Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Michael's Journey Around the World"

The video of musikFabrik's 2008 production of Michael's Journey Around the World has been posted to YouTube, and it's well worth watching. WDR did an admirable job of capturing the overpacked visuals, but the DVD still represents only a fraction of what the audience was seeing.

Admittedly, my focus was on playing my part, but every time we performed this, I was noticing new things in the production. When I got the DVD earlier this year, I saw even more elements that I was completely unaware of from my seat in the orchestra. Like so much of Stockhausen's music, it helps to watch this video multiple times.

By way of introduction, it's probably enough to say that Michael's Journey Around the World is Act II of Thursday from Stockhausen's seven-opera cycle Light. The Michael in question is from the Urantia book, which is a sci-fi retelling of the Bible. Michael is required to incarnate on seven different planets in the universe, and Earth (Urantia) is the final planet, where he fulfills his destiny. While he is incarnated on Earth, he is known as Jesus, and therein his story overlaps with the Gospels.

Stockhausen characterizes the protagonists of Light through multiple means. Sometimes they appear as a mime, other times as a singer, sometimes as an instrumentalist. Sometimes as all three. In this Act, Michael is portrayed only by the trumpet. Instead of the original spinning globe from the La Scala production, the soloist (Marco Blaauw) is hoisted through the first half in a crane, and his travels are depicted through video projections.

Part 1: Michael's arrival on earth. He plays a short melody to describe himself and then begins his journey around the world. There are seven stops in his journey. After his first stop, where he interacts with the alto flute, he crosses the Atlantic and heads to New York. musikFabrik couldn't resist a reference to Stockhausen's misinterpreted comments on 9/11; so, Michael's arrival in NYC is quite memorable:




Part II: Michael's journey continues on stops 3 through 5, and the clarinet jesters make their first appearance. They are mocking whatever they see. They cleverly repurpose whatever music they hear and turn it into a joke. The end of this clip features the most extreme crane work of the entire production. As Marco has to play 5-octave glissandi, the crane has him playing from all manner of angles. At one point, he's almost completely upside down.




Part III: Michael's journey concludes at stop 7. He hears the rising 3rd motif of Eve and shouts "Halt", bringing the rotation of the earth to a stop. The music from here to the end takes on a very static character as time is literally suspended. He plays to the offstage basset-horn which represents Eve, trying to find her.




Part IV: Michael continues his search for Eve. He meets a bass player and they exchange gestures. Finally, Eve appears onstage and the two perform a sort of mating dance, exchanging gestures just as Michael did with the bass player. This time, however, they grow more and more in sync. The clarinetists return at the end of the clip to mock Michael & Eve.



Part V: The clarinetists are dispatched by a trombone duo in a mock Crucifixion. Michael & Eve appear above the stage, floating up to Heaven. Their musical gestures finally intertwine into one unified statement in the form of an enormously long trill.