CCA students play unique music with metronomes

Throughout history, musicians have made many attempts in producing new forms of music. One of such was Poème Symphonique, a work composed by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti in 1962 and first performed in 1963, in which 100 metronomes were set to tick at different speeds. To celebrate the innovative spirit of music production and to gain new musical experience, four students from the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts (CCA) performed a piece adapted from Ligeti’s original work but on a smaller scale at Tai Po campus in February.

“As students of music, we used a mechanical metronome to develop our rhythmic sensitivity and to learn how to keep a steady beat. Even though electronic and digital timers have become a popular replacement of the metronome, most of us have one as it symbolises the beginning of our musical journey,” Chung King-yat, a second-year student from Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Creative Arts and Culture and Bachelor of Education (Honours) (Music) Co-terminal Double Degree Programme (DD(MU)) who led the team to play the adapted piece on 23 February 2024, said. Other members of the performance team included: Lee Shing-lai, Fok Yan-tung, and Tsang Hoi-wah. Lee Sing-lai is also a committee member of the EdUHK Modern Music Ensemble.

“It was Dr Michael Leung Chi-hin, Assistant Professor of CCA, who initiated the project,” King-yat added. Under Dr Leung’s guidance, King-yat and his team members gathered a total of 30 metronomes, some made from plastic and some from wood, from teachers and students from CCA. Dr Paulina Wong Wai-ying from CCA lent out a larger-than-usual metronome for the performance. In the adapted work, regular-sized metronomes were placed at the two sides of a long table while the largest metronome was placed in the centre. While the original performance lasted for 35 minutes, the adapted version was shortened to 20 minutes.

In the original performance held in 1962, György Ligeti directed ten musicians to set all 100 metronomes at different speeds and fully wind them up. After minutes of silence, Ligeti asked the musicians to set the metronomes in motion to start ticking. As the pendulums ticked at different rhythms, the audience heard a symphony of a desynchronised pattern of sounds. The metronomes were spring-driven and different springs have different degrees of stiffness. This resulted in tick-tock sounds of the metronomes being tapered off at different points of the performance. When the metronomes stopped one after another towards the end of the performance, the ticking sounds of the remaining devices became clearer. The performance ended when the last remaining metronome grounded to a halt.

“Our students played the adapted piece three times that day. As the metronome is a mechanical device, there were slight differences every time when the same musical piece was played. Even though these performances might stand in stark contrast to what most people believe music should be, we think they gave our students a chance to experience other forms of music. I always remind my students that music education is a continuous process of discovery and encourage them to seize opportunities to expand their understanding of music. In the performance, our students tried an unconventional approach to compose and play music, which has definitely broadened their musical experience,” Dr Leung said.

Before the beginning of the performance, Dr Leung made a short introduction about György Ligeti’s original work to the class of students taking Dr Philbert Li King-yue’s MUS1248 Creative Musicking who came to listen to the live performance. Dr Leung mentioned that the first performance of Ligeti’s groundbreaking attempt in 1963 in the Netherlands challenged people’s preconception about music. It caused a controversy to such an extent that the Dutch Television cancelled the scheduled TV broadcast of the recorded premiere.

Click here to listen to the original performance conducted by György Ligeti in 1963.