The Untempered Piano (2000) - interactive sound installation for J. S. Bach

The Untempered Piano is an interactive sound installation that has been created by Karlheinz Essl for the Johann Sebastian Bach exhibition at the Museum of Technology in Vienna, Austria in 2000. Info: http://www.essl.at/works/untempered_piano.html By clicking with the mouse on the colored circles and the piano keyboard on the computer screen, the user can compose an individual version of this infinite piece. This infinite piece is being composed in realtime due to user interaction. Written in Max/MSP, it takes advantage of compositional algorithms that have been developed by Karlheinz Essl since the middle 1980s utilizing random operations, serial and stochastic procedures. The Untempered Piano is based on piano sounds opposed to the world of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Well-Tempered Piano". It focusses on those domains that has been banished in the traditional piano music: strange, noisy and crackling sounds produced by treating the instrument with tools like horse hair, coins, chains, rubber gum, plectron etc. The "normal" piano sound - achieved by playing with fingers on the keyboard - has been completely abandoned.