Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück XI"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

10. Klavierstück XI [13'59"]

Compensation:
During the flight from Düsseldorf to Zurich on June 29, from 8:30 to 10:40 p.m., the Caravelle went through some heavy turbulence, and what was left of the evening meal, which had already been served, was cleared away as quickly as possible; only Kontarsky, who had refused the "warmed-over" airline dinner, kept his Tuborg beer in hand, with the somewhat worried remark that this would be the last decent beer he would get for days. After arriving in the Gartenhotel in Winterthur, he made sarcastic comments in the bar about Haldengut beer, the only brand available, and slept "rather badly" from 12:30 to 8:30 a.m. That morning, he took - as usual - a hot bath and his habitual breakfast with orange juice, a three-minute egg, tea with cream and a roll with cherry jam. Contrary to his habit of talking about books in the most excited tones, telling anecdotes in dialect and commenting on the latest Spiegel [news magazine] stories he used every opportunity during the days we were recording to dream aloud about past and future gastronomical pleasures. On the day of the first recording session, as a matter of principle, he abstained from all alcohol until 10:00 p.m., drank only an espresso at noon, ate a fillet of perch with a bottle of Hermiez mineral water in the Gartenhotel at 2:00 p.m., and in the evening in the Hotel Krone - whose cuisine he henceforth praised - consumed a clear oxtail broth, a schnitzel in cream sauce with tagliatelle, green salad with oil and vinegar, Brie with black bread, 1/2 lit. Johannisberg wine and two bottles of Hermiez mineral water. He went to bed early and slept "somewhat better" from 11:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. On the following day, he lunched on a glass of tomato juice, a saltimbocca alla romana with spaghetti, an ice cream coffee float with whipped cream, 2/10 lit. Johannisberg wine, and two bottles of mineral water; at around 6:00 p.m. he ordered a bottle of Coca-Cola, and for dinner (the kitchen had already stopped serving warm meals) a Bündner Platte (smoked country ham) with a tossed salad and 3/4 lit. Johannisberg wine; afterwards at Kolbe's house, he ate a piece of "Mövenpick" ice-cream cake and drank two glasses of cognac; he slept "marvelously" from 2:30 a.m. to 8:30. On Saturday, July 3, he ate steak tartare at midday shortly before the departure, and drank a glass of mineral water.

On the evening of November 14, after landing at Zurich airport, Kontarsky passed the time spent waiting for the bus with a Bloody Mary, and in the bar of the Gartenhotel, prepared himself for bed with two Haldengut Pilsners as a nightcap. On November 15 at noon, he ordered a salami omelet and High Grown Ceylon tea; in the evening in the Krone Hotel: bouillon with beef marrow, two baked fillets of sole, chipped veal in a herb sauce on spaghetti, 1/4 lit. Johannisberg wine, one bottle of Hermiez mineral water and a hazel-nut desert. Then we went to the City-Lichtspiele [a cinema], where during the showing of Morituri he looked at me from time to time and rolled his eyes; I motioned in the direction of the exit three times, but he remained seated and shrugged with his right shoulder. After the film, he drank two John Haig "Red Label" whiskies on the rocks. On November 16, we went to lunch so late that the Im Silbernen Winkel was filled to overflowing with cake-eating ladiesand he could only order, of the three warm dishes offered, a helping of jugged venison on spaetzle [a regional variety of pasta] and a green salad, with a cup of tea with lemon. In contrast, the evening meal in the Schloss Wülflingen restaurant was a minor feast. He consumed a bouillon with beef marrow (incomparably better than the one mentioned above), six helpings of saltimbocca alla romana ( he sent the rice back), another six helpings of saltimbocca alla romana, green salad; he drank 1/2 lit. Johannisberg wine; there followed crêpes Suzette, together with mocha coffee; and to accompany three glasses of pear schnapps, he chose a "Montecristo" Havana cigar, with an extended commentary on European cigar duties (he praised Switzerland for reckoning duty by weight) and on the preparation and packaging of Havana cigars. On November 17, he closed the recording sessions by composing a lunch: bouillon with beef marrow, sole meunière, 1/2 lit. Johannisberg wine, a pear Hélène, mocha coffee, one glass of pear schnapps and an Upman Havana cigar.

I mention the technical and material details of the recording sessions because I learned from these sessions how much the recording process, playback quality, and even the pianist's playing is dependent on all these conditions. These were the first recording sessions at which I personally had been present, and I was shaken by the extremely artificial situation, the amount of influence exercised by "imponderables", and the technical intervention in the musical sphere. -- Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück X"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

10. Klavierstück X [22'15"]

Things "with a will of their own" (one of many): During the recording of the eleventh Klavierstück on July 15, Kontarsky's every movement caused the stool to creak on the wooden floor. First, the recording was stopped and restarted several times; then pieces of rubber were put under the stool legs; finally, different sorts of mat were procured and put under the stool. Recording started again. Stopped again several times. The stool was taken apart and put back together. Recorded. Again interrupted. Other stools tried: same result. Finally, after about one and a half hours of fruitless effort, a wooden organ bench was found upon which Kontarsky played the rest of the recordings undisturbed. As he started recording again, Kontarsky called through the microphone, "My heartfelt thanks, many thanks, thank you, I'll never forget you! You know, you have to be able to move around for this piece. Thanks, many thanks...fantastic, thank you, gentlemen, thank you!" Kolbe answered over the loud speaker, "But now people listening to the record won't know when you've shifted your center of gravity, Mr. Kontarsky!"

ANALOG @ The Red Room Tonight

We're playing at the Red Room tonight, opening for Pamplemousse. The show includes original music for tuba and theremin, Robert Ashley and Stockhausen, and one of the members of the ensemble will be a visual artist projecting his interpretations of the scores throughout.

The Red Room
at Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street Baltimore
Doors open at 8:30
$6

Program
Karlheinz Stockhausen, IT
Karlheinz Stockhausen, INTENSITY
Dolf Kämper, PULSATING STARS...
Robert Ashley SHE WAS A VISITOR

PERFORMERS
Cody Griffith, visual artist
Dolf Kämper, trumpet & theremin
Alex Muehleisen, tuba
Nick Mazziott, trombone

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück IX"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

9. Klavierstück IX [9'42"]

Recording equipment:
Microphones: Neumann U 67, Telefunken KM 54, three Sennheiser MD 421s. The Klavierstücke I, II, III, IV, V, VIII & IX were recorded with one KM 54 and two MD 421s, Klavierstücke VI and XI with an additional U 67 under the piano to bring out the bass. Klavierstücke VII and X with the additional U 67 (as for VI and XI) used still another MD 421 (cardioid) directly above the piano strings to bring out the long, sustained resonant tones.
Recorder: Studer C 37 Stereo.
Three-channel mixer: Kudelski (Paudex near Lausanne) and Leonhard (Zurich).
Recording tape: AGFA PER 555, high output.
Monitor speaker: KLH, Model Four.
Music:
Kontarsky: Klavierstücke I-IV, V and VI, published by Universal Edition, reprint 1965; Klavierstücke VII and VIII, a photocopy of the manuscript that had been compared with the UE 1965 edition; IX and X, photocopy of the manuscript; XI, published by UE, new edition (1964).
Stockhausen and Kolbe: Klavierstücke I - VIII published by UE, 1965 edition; IX and X, a photocopy of the manuscript; XI, published by UE, new edition (1964).
Photographs were taken in the recording auditorium by Glattfelder, Winterthur, on July 2, 1965 from 10:00 to about 10:30 a.m. and from 3:30 to 4:00 p.m.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück VIII"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

8. Klavierstück VIII [1'43"]

Instruments
For the recordings on July 1 and 2, a Steinway (Hamburg) grand piano was used, Model D, built in 1959, No. 361 880, lent by Pianohaus Jecklin, Zurich. The piano had a definitely hard touch, its dynamics were balanced throughout the entire range and the resonance time was comparatively short, particularly in the highest range. The tone was considerably affected by the relatively high humidity (75%) at 21°C room temperature (rainy, muggy summer weather); it had to be retuned frequently (piano tuner: Doldinger, Winterthur).

