Instrumentation: clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, vioncello
Duration: ca. 9′
For the April in Santa Cruz Festival of New Music and New Music Works

 

Program Notes:
In 1895 the German inventor and impresario Max Skladanowsky invented the bioskop, one of the first film projectors. The bioskop used two loops of 54 mm film along with two lenses, electrical arc lamps and a worm-gear intermittent motor to achieve the sixteen frames per second necessary for simulating full motion. Later that year in November of 1895, Skladanowsky debuted his invention at the Wintergarten theater in Berlin to packed crowds—the first film projections in Europe shown to a paying audience. Nine films, each lasting about six seconds, were looped with musical accompaniment. Titles were projected using a magic lantern while stagehands kept the screen translucent by continually spraying it with water. After the success at the Wintergarten, Skladanowsky’s invention was engaged to play the Folies Bergère in Paris in January of 1896, but after the Lumière Brothers unveiled their technically superior Cinematographe that December, the contract was cancelled and Skladanowsky and his invention slipped into obscurity…