Raiding in Austria, Luxembourg and Bayreuth, Germany were connected together on July 19th and on July 31st by Mayah technology for a unique project by Austrian composer and musician Gerhard Kramer called ‘LISZ[:T:]RAIN’, dedicated to Franz Liszt, writes Andy Stout. Franz Lizst was born on 22nd October 1811 in Raiding, he performed in public for the last time in Luxembourg on 19th July 1886, and he died in Bayreuth on 31st July 1886.
Kramer has reflected the structure of his life by reworking several of his musical pieces into a form of musical microcells. The composition thus features three pianos and three percussionists spread across the three locations, additionally symbolising the main elements of Liszt’s life: roaming, travels, and changes.
Using the historical rooms where Liszt himself performed back in the 19th Century, the percussionists and pianists synchronised themselves using digital clocks. Six IO [io] 8000 audio video en/decoders from Mayah provided synchronous transmission of broadcast quality pictures and audio signals over the public internet to the fourth location — the train station in Luxembourg where the audience was gathered.
Video signals were encoded at full standard definition resolution with MPEG-4 H.264 and successfully transmitted with bitrates varying from 1 to 2Mbps, partially using the public IP-addresses, partially from the units behind the DSL-Routers. Audio was encoded with MPEG-4 HE AACv2 at 64Kbps stereo.
The piece by Gerhard Kramer will also be performed also in 2011 in Weimar during the celebrations of Liszt’s 200th anniversary.