For the recordings made on November 15 to 17, this piano was not available, as it had been rented to the Zurich Tonhalle for the entire 1965/6 winter season. Instead, the Steinway (Hamburg) grand piano Model D, built in 1964, No. 386 360, was borrowed from Pianohaus Hug, Zurich. This piano had a very soft touch and tone, was not balanced dynamically (volume fell off in the lowest and highest ranges, no brilliance), and had a rather long resonance time. The relative humidity was approximately 50% at an average room temperature of 18°C (because of the excessive heating, all the windows were opened at frequent intervals to keep the auditorium at this average temperature; dry, frosty weather, snow). Several notes had to be retuned repeatedly, the entire tuning was corrected once on the 16th and once on the 17th; the left pedal made a creaking noise that could only be corrected after several repairs (piano tuner: Wilhelm Baehr, Zurich).

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück VII"

7. Klavierstück VII [6'34"]

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück VI"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

6. Klavierstück VI [25'23"]

Tape recording:
Phonag AG, Stadthausstrasse 69, Winerthur, Switzerland, commissioned by COLUMBIA RECORDS, New York, MASTERWORKS, Mr. John McClure. Sound supervision and editing: Hellmuth Kolbe (Fohrlibuckweg 9, Zurich, Wallisellen). Assistant: Robert Lattmann (Etzbergstrasse 70, Winterthur). Recording supervision: Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hellmuth Kolbe.
Location: the large auditorium of the Parish Hall (Liebestrasse 3, Winterthur).
Time: July 1, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.: technical set-up, microphone adjustment and test recording; 3:00 - 6:30 p.m.: recorded Klavierstücke I, II, III, IV, V & VIII; 6:30 - 10:00 p.m.: edited Klavierstücke IV, V & VIII.
July 2, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.: microphone adjustment and test recording; 3:00 - 3:30 p.m. and 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.: recorded Klavierstücke VII and IX; 6:00 - 9:30 p.m.: editing.
July 3, 1965, 10:45 a.m. - 2:25 p.m.: edited Klavierstücke I, II & III; 2:30 - 3:00 p.m.: listened to the edited tapes of Klavierstücke I, II, III, IV, V, VII, VIII & IX.
November 15, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.: technical set-up, microphone adjustment and test recording; 2:45 - 4:00 p.m.: recorded Klavierstück VI from page 11 to end; 4:20 - 8:00 p.m.: recorded Klavierstück X to the top of page 8.
November 17, 1965, 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 - 7:00 p.m.: edited Klavierstück X and VI.
November 19, 1965, 10:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.: listened to Klavierstücke I-XI.
A list with all information on the segments recorded, as well as the sheet music with all remarks entered during editing, are in the possession of Phonag AG.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück V"

5. Klavierstück V [5'24"]

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück IV"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

4. Klavierstück IV [2'02"]

PERFORMER

Aloys Kontarsky, born May 14, 1931 in Iserlohn, Westphalia, received his first piano lessons at the age of five from his mother, later (1939-49) from Franz Hanemann Jr. (pupil of James Kwast and Max van de Sandt). In 1951, school-leaving certificate at the Oberschule, Iserlohn. In 1949, public concert with his brother Alfons (Stravinsky's Concerto for two pianos); 1951, Bartok's Sonata for two pianos and percussion. From 1949-51 lessons with Else Schmitz-Gohr at the Cologne Hochschule fur Musik, together with his brother Alfons, followed by one semester at the University of Freiburg (German studies and musicology). From autumn 1951 to January 1953, University of Cologne (German studies and musicology) and piano duo (again with Else Schmitz-Gohr). One year of illness. From January 1954 to autumn 1955, Cologne Hochschule fur Musik, solo piano and chamber music with Maurits Frank, music theory. In 1955, first prize for piano duo, together with his brother Alfons in the fourth German Radio International Music Competition. Autumn 1955 to 1957, pupil of Eduard Erdmann (Hochschule fur Musik, Hamburg). Since 1959, regular activity as concert pianist, mainly as a duo with his brother Alfons.

Since 1962, instructor at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music; since 1963, instructor at the Cologne Courses for New Music; since 1962, member of the Darmstadt International Chamber Ensemble (as well as public performances with individual soloists from this ensemble: Siegfried Palm [cello], Christoph Caskel [percussion], Severino Gazzeloni [flute]). In 1959 he married the actress Gisela Saur.

Most important premieres: Stockhausen: Klavierstuck IX, Mikrophonie I, Momente (Hammond organ); Kagel: Sur Scene; Pousseur: Caracteres; in addition, works by Brown, de Pablo and Zimmermann.

Frequent tours in all Western European countries; extensive tours in the Middle East, South and Middle America.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück III"

3. Klavierstück III [0'27"]

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Klavierstück II"

-- Liner Notes (Continued) --

2. Klavierstücke II [1'47"]

COMPOSER

Since finishing his studies (1947-51, Cologne University and Hochschule fur Musik), Karlheinz Stockhausen, born August 22, 1928 near Cologne, has composed KREUZSPIEL for oboe, bass clarinet, piano, 3 percussionists (1951); SPIEL for orchestra (1952); PUNKTE for orchestra (1952-62); KONTRA-PUNKTE for 10 instruments (1952/3); KLAVIERSTUCKE I-IV (1952/3); ELEKTRONISCHE STUDIEN I and II (1953/4); KLAVIERSTUCKE V-X (V-VIII 1954/5, IX-X 1954/61); ZEITMASZE for five woodwinds (1955/6); GRUPPEN for 3 orchestras (1955/7); KLAVIERSTUCK XI (1956); GESANG DER JUNGLINGE (1955/6); ZYKLUS for 1 percussionist (1959); CARRE for 4 orchestras and choirs (1959/60); REFRAIN for 3 performers (1959); KONTAKTE for electronic sounds, piano and percussion instruments (1959/60); ORIGINALE, musical theater (1961); MOMENTE for soprano solo, 4 choir groups and 13 instrumentalists (1962/4); PLUS-MINUS, twice seven pages for elaboration (1963); MIKROPHONIE I for tam-tam, 2 microphones and 2 filters (1964); MIXTUR for orchestra, 4 sine-wave generators and ring modulators (1964); MIKROPHONIE II for 12 singers, 4 ring modulators and Hammond organ (1965); SOLO for one melody instrument and magnetic tape recorder (1966); TELEMUSIK (1966); ADIEU for wind quintet (1966); PROZESSION for tam-tam, viola, electronium, piano, microphones, filters and potentiometers. All works have been published by UNIVERSAL EDITION, Vienna-Zurich-London.

Writings: TEXTE, Vol. I, zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik; TEXTE, Vol. II, zu eigenen Werken, zur Kunst anderer, Aktuelles (DuMont Schauberg, Cologne); numerous articles in periodicals, principally in "Die Reihe" (Universal Edition, Vienna; Theodore Presser Co., Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania).

First Stockhausen monograph: K. H. Worner (P.J. Tonger, Rodenkirchen/Rhine, 1963).

