Stockhausen and the future(ists) (part 4 of 4)

If one were to pick an object of the world and express what that object means to us in the human experience we could see more clearly how the work of Stockhausen and the Futurists relate. For example, when a Futurist wishes to express a table he or she would immediately want to know how the table would move, or under what circumstances it would move and it would show the entire movement of that table in one flat space. Simultaneity might also provoke a Futurist artist to express other things moving in relation to the table at the same time. Stockhausen can view this table with the knowledge gained in the last fifty years. The atomic age lets us know that the table is no longer merely a table but it is an object which is composed of millions of atomic materials in constant motion. If all materials are composed of fundamental elements it is possible to imagine that object being transformed into a different object with the elements added, subtracted, or rearranged. In other words the Futurists might want to exhibit the simultaneous motion of a train smashing through the table with passengers dining comfortably on similar tables in their cabins, and Stockhausen could conceivably express a transformation from the table into the locomotive itself. The Futurists idea of simultaneity is the expression of the movement of the table and its modern environment at the same time. Stockhausen’s idea of expressing simultaneity is to express the table becoming the environment, or perhaps to show various degrees of the elements between the table and its environment. Stockhausen’s music is often essentially a decomposition or deconstruction of melodic and harmonic elements and new permutations of these elements. Using electronics he can create these permutations almost infinitely in ways the human body can not comprehend without the knowledge of mechanical or electronic devices.


Karlheinz Stockhausen’s work can clearly be seen as an extension of the Futurist aesthetic that motivates us towards thinking above and beyond the limitations of our natural body. They both use a simultaneous expression of time that is free of the body’s limitations, they both believe in the potency of the future compared to the latent perceptions of the past, and they both rely on the machine’s ability to do what the body naturally cannot. Stockhausen has similar views of expressing the simultaneity of the human experience and the relationship between man and machine but he applies what we have learned from science and technology in the last fifty years. Stockhausen shares the Futurists’ wish to “hurl their defiance to the stars,” and proclaim the age of the machine as a necessary step in human evolution. He also uses technology to heighten our perception of the world and escape from what he calls the prison of our organic limitations.


It is a constant desire of mankind to learn as much as we can about the world and it is also the constant need of the artist to express our experiences. Therefore it is inevitable that the learning and the expressing combine to push mankind further in its evolution. Both the Futurists and Stockhausen struggle with the possibility of escape and transcendence from the limitations that were imposed upon us from birth, and both wish to express the possibility of a malleable reality which would allow us to evolve into a freer and more perfect entity.