Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück I"

-- Liner Notes --

1. Klavierstück I [2'56"]

Aloys Kontarsky, Piano
(Recordings: KGH, Winterthur, Switzerland, July 1 & 2, November 15-17, 1965)

KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN:
KLAVIERSTUCKE I-XI - MIKROPHONIE I & II
The following texts by the composer accompanied the original long-play recording. As they, like the recordings themselves, are interesting documents of their time, they are being reissued in unabridged form with this new edition.

Despite -- or rather because of -- the importance of tonal color compositions in my electronic music, in the orchestral and vocal works, I have from time to time concentrated on "Klavierstücke" [piano pieces]; on composing for one instrument, for ten fingers, with meticulous nuances of instrumental tone and structure. They are my "Zeichnungen" (drawings). I wrote the third and second Klavierstücke in 1952 in Paris for my wife Doris, who studied piano with me at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. I then added the first and fourth Klavierstücke. In these four pieces, a transition can be seen from "selective" or "point" music to "group composition".

The second cycle, begun in late 1953 in Cologne, is characterized by an expansion of the tone composition by means of the piano; I found six new "touch forms" that changed the way the piano tone was built up, just as before in Elektronische Studien I had composed tones using a series of "envelopes". I defined new symbols for these touch forms. Above all, I was greatly aided by the discovery of harmonics with "subharmonic" resonances: these made possible the simultaneous combination - on one tone - of short, staccato notes with soft, undamped "echo" tones. In addition, I no longer composed single notes and chords, but sounds with characteristic inner structures. The so-called "small notes" - what were earlier known as "grace-notes" - were used in great number, composed in groups of varying density around "nuclei": Klavierstücke V-X were all characterized by preceding, simultaneous and succeeding tone groups arranged around their nuclei. Klavierstück X consists almost entirely of greater or lesser density around few tonal nuclei.

I have written several texts about the Klavierstücke for radio programs, and they have all been published in "TEXTE" (two volumes, DuMont Schauberg, Cologne) which includes an extensive analysis of the first Klavierstücke. As early as 1954, I worked out a plan for a cycle of twenty-one Klavierstücke divided into six subcycles as follows: I-IV / V-X / XI / XII-XVI / XVII-XIX / XX-XXI, of which I-XI have been completed to date. Klavierstücke I-IV are dedicated to the Belgian pianist Marcelle Mercenier, Klavierstücke V-VIII to the American pianist David Tudor, Klavierstücke IX and X to Aloys Kontarsky, and Klavierstücke XI to Doris Stockhausen, née Andreae.