Fresco

Fresco (plural frescos or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco (Italian: affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting.

Technology

Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of room temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster, intonaco, is used. Because of the chemical makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco, which itself becomes the medium holding the pigment. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster; after a number of hours, the plaster dries in reaction to air: it is this chemical reaction which fixes the pigment particles in the plaster. The chemical processes are as follows:

Fresco (Stockhausen)

Fresco ("wall sounds for meditation") is an orchestral composition written in 1969 by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen as foyer music for an evening-long retrospective programme of his music presented simultaneously in three auditoriums of the Beethovenhalle in Bonn. It is Nr. 29 in his catalogue of works, and a performance takes about five hours.

History

In October 1968 Volker Wangenheim, general music director for Bonn, offered Stockhausen all of the rooms of the Beethovenhalle in Bonn for an evening concert of his music. In addition, he suggested that Stockhausen might consider writing a new piece for the Bonn Orchestra, though he could offer only three rehearsals, and warned that Bonn did not have much money for expenses. Wangenheim also wrote that he had heard about Stockhausen's Ensemble and Musik für ein Haus projects at Darmstadt in 1967 and 1968, implying that he hoped for something along the same lines (Stockhausen 1971, 143). Stockhausen proposed an evening-long programme of his music to be performed simultaneously in all three auditoriums of the building. At the same time, there would be a new work played at four places in the foyer and lasting four-and-a-half hours. This work was composed in the Fall of 1969 for the Orchestra of the Beethovenhalle Bonn, and was titled Fresco, Wall Sounds for Meditation (Kurtz 1992, 174). The world premiere took place on 15 November 1969, with Volker Wangenheim conducting Orchestra I (winds and percussion) in the cloakroom foyer at the main entrance of the Großer Saal, Volkmar Fritsche conducting Orchestra II (strings) on the "bridge" in the foyer of the Großer Saal, Bernhard Kontarsky conducting Orchestra III (winds and strings) in the exhibition space by the inner courtyard, and Georg Földes conducting Orchestra IV (strings) in the small cloakroom foyer in front of the Studio auditorium (Stockhausen 1971, 149).

Fresco (surname)

Fresco is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: