This piece was written for my good friends of the Tesla Quartet. And (not coincidentally) it is meant to be a musical portrait of the famed scientist, Nikola Tesla. The title “Great Danger, Keep Out” is a variation on a sign posted outside Tesla’s Colorado Springs laboratory, which housed an eighty foot high Tesla coil that reportedly generated the largest manmade lightning bolts to this day (and was also the cause of a citywide blackout). The music is greatly inspired by the following account of the phenomenon by Tesla biographers, Hunt and Draper:
"The crackling and snap repeated and then came a tremendous upsurge of sound as the power built up. There was a crescendo of vicious snaps above. The noises became machine-gun staccato, then roared to artillery intensity. Ghostly sparks danced a macabre routine all over the laboratory. Flames began to jump from the ball at the top of the mast—first a few feet long—then longer and brighter—thicker, bluer. More emanations until they reached rod like proportions thick as an arm and with a length of over 130 feet. The heavens reverberated with a terrific thunder that could be heard 15 miles over the ridge to Cripple Creek."Matthew Browne
Classical Music | Music for Quartet
Matthew Browne
Great Danger, Keep Out Play
Recorded on 02/04/2015, uploaded on 06/25/2015
Musician's or Publisher's Notes
This piece was written for my good friends of the Tesla Quartet. And (not coincidentally) it is meant to be a musical portrait of the famed scientist, Nikola Tesla. The title “Great Danger, Keep Out” is a variation on a sign posted outside Tesla’s Colorado Springs laboratory, which housed an eighty foot high Tesla coil that reportedly generated the largest manmade lightning bolts to this day (and was also the cause of a citywide blackout). The music is greatly inspired by the following account of the phenomenon by Tesla biographers, Hunt and Draper:
"The crackling and snap repeated and then came a tremendous upsurge of sound as the power built up. There was a crescendo of vicious snaps above. The noises became machine-gun staccato, then roared to artillery intensity. Ghostly sparks danced a macabre routine all over the laboratory. Flames began to jump from the ball at the top of the mast—first a few feet long—then longer and brighter—thicker, bluer. More emanations until they reached rod like proportions thick as an arm and with a length of over 130 feet. The heavens reverberated with a terrific thunder that could be heard 15 miles over the ridge to Cripple Creek." Matthew Browne
Performances by same musician(s)
String Quartet No. 12 in c minor, D. 703 “Quartettsatz”
Crisantemi
String Quartet in D Major
String Quartet No. 22 in B-flat Major, K. 589 "Second Prussian Quartet"
Classical Music for the Internet Era™
Courtesy of International Music Foundation.