Since 1955, instructor at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music; since 1963, instructor at the Cologne Courses for New Music; 1963, teacher of composition at the conservatory in Basel, Switzerland; 1964, visiting professor of composition at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A.; 1966/7, leader of a composition class at the University of California Davis; since 1953, permanent participant in the Studio for Electronic Music of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk [West German Radio] in Cologne, where he has been the artistic director since 1962. Regular concert tours as director and performer of his own works in all European countries, the U.S.A. and Canada; 1966, five-month stay in Japan (for composition) and Asian tour.

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.

He Was A Visitor

He Was A Visitor began as a joint project between Baltimore performing musicians and visual artists from the Maryland Institute College of Art. ANALOG arts ensemble will present a program of selections from Stockhausen's From the Seven Days, Rudolf Kämper's Pulsating Stars Enable New Precise Determination of the Rotation of the Milky Way, as well as an audience participation version of Robert Ashley's She Was A Visitor. Visual artist Cody Griffith is our visitor in the ensemble. He will be working from the same descriptive score as the musicians to create an intuitive realization, not as an accompaniment but as another member of the ensemble.

Below is a short interview with the visual artist...

Cody: As someone who does not play an instrument, I will perform with visual media, keeping in my that my pen will be my instrument. It is difficult to translate Stockhausen's concepts into a language of imagery. Many questions have to be asked concerning the stability of this idea. I have practiced intuitive drawing before and will try to remain true to Stockhausen's ideas.

Dolf: Normally, when visual artists and musicians collaborate, an animator is given a tape and asked to interpret what they hear - or, a composer is given an existing film and asked to find music the compliment what they see. This time, you and the musicians are working from the same score. What are some of the ways you would interpret the score that are different than the musicians?

Cody: As a visual artist, upon hearing music, I create imagery in my mind. These images often begin in an abstract form and then move into the figurative.

Dolf: Have you been involved in improvised or intuitive drawing before? How about drawing/painting in public performance?

Cody: Warren Linn, a professor at Maryland Institute College of Art, worked with me on improvised drawing for years, whether it be from sound or a visual journalism. I have also done portrait work at community art festivals and painted public murals.

Dolf: You are also presenting some film for one of the pieces. What was your thought process in coming up with the material for that piece?

Cody: I look at Stan Brakhage a lot. I tried to focus on the silence and chaos of nature.

He Was A Visitor will be presented at Normal's Books as part of the RedRoom series, March 14, 8:30pm. See www.redroom.org for more info.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Ensemble"

Composition Seminar Karlheinz Stockhausen
ENSEMBLE
For a player and tape or short wave transmitter.

Side A
Side B

Process planning: Karlheinz Stockhausen

Composition realization: members of the composition seminar

Musicians from the Hudba Dneska Ensemble, Bratislava;
Aloys Kontarsky, Hammond organ,
Harald BojÈ, Alden Jenks, David Johnson, Petr Kotik: controllers

	Composer	Musician
Flute	Tomas Marco	Ladislav Soka
Oboe	Avo Somer	Milan Jezo
Clarinet	Nicolaus A.Huber	Juraj Bures
Basoon	Robert Wittinger	Jan Martanovic
French horn	John McGuire	Jozef Svenk
Trumpet	Peter R.Farmer	Vladimir Jurca
Trombone	Gregory Biss	Frantisek Hudecek
Violin	Jurgen Beurle	Viliam Farkas
Violoncello	Mesias Maiguashca	Frantisek Tannenberger
Double Bass	Jorge Peixinho	Karol Illek
Percussion	Rolf Gelhaar	Frantisek Rek
Hammond Organ	Johannes G.Fritsch	Aloys Kontarsky

ENSEMBLE is an experiment in adding a new concept to the traditional "concert". We are used to comparing different pieces played sequentially. In ENSEMBLE "pieces" of 12 composers are played simultaneously.

These "pieces" are musical objects ("works") not fully worked out. They are sound objects (produced on tape or with a short wave transmitter), with individual control, action and reaction models, and notated "events", which are introduced by the composers to the ENSEMBLE play in the process of the actual performance.

Each composer has composed for one musician and tape or short wave transmitter. The total plan and the introduction of the parts for its synchronisation with the ENSEMBLE were established by Stockhausen. The twelve systems and their coordination were formulated during daily meetings. The resulting four hour process is more than the addition of the "pieces": it is a composition of compositions, fluctuating between the complete isolation of the different events and the total dependence of each layer, and between extreme determinism and full improvisation.

On top of the 12 composers and musicians, who play together as "duos" - distributed throughout the room - four other musicians are responsible for using mixers to amplify and spacialize definite details and moments of the process via microphones and eight loudspeakers. Also, the position of the listener is not fixed. He can move in the room and thus establish his acoustical perspective.

The simultaneity of the compositions requires also that certain "pieces" should be heard together and related through superimposition.

This "verticalisation" of the perception of events and the relativisation of a definitive form ("piece" signed by an individual) happens not only in the field of music. -- Notes by Karlheinz Stockhausen

Darmstadt International Music Institute
22nd International Seminar for New Music 1967, director Ernst Thomas

The LP version of "Ensemble" was realized in the WDR Electronic Music Studio between August 26 and September 22, 1971. The available material was:

- Recording of the rehearsal on August 28, 1967 from 19:00-23:00 (6 stereo tapes, about 4 hours duration)

- Recording of the concert on August 29, 1967 from 19:00-23:00 (6 stereo tapes, about 4 hours duration)

The challenge for me was to reduce a four-hour performance to 50-60 minutes, and therefore I proceeded as follows.

1. I wanted as much as possible to keep the formal pattern that we had developed during the Seminar

2. I wanted to keep a balance between the deterministic, less deterministic and non-deterministic material.

My working method was as follows:

1. I listened to all tapes of both recordings. The material that seemed to me adequate, I copied.

2. This selected material was listened to again, cutting out some sections, so that a series of musical events remained, which I deemed relevant.

3. In the third process - the most difficult one - this material was cut, faded in and out and mixed occasionally according to my vision (retaining the time plan in its basic structure) -- Notes by Mesias Maiguashca

The Listening Habits of Superheroes:

NAME: Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt)
BORN: 1939
POWERS: Super intelligence and discipline, exceptional hand-to-hand combat skills.
MEMBER: Crimebusters
APPEARS: Watchmen

From "After the Masquerade: Superstyle and the art of humanoid watching" from Nova Express, July 12, 1975

NOVA: Changing the subject entirely, do you listen to much music? I wondered what your tastes might be, as a superhero...

VEIDT: I like electronic music. That's a very superhero-ey thing to like, I suppose, isn't it? I like avant-garde music in general. Cage, Stockhausen, Penderecki, Andrew Lang, Pierre Henry. Terry Riley is very good. Oh, and I've heard some interesting new music from Jamaica...a sort of hybrid between electronic music and reggae. It's a fascinating study in the new musical forms generated when a largely pre-technological culture is given access to modern recording techniques wihtout the technological preconceptions that we've allowed to accumulate, limiting our vision. It's called dub music.

ideas for a new kind of multi-channel presentation

We, at ANALOG, were privledged to be able to present the US premieres of two 8-channel works by Stockhausen at ARTSaha this year. One of them even got mentioned in the New Yorker.

There was a ton of work and organizing by the project's leader Joe Drew, and it was an experience few of us at ANALOG will ever forget.

It also got me thinking about alternative ways of presenting multi-channel works. Because of the difficulty and cost in securing the proper equipment for such a large hall, I became interested in finding a simple way to present an intimate multi-channel event. The post on my blog of ideas shows some of the experiments I've been into to work on that concept.





Dolf Kamper

The Drama In Doing Nothing

We were just in Cleveland performing a program that veered from Elliott Carter to Giuseppe Verdi to Prince, with heavy doses of Stockhausen and a finale of Queen. If it didn't all flow together like a good mixtape, I think we'd spend a lot of time answering questions like, "How do you justify putting Prince on the same program with Mauricio Kagel?". Thankfully, the flow works. It always has, for the most part, and to me, it's a very honest byproduct of being a child of the 80's, when everything started to become instantly available. My brain's all jacked up with high and low culture, and it's never really been clear to me what the difference was. Once, when I remarked to a professor that I thought Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' was as unimpeachable as 'Tosca', he said that if I really felt that way, I shouldn't be studying in a conservatory. At the time, most of my professors would've shared that view, but I doubt it now, given how many of us kids who grew up on CHiPs and Chopin are taking over the teaching posts nowadays.

What brings all of this to mind is Moby Dick, actually. I got to chapter 36 today ("The Quarter-Deck"), and it reminded me of Michael Jackson's entrance on the Dangerous tour. In my edition, over 100 pages have gone by, and Ahab has been not much more than a ghost. He makes his first real appearance in chapter 28, where Ishmael gives us a full rundown on his appearance. But he really doesn't do much until chapter 36, when he all of the sudden assembles the entire crew of the Pequod on the quarter-deck.

Melville ratchets up the drama with the slightest effort:

"Sir!" said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on shipboard except in some extraordinary case.

"Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. "Mastheads, there! come down!"

The exceptional nature of the circumstance is deftly drawn, and then Melville has Ahab lob some softballs at the crew:

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"

"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of chubbed voices.

"Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them.

"And what do ye next, men?"

"Lower away, and after him!"

"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"

"A dead whale or a stove boat!"

Ahab has his crew in the palm of his hand by sheer dint of doing nothing for some weeks and then throwing them off balance. The sheer weight of their anticipation, their hunger for some direction, and the force of his personality marry in an alchemical moment. When, moments later, Ahab entreats these strangers to join him on his mad quest after a crippled white whale, they are more than happy to seal their doom with the fellow.

As I was reading the passage today, the image of Michael Jackson taking the stage kept coming to mind. On his Dangerous tour, he'd shoot up onto the stage from a trap door, amid fireworks. Then, he'd do nothing.

Like Ahab, he knew the power of his presence. By simply letting the tension build, as Ahab did in the weeks of his silence, Michael turns up the audience's enthusiasm to sheer hysteria. Then, after a minute of standing there in stone silence, what does he do?

He turns his head.

It's an absolute mastery of the moment and his audience. With that entrance, Michael, like Ahab, can command absolutely anything. Maybe I've watched too much TV and listened to too many rock records, but the connection makes sense to me:

Michael jackson - dangerous tour
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Stockhausen Day at the BBC Proms

Via inconstant sol.

(As per usual, we don't think most people will bother with FLAC files; so, we converted to mp3)

Gruppen
Announcement
Cosmic Pulses (UK premiere)
Announcement
Harmonien (world premiere) (BBC commission)
Announcement
Announcement
Kontakte
Stockhausen interview
Gruppen (repeat performance)
Announcement
Announcement
Stimmung
Announcement

PERFORMERS
Marco Blaauw trumpet
Nicolas Hodges piano
Colin Currie percussion
Bryan Wolff sound projection

BBC Symphony Orchestra
David Robertson, conductor
Martyn Brabbins, conductor
Pascal Rophé, conductor

Theatre of Voices
Paul Hillier, director

Stockhausen Tribute Concert in LA

My roommate in Kuerten this year was an incredible guy named Bruce Friedman. He's a wonderful trumpeter and composer (his OPTIONS project is included in the new Notations21 book).

Bruce has lined up a really strong tribute program for this Saturday at Harbor College:

Telemusic (electronic music)
Klavierstück 7 and 9 (piano solos)
Cheer Up (from Amour for solo clarinet)
Connection (from “The Seven Days”)
Proposal (from “Freitag aus Licht”)
Halt (from “Donnerstag aus Licht”)
Tierkreis (for two guitars and trumpet)

musikFabrik's Take on Stockhausen

I'm just coming off a tour with musikFabrik's new production of Act II from Donnerstag, which is titled 'Michaels Reise um die Erde' (Michael's Journey Around the World). Originally, Markus Stockhausen played in a giant rotating globe for the La Scala production in 1981.

musikFabrik has breathed some much-needed fresh air into the LICHT production history with this inventive new staging. Marco Blaauw plays from a portable crane for the first half of the piece. There is a scrim at the front of the stage and a portable screen onstage which allows for double projections of everything from a vagina to the World Trade Center.

In this clip, the camera has trouble focusing on Marco, but it captures just how extreme the movements of the crane are. This was shot during a rehearsal in Dresden:



Full quality photos of the production can be viewed here. Perhaps the most encouraging part of this new production is how enthusiastic the curators of the Stockhausen estate have been about it. If there ever is a chance of staging LICHT in its entirety, fresh perspectives like musikFabrik's are going to be essential.

Think As Little As Possible (While Blogging)

Of all the nonsensical ways to approach Aus Den Sieben Tagen, this should be near the top:

Gold Dust

live completely alone for four days
without food
in complete silence, without much movement
sleep as little as necessary
think as little as possible...

Gold Dust, requires two performers to be isolated in adjacent hotel rooms for 4 days. On the 4th day (Friday 25 October), in the evening, they leave and go directly to Wilton's Music Hall and play together. They may not eat food for the duration of this event, but may have only liquid sustenance. They must have no contact with the outside world. They are required to maintain an online blog, writing of their experiences of this process, to serve as a real-time document of the work.

The key phrase in the piece is not the prohibition of food (eye-catching as that is), it is the instruction to 'think as little as possible'.

While some bloggers are apparently capable of posting without thinking, requiring the performers to blog about their 4-day preparation for the piece flies directly in the face of Stockhausen's intent.

As usual, he took a pivotal moment in his life and reworked it as a score. In the midst of a nervous breakdown, and on a hunger strike until his 2nd wife returned to him, he sat down at the piano and played a sound which he felt had been communicated through him, as if he were a short wave receiver. He asks the performers to eat nothing, move very little, say nothing, and barely sleep for four days because that's what Stockhausen had done before he received this sonority on the piano.

He called this method of composition 'intuitive', from that point on, and he would often return to this frame of thinking while working on a piece. Not quite as dopey as Hansel 'going monk' in his walk off with Derek Zoolander, but nearly, Stockhausen would literally take to his bed if he were in a tough spot with a piece. He'd quiet himself until he could hear what was next.

Editorializing the intuitive composition process destroys it. There's no way around that fact.

Matthew & Neil should start posting on Monday about Friday's performance, if you are interested.

Autumn In Warsaw Works Minor Miracles

Like the Lourdes of new music, the Warsaw Autumn festival yielded a few miracles this past week, at least from my perspective. The most notable has to be the as yet wholly unreported return of Markus Stockhausen to performing his father's music.

MusikFabrik was set to perform Michaels Reise from DONNERSTAG, but the trumpet soloist Marco Blaauw injured his lip a week before the Warsaw date. He called Markus and asked him to fill in on the show, and with no arm twisting, Markus agreed! He has not performed his father's music at all since 2001, and Michaels Reise is a hell of a way to get back in the Stockhausen saddle. It's an excruciating trumpet part, and it was an absolute joy to hear Markus playing this music again.



The 2nd miracle, to my eye, was the audience at the Torwar, which as best I can tell is usually used for rock concerts and sporting events. The 800 seats that were put on the floor were all completely filled, and with people of all ages. There were groups of teenagers giggling and having a night out. The concert was the Polish premiere of Cosmic Pulses, and having just presented the US Premiere of the same piece only 10 days earlier, I couldn't help but be astonished all over again at the sheer appetite for music that Europeans have. To say we had 1/10th the turnout in Omaha would be putting it kindly. (NOTE: The Omaha audience did respond to the piece more enthusiastically than the Polish one, however)

Tonight, the orchestral version of Hymnen will be performed on the festival (in an old vodka factory, of all places). With the Berlin performance of Gruppen kicking off the week, one can say Stockhausen is alive and well in Europe.

