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Diagonal Flying is a 1989 composition by Rolf Gehlhaar for amplified piano and synthesizer. The piece was dedicated to the Australian pianist Roger Woodward and premiered at the Extasis Festival of new music in Geneva in October 1989.
According to Rolf Gelhaar:
I have worked since 1984 on the development of the system of real-time gestural remote control of synthesizers. This system, with composition software, consists of the distribution in space of ultrasounds, producing an echo phenomenon, which have been used in a series of applications termed "sound spaces". Sound-space may be an interactive musical environment destined for public use, a musical environment for dancers, environments created by synthesizers from the simultaneous interpretations of performers, each playing his own instrument, a musical instrument accessible to the physically handicapped, an educational applied to ta single performer, The electronic sounds are controlled entirely by his movements, the position and movements of this hands are measured by ultrasonic detectors and converted into values in real time by software designed for the composition of musical structures and generating the control signals of synthesizers.
The British-Australian musicologist Richard Toop described the piece as borrowing sequences of Tai chi movements.