was actually preparing to land people on the moon. That’s a powerful image. I’m sure Stockhausen made a mental note at the time to compose a work for a quartet of rockets rather than helicopters. But you have to be realistic. Helicopters are noisy. But the noise