NOTE: Marco Blaauw and Markus Stockhausen performed in a trumpet quartet for a few years, and Stockhausen wrote Trompetent for them. dung will perform the piece this Saturday at St. Mark's on the Bowery, as part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music.

Stockhausen in the NY Times -- 1961

CONCERT STRESSES PERCUSSIVE SOUND; Works by Messiaen, Boulez and Others From Europe Heard at New School
ERIC SALZMAN.
February 6, 1961, Monday

Devotees of the beaten drum, the crashed cymbal, the tapped vibes, the clucking wood block and the gravelly guiros ahd another good time yesterday afternoon at the New School for Social Research. If you count the piano as a percussive, practically all the New Music From Europe on the prgoram fell into the category. Percussion is definitely In.

The international array of composers represented are all up-to-date types. They naturally use the latest and hottest idea: let the performer do it. Give him a few general notions on what to do, written in code on some large pieces of cardboard that can be shuffled at will. Then turn him loose on the battery to raised a virtuoso storm.

The casualties yesterday were two toppled wood blocks, a big drum that crashed over, the peace of mind of the performers who had to stop and rescue the instruments, and an undetermined number of busted eardrums.

Paolo Castaldi's "Frase" for piano and one percussion player, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati's "Liaisons" for vibra-marimbaphone, Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Zyklus" for one percussion player and Gilbert Amy's Invention I for flute, piano and vibra-marimbaphone happened to go one way. They might not have. It didn't matter very much.

It gave the performers an excuse for doing something. It did little more. Music like this is quite beyond criticism; it is so intended to be. If the composer won't take responsibility for his own piece, the bystander can hardly offer any comment except to call him a coward.

DELIA CALAPAI PLAYS PROGRAM FOR PIANO
ERIC SALZMAN
March 19, 1961, Sunday

The most convincing part of Delia Calapai's Town Hall piano program yesterday afternoon was the Klavierstueke I-IV of Karlheinz Stockhuasen.

Amid the fast-moving pace of the post-war modern music world, these pieces qualify only as early Stockhausen--elaborate, fractured serial pieces in the post-Webern "punkt-musik" style in fashion a few years ago. Miss Calapai took all these matters in hand and delivered a serious, effective reading that quite grasped the style.

Don Ellis Is an Eclectic of Jazz; His Trio Offers New Approaches to Old and Modern Ideas Trumpeter Makes an Impressive Debut at Village Vanguard
By JOHN S. WILSON
March 30, 1961, Thursday

...Mr. Ellis, in his playing, reveals a spread of influences that range from Louis Armstrong to the German avant-garde composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen.

SICILIAN SOIL INFLUENCES THE MODERN SEED
By ARTHUR BERGER
June 25, 1961, Sunday
PALERMO

The marriage of the old and new is another fillip Palermo can provide. Such was the case when an itinerant musician's pipe or a pedlar's cry penetrated the closed windows of the conservatory hall to add unexpected counterpoint to the fabulous flute-playing of Severino Gazzelloni, stellar virtuoso of the occasion, or to the drones of Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Kontakte," a lengthy, uneven four-channel electronic piece that has made the rounds in Europe in but a year of its existence.

4th Year of WQXR's Show on New Music
LISA HAMMEL
July 3, 1961, Monday

Titled "What's New in Music?" the enterprising program is heard Saturday afternoons on radio station WQXR...

The first Saturday in each month is set aside for new recordings. Last Saturday's interesting melange included Ernst Toch, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Richard Yardumian and a brief excerpt from a new "space" opera by the Swedish composer, Karl-Birger Blomdahl

RECITAL OFFERED BY PAUL JACOBS; Pianist Interprets Music of the Twentieth Century
By ERIC SALZMAN
November 19, 1961, Sunday

From Germany and Austria there was a whole series of landmark pieces: ...Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstueck V of 1954, a post-Webern, number-organized, maize, gruel and serial sort of piece, and the same composer's Klavierstueck XI of 1956, the first of a series of non-determined, non-serial pieces...

A word or two about the Stockhausen might be in order. Klavierstueck V is a solid somewhat arbitrary-sounding work as impressive as any work in the rather stiff, complicated, post-war, serial genre.

Klavierstueck XI comes out of a tube in the form of a rolled-up piece of cardboard containing nineteen musical snippets. Following some instructions, which will not be given here, the pianist skps around from one bit to another, more or less at random. The results are not likely to be the same twice--at least not within one lifetime. It is not easy to have an opinion about such a peice, although it is easy to have an opinion about the idea.

Stockhausen in the NY Times -- 1960

MUSIC POSES PROBLEM; Avant-Garde Work Calling for Seats' Removal Dropped
January 12, 1960, Tuesday

Part of Leonard Bernstein's projected series on "Twentieth Century Problems in Music" with the New York Philharmonic has run into a familiar twentieth-century difficulty: a housing problem.

The Philharmonic programs of March 31 to April 3 were entitled "The Search for New Techniques" and it was this search that led Karlheinz Stockhausen to score his "Groups" for three comlpetely [sic] independent orchestras, each of which must be placed in a different part of the auditorium. But the work of the young German avant-garde composer will not be performed in Carnegie Hall.

Following the composer's instructions would have meant ripping out seats on both sides of the hall to make room for the musicians. It is hoped that a performance will prove more feasible in Lincoln Center.

FESTIVAL CHANGED BY PHILHARMONIC; ' Mahagonny' Dropped From Theatre Musio Fete -- 2 Other Switches Listed
March 11, 1960, Friday

The Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht opera "Mahagonny" will not be performed by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein because of difficulties in obtaining the rights for the use of the libretto...

In two other switches, Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Gruppen," an avant-garde German work, has been replaced by unusual French and American compositions...

The Stockhausen work, which calls for three orchestras, has been replaced by Henry Brant's "Antiphony I," a composition that divides the orchestra into five groups; Pierre Boulez's "Improvisation sur Mallarme I," for soprano and an unusual instrumental ensemble including harp, vibraphone and percussion instruments; and "Concerted Piece for Tape Recorder and Orchestra" by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky.

RECITAL IS GIVEN BY DAVID TUDOR; Whacks and Scrapes Piano in Avant-Garde Works of Bussoti and Others
ERIC SALZMAN.
March 29, 1960, Tuesday

David Tudor has been known to perform on a "prepared" piano, but last night at the Living Theater he had to play a repaired piano...

...the socko last movement [Bussotti's "Pieces of Flesh"] cost the piano one of its black keys. Mr. Tudor glued it back on after the work, and it seemed to hold...

The whole evening was really very frustrating. Mr. Tudor is such a fantastic pianist; he can do the most unbelievable things. But there was very little that was worth the effort...

Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstueck VI was quite something else. It is a static piece, the hard sounds of which are repetitive and do not seem to add up to a single proportioned piece; at least on one hearing. But there is the sense of an utterance that is substantial and in which the means, the material and the realization stand in some sort of valid relationship with one another.

COLOGNE -- MEETING PLACE OF MODERN MUSIC
April 24, 1960, Sunday

Between June 10 and 19 there will be a great deal of contemporary music performed at Cologne, Germany. The thirty-fourth festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music will provide the nucleus for a series of concerts. All the works performed on the society's programs were selected by an international jury, with each national section being entitled to submit six works...

There will be two concerts for chamber orchestra. The one on June 11 will consist of "Cori di Didone", by Luigi Nono (extra selection), "Anagrams" by Mauricio Kagel (extra selection) and "Schwingungen" for four groups of loudspeakers and four instrumentalists by Karlheinz Stockhausen (Germany).

STRAVINSKY-GESUALDO; New Work Is a Transformation of Old Ones By 16th-Century Modernist
By VIRGIL THOMSON
October 2, 1960, Sunday
VENICE

Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, conducting the Orchestra of the Teatro La Fenice in the Sala Dello Scrutinio of the Doge's Palace, brought to a close last week this city's twenty-third festival of contemporary music...

...There also were two works by Stravinsky, which the composer conducted. These were the ballet score "Orpheus" and a new seven-minute work, "Gesualdo Monumentum."

This last is a homage, on the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth, to Gesualdo da Venosa, prince and murderer, as well as a composer of advanced harmonic invention...

Germans Represented

German composers represented included Karl Amadeus Hartmann (by his Seventh Symphony) Wolfgang Fortner (by a work for oboe and orchestra entitled "Aulodia"), and Karlheinz Stockhausen (chiefly by a piece for electronic tape, piano and percussion, entitled "Contacts.")

Stockhausen in the NY Times -- 1959

Schuller and Piston Quintets Bow Here
ERIC SALZMAN
March 11, 1959, Wednesday

Local premieres of two contemporary American works were features of the second of two Tuesday evening concerts given by the New York Woodwind Quintet last night in Carnegie Recital Hall.

A Quintet (1958) by Gunther Schuller is an important work of a talented young man who has turned of late from concert jazz to serial techniques. Mr. Shuller [sic] is a horn player, so it is understandable that he knows the winds intimately, and he writes for them with skill. But the work suffers slightly from stylistic inequities.

The first movement was the most "abstract," and hence might have seemed the most experimental. Actually, it leans heavily on its prototype, the "Zeitmasse" for wind quintet by the young German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The other two movements shake free of the influence and present more imaginative ideas.

DARMSTADT DEBATES; German City Host to a Festival That Discussed as Well as Played Music
By PETER GRADENWITZ
September 27, 1959, Sunday
DARMSTADT

Music has lost its once cherished spontaneity, freedom, variety and color of expression because classicism, romanticism and early serial music all tended toward applications of strict rules in composition and a completely "determined" way of execution--the composer writing his score, adding dynamic and expression marks and demanding specific results from the interpreter of his music. Music has not kept pace in its development in comparison with other arts, such as literature and painting. Music should never try to express feelings or depict literary programs...

These were some of the theses propounded at this year's fourteenth International Vacation Courses for New Music held by the Kranichsteiner Musikinstitut in conjunction with the Hessischer Rundfunk (Radio Frankfurt) and the Darmstadt Theatre...

Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Henri Pousseur...are the leading spokesmen of the youngest generation, and it was their lectures and demonstrations that proved the most interesting and rewarding of this year's events.

Stockhausen demonstrated the most extreme application possible so far of the "indetermination" in a composer's work and of the "freedom of choice" given to the interpreter. In a composition by the 28-year-old Italian, Sylvano Bussotti, "Piano Piece for David Tudor," the music presents itself as a line drawing. This drawing is to inspire the pianist to whom the composer leaves all freedom to interpret the lines, ornaments, points and signs of the "score." Stockhausen's own latest work, "Cycle for percussion instruments," applies this principle of "undetermined" music to a large group of percussion instruments served by one player who turns around in a circle to play a cycle of structures noted on single leaves, beginning and ending according to his own choice.

Most of the music heard could hardly be imagined in a performance other than by the miraculous David Tudor at the piano and Severino Gazzelloni the flutist. Indeed, a prominent visitor ventured to say that the only real composer this year was Tudor, who built complete edifices of music out of sparse lines of notation or drawing.

MORE MODERNS, PLEASE; Many Important Works Of Our Time Missing From LP Catalogues
By ERIC SALZMAN
November 15, 1959, Sunday

Whatever happened to the big boost that the long-playing record was supposed to give contemporary music?

Within the first few years of the LP disk a number of small companies were devoting much of their energies to the music of our century. Most of these outfits have long since passed on and, with them, their catalogues...

Stereo may mean real drought for the moderns, at least for the moment. With a few exceptions, most of the major companies are concentrating on getting out stereo versions of bestsellers, standards and stand-bys...

...there are a host of big European names who might fairly demand a hearing in the new catalogue on the basis of merit or importance.

The Italians, Luigi Dallapiccola, Goffredo Petrassi and Luigi Nono; the Germans, Hans Werner Henze, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giselher Klebe and Boris Blacher; the Englishman, Matyas Sieber; the Russian-Swiss, Vladimir Vogel; the Frenchman, Pierre Boulez, are all names to conjure with in Continental circles but are represented in our catalogues not at all or poorly. Some have had works made available in Europe. Deutsche Grammophon has a whole contemporary series. Decca, please take note...

Invoking the deities and the A and R men is undoubtedly not enough. As always, one gazes longingly in the direction of the foundations. This is a large country and its musical life is heterogeneous. This diversity, often accounted a virtue, has hurt the American composer because there are no adequate channels to make his work widely known across the land, even when he can get performances. A good program of recording combined with good publicity and distribution facilities, might work wonders.

Music: An Annual Visit; Pittsburgh Symphony Plays Hindemith, Nono
By HOWARD TAUBMAN
November 17, 1959, Tuesday

The Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by William Steinberg came to New York for its annual Carnegie Hall appearance last night and bore the gift of two unfamiliar pieces. One was by the young Italian, Luigi Nono, who is far out in the advance guard. The other was by Paul Hindemith, now moving up into the rank of grand old man, and this work carried the proud title "Pittsburgh Symphony."

Mr. Nono often is bracketed with Pierre Boulez of France and Karlheinz Stockhausen of Germany among the leaders of the international vanguard, which is experimenting with all sorts of new--and strange--musical materials. In "Due espressioni," which had its New York premiere, the most radical device is to organize the percussion section like the elements of a choir. Otherwise, the full apparatus of the symphony is used, but always with restraint and reserve.

Stockhausen at the Proms

There was quite a flurry of posts about the Stockhausen tribute at the Proms. Sadly, it sounds like the big dud was Gruppen, because only a handful of folks were in the money spot between all three orchestras.

Boring Like a Drill:

In addition to the strongest overtone singing I've heard in a performance of the piece [Stimmung] (some punters afterward believed they were electronic effects), Theatre of Voices invested their performance with the solemn informality of a true ritual, unifying the spiritual and corporeal aspects of Stockhausen's vision as embodied in the text's inclusion of the names of gods and self-penned erotic poetry (which, in true British fashion, were printed in the programme but not translated).

Intermezzo: This post comes with some very lovely photos of the event.

Cosmic Pulses, from Stockhausen's last, unfinished work Klang, was some contrast. Half an hour of electronic tape loops, swirling around the Royal Albert Hall from a series of speakers placed far above our heads, it was an extraordinary, enveloping experience. Like some cathedral from outer space, or a summons from the gods, warped organ sounds piped from the walls. As dulled bells pealed in the distance, testament to Stockhausen's profoundly religious background.

Musical Criticism:

The decision to perform Gruppen twice is itself indicative of the intelligent and sensitive thinking that went into this concert. Concert halls are only just starting to discover the potent effect of a repeated performance within a single concert, especially where contemporary art music, or any music that is aurally challenging, is involved. Gruppen provides the listener with a spectacular introduction to issues that stayed in Stockhausen's mind until the end: multi-directional, travelling sound, and the poetry of highly complex structures. Yet the work also provided the perfect close to a programme that chose to celebrate the constant elements in Stockhausen's output, rather than the more often dealt-with changes. Both performances were excellent in themselves – the second, as often happens, exceeding the first one in accuracy, without however the usual loss in overall synergy.

This Is London:

Cosmic Pulses, from the immense, unfinished cycle Klang, was purely electronic; with lights dimmed, the Albert Hall sounded like a mighty beast woken from slumber.

Financial Times:

On the way home from Saturday’s late-night Prom a distant clap of thunder rumbled around the sky. Somewhere up there, I thought, Karlheinz Stockhausen is still at work, conjuring awesome sounds to put in his next cosmic musical creation.

There could not have been a better occasion than the BBC Proms for a memorial concert to Stockhausen, who died at the end of last year. The audience is generally open to experimental ideas such as his and the vast Royal Albert Hall is well suited to the work of a composer afflicted with a serious case of megalomania.

Telegraph:

Only Stockhausen would have dared it. About an hour into the Saturday evening Prom devoted to his music, a lone trumpeter came on to the platform and, in between long burnished notes, announced, word by word, the phrase "Lob sein Gott!" - "Praise your God!"

This was the opening gesture of his late work Harmonien, commissioned by the BBC, which was being given its world première by the astonishing Dutch trumpet virtuoso Marco Blaauw. Even for a confirmed atheist like me there was something moving in that naïve, imperious command

Stockhausen in the NY Times -- 1958

1958 was a rough year for Zeitmasse, which is the only piece of Stockhausen's to be reviewed in the Times. Neither critic received it favorably.

It's interesting to note that Stockhausen first spooked Americans on Halloween.

MODERN SCORES FROM 17 NATIONS; Strasbourg Plays Host To Recently Ended I. S. C. M. Festival
By PETER GRADENWITZ
June 29, 1958, Sunday
STRASBOURG

Most of the music performed was "serial music," not all of it purely dodecaphonic, though. It is probable that the principles of serial writing will go down in music history as the only new technical and stylistic devices that have produced a really new mid-twentieth-century music.

However, many young composers seem to be so delighted with the technical tricks possible (but not necessary) in serial music that their compositions have nothing but technical interest. One visitor mockingly said I.S.C.M. stood for International Series Computing Machine...

Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Zeit-Masse" for wind quintet was not new to most festival visitors. It is an interesting but not wholly convincing attempt at reviving liberty and improvisation in performance.

SCHOLARS MEET; International Society Confers in Cologne
By EDWARD DOWNES
July 20, 1958, Sunday

A report on the 1958 triennial meeting of the International Musicological Society, Downes only mentions Stockhausen in passing, while setting the scene.

The Cologne conference was as wide in scope as the host city itself. The impressive remains of the Roman colony, which gave the city its name, lie almost within sight of a large Ford factory on the Rhine. From the Cologne radio station, where Karlheinz Stockhausen leads a group of radical composers of electronic music, it is only two city blocks to the great cathedral and its eleventh-century shrine with the bones of the three kings who followed the star to Bethlehem.

YOUNG RADICALS; First LP Issues of Works by Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen
By EDWARD DOWNES
September 14, 1958, Sunday

Expert Group
This is the first LP disk issued in this country of a work by M. Boulez and it seems an excellent choice [Le Marteau sans maitre]. It is performed by an expert group of chamber musicians under the direction of Robert Craft with Margery MacKay, alto, as soloist. The reverse of this single Columbia disk contains Nr. 5 Zeitmasse the first work of the German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, to be released in this country...

Herr Stockhausen's "Nr. 5 Zeitmasse" left this listener as cold as did the same composer's electronic music performed this summer by the Cologne radio. "Nr. 5 Zeitmasse," which is for woodwind trio, uses many of the same complex serial techniques as M. Boulez' score, but it lacks the latter's surface appeal. And underneath the surface this listener failed to hear anything but a confused jumble of notes. They sounded as if they were played with wonderful precision but they grew duller with repetition. In addition to his conducting, Mr. Craft contributed copious and interesting sleeve notes, part technical, part personal.

German Composer to Visit U.S.
October 31, 1958, Friday

Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer, will arrive here Sunday for his first visit to the United States. He will lecture Monday at 8:30 P.M. in Columbia University's McMillin theater on "New Developments in Instrumental and Electronic Music." Herr Stockhausen is a leader in electronic composition in the studio of the West German Radio at Cologne. Columbia University has what it believes to be the only comparable electronic studio in this country.

Stockhausen in the NY Times -- 1957

There was only one formal mention of Stockhausen, in a review of David Tudor's recital at the Carl Fischer Concert Hall. The program also included two works each by Bo Nilsson, Henri Pousseur and Bengt Hambraeus.

The second mention of Stockhausen came in the form of some creative insults from a reader.

Music: Tudor Plays Modern Works; Pianist Heard at Carl Fischer Concert Hall European Composers Make Up Program Daniel Abrams Bows
By ROSS PARMENTER
April 23, 1957, Tuesday

Ever since he began playing here seven years ago, David tudor has devoted himself to experimental composers. Recently, too, the young Philadelphia pianist has become a sort of liaison performer between the United States and Europe...

The cross-fertilization process was shown most strikingly in Karlheinz Stockhausen's No. 4 Klavierstueck XI. It was a work in which the young German musician incorporated into his own composing the ideas of chance that John Cage and other Americans have been developing.

The work consisted of nineteen or twenty fragments of music written on a sheet of cardboard that resembled a medium-sized poster. The instructions were for the performer to start with the fragment that caught his eye first. Then he was to play the other fragments at random, the stipulation being that when he found he had played one fragment three times he was to stop. The piece was over.

The work was programmed twice. Mr. Tudor first played it just before the intermission and then he played it as the concluding work...

Both performances sounded equally episodic and disjointed. In fact, it was hard even to distinguish this work from the earlier eighteen-minute Stockhausen No. 2 Klaviertuck VI [sic]. There were the same angry piling of notes, followed by isolated clanks and bell-like tones, the same unexpected pauses and the same absence of such elements that ordinarily make for coherence as melody and formal rhythm...

Instead of its conventional place on the stage, the piano was placed in the center of the hall. the listeners made a rectangle as they sat on the four sides of the performer. They hung on each note with absorbed attention. One gained the impression, too, that the composers were men of extraordinary earnestness. But whether this music is really the music of the future remains to be seen. This listener was interested, but he could not honestly say he enjoyed it.

FROM THE MAIL POUCH
May 19, 1957, Sunday

EXPERIMENT
To the Music Editor:
I enjoyed Ross Parmenter's review of David Tudor's performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's No. 4 Klavierstueck XI. However, I feel that I have surpassed Herr Stockhausen's experimental technique. In my system several pre-punched International Business Machines cards are arbitrarily arranged by a 3-year-old neighbor. The resulting pack is fed into a large calculating device, which, in turn, activates a piano keyboard. This is indeed "pure" music, for it is almost entirely free of cumbersome devices such as form, discipline and meaning.

M. HARRIS CHASE
Brooklyn.

Stockhausen in the NY Times -- 1956

In the summer before he turned 28, Stockhausen came up in three articles in the New York Times.

STOCKHOLM FETE LACKS NOVELTIES; Even Most Extreme Works on Modern Music Program Are Short on Shock Value
By HAROLD C. SCHONBERG Special to The New York Times.
June 6, 1956, Wednesday
STOCKHOLM, Sweden

A review of the 30th annual ISCM festival. Schonberg cites 'an absence of real shockers', saying 'the closest thing along those lines' was Stockhausen's Kontrapunkte, and Toshiro Mayuzumi's Ectoplasme. Of Stockhausen, he writes, "...a 28-year-old German, is that country's leading exponent of electronic music, but his "Kontrapunkte," a chamber work scored for ten instruments, is a more or less conventional twelve-tone piece strongly in the style of Webern. It is extremely ingenious, extremely dissonant, and it has a novel piquancy for the first three minutes, after which it begins to dissipate itself.

SPLITTING THE OCTAVE; I.S.C.M. Composer Believes He Can Break It Down Into 42 Segments
By HAROLD C. SCHONBERG
June 17, 1956, Sunday
STOCKHOLM

Again from the ISCM, Schonberg writes, "Modern music has to a large extent consolidated itself. There was...little of the breathless experimentation that went on in the Twenties or early Thirties. Present-day ears are inured to dissonance...It may be that the harmonic liimit has been reached and that the only really new developments will come from those experimenting with electronic music.

Experimenters
At the ISCM concerts there were two such experimenters, and the more voluble was Karlheinz Stockhausen. This young German composer, born in 1928, is tall, boyish and utterly dedicated. He has a typical streak of German mysticism--a streak that led him to describe his "Kontrapunkte," a score for ten orthodox instruments, as a work in which "the contrasts may be so arranged that a state is created in which only one unity and one infinity are audible."

But his main interest is an electronic music, of which he is Germany's leading exponent. Stockhausen's views toward the new art are near-religious and his eyes take on a fanatical glow when he refers to "our music."

The Basic Aims
Basically, he says, his musical aims are those of any composer--to be master of his material, to employ the laws of musical form, and to create an emotional entity...One of his electronic works has been published by Universal Editions, and Stockhausen has prefaced it witha long and detailed introduction. Any electronic technician, he says, should be able to follow those directions and set up equipment that can realize the score...

...[Gesang der Jünglinge] uses forty-two steps in the octave...Stockhausen, incidentally, believes that the human ear, given a point of reference, can distinguish many more than forty-two steps to the octave.

Other Ideas
Stockhausen will not entirely desert his instrumental composition for electronic music. Up to now he has been greatly influenced by Anton von Webern, "the greatest composer of the century." He has many new ideas for instrumental compositon, and is preparing a work that employs (if this bewildered listener accurately followed his statement) a theory between the electrical system of his own body and the instruments themselves.

EXPERTS ON SOUND PULL NEW STRINGS; Congress on Acoustics Hears Electronic Music, Discusses Deceptive Tape Recording Wired for Sound New Music in the Air
By ROBERT K. PLUMB Special to The New York Times.
June 23, 1956, Saturday
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

Music and engineering were matched here yesterday at the second International Congress on Acoustics. The general conclusion was that music lost...

Wired for Sound
[Werner Meyer Eppler] introduced several compositions by the experimental German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Herr Stockhausen uses sounds produced by electronic devices to make his music. He is, according to Professor Meyer Eppler, the composer of the only piece of electronic music that has been published in score form.

The score of this composition (Stockhausen's 1954 Study No. 2) was a disappointment to those accustomed to conventional musical notations. It specifies tape lengths in fractions of inches in place of note duration. In electronic-music scoring, crescendos and diminuendos are indicated in decibels.

As part of a discussion of electronics compositions, Professor Meyer Eppler played (on tape) Herr Stockhausen's latest work, "Song of the Young Man in the Furnace," which had its world debut five weeks ago in Cologne. That performance utilized five loudspeakers. Today, Professor Meyer Eppler got along with one...

Engineers at the session felt that the composition was hard to understand, since it had a lot of musical effects that sound merely like something falling down stairs.

Professor Meyer Eppler agreed that electronic was difficult for the average listener, but he maintained that people who were familiar with modern music could understand it pretty well. This view was challenged by others in the discussion that followed.

New Music in the Air
But Professor Meyer Eppler and others maintained that new sound-producing and transforming techniques were going to change music. Eventually, a composer will be able to fix his ideas forever in sound through electronic devices, just as a sculptor fixes his ideas in modeling clay. No interpretation or change will be possible later.

I Have a New Favorite Stockhausen Piece

(Can I switch them inside of a week?!)

It's one that I'd never taken seriously before, but seeing it in performance was a spectacular experience. It is Inori, for orchestra and two mimes. The orchestral writing is well and truly spectacular, and the mimes are using these Japanese prayer gestures, which are precisely synchronized in the score. Kathinka performed it with Alain Louafi, and it was spellbinding.

The weekend started with the German premiere of Glanz, which is the tenth hour of KLANG. Sad to say that the Asko Ensemble seemed wholly uninspired, and it was a frustrating performance of a fantastic piece.

One of the interesting things to note about KLANG is that the Urantia book is placed front and center. The other night, we were looking at the saxophone part for Edentia, which is a location in the Urantia book. In fact, one of the hours of KLANG is even titled Urantia.

It's been fascinating to see how strong the turnout still is for these concerts. Stockhausen's first wife, Doris, has been to several, and her grandson is studying trumpet and working as a stagehand.

I should say that the reason I'm here is to get the necessary training to project Cosmic Pulses, which is the 13th hour of KLANG. ANALOG arts ensemble will be giving the US premiere of the piece at ARTSaha! 2008. The piece is very important in the KLANG cycle, because all of the tape parts in the later hours are layers from Cosmic Pulses. We will also give the US premiere of Friday's Greeting. (The two pieces couldn't be more different)

Cosmic Pulses is only a year old, and the premiere in May 2007 in Milan was packed. It was given its German premiere at the 2007 courses, and there were so many people here that they were sitting on the floor.

May God grant such turnout in Omaha on September 12!

"But concerning that day or that hour..."

...no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” - Mark 13:32-37

No one knows, indeed.

Except, of course, for Stockhausen. ;)

In the last two years of his life, his rate of composition increased dramatically. He wrote far more than he ever would in a normal year, and he kept telling those who were close to him that he was 'running out of time'.

When I was in the middle of writing that little survey of Stockhausen's career, I found I kept putting it off because I didn't want to let go of him. I suppose it was my own grieving process, and I was miserable when there were no more decades to write about. When it was all done and I'd hit the 'Publish' button on the last post, I couldn't stop thinking of the final line of A Prayer for Owen Meany.

The parallels between the two are uncanny, in my mind. Owen knows the specific date he will die, and the things that set him apart in life (his abnormally small size; his high-pitched voice; his profound intelligence) all factor into his death, as if he lived by thesis. That is certainly how Stockhausen endeavored to live, as though everything in his life were governed by a tone row or a super-formula.

In the Tibetan tradition, the soul gets easily distracted after death, and it faces a perilous journey towards Heaven (or whatever you want to call it). It is very easy for the soul to lose its way and end up in limbo. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (which is referenced heavily in Samstag) is a series of exercises meant to help prepare the soul for the journey. The prayers in the book are all designed to bolster the spirit as it faces temptations away from nirvana.

It seems clear now that in the last two years, Stockhausen was consciously winding down his time on Earth and truly preparing for his own journey. Realizing that only makes his absence more bittersweet to me, and I've found this final passage from Owen Meany coming to mind again and again as I study here in Kuerten:

There’s a prayer I say most often for Owen. It’s one of the little prayers he said for my mother, the night Hester and I found him in the cemetery—where he’d brought the flashlight, because he knew how my mother had hated the darkness.

“’INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,’” he’d say over my mother’s grave; and so I say that one for him—I know it was one of his favorites.

I am always saying prayers for Owen Meany.

And I often try to imagine how I might have answered Mary Beth Baird, when she spoke to me—at Owen’s burial. If I could have spoken, if I hadn’t lost my voice – what would I have said to her, how could I have answered her? Poor Mary Beth Baird! I left her standing at the cemetery without an answer.

“Do you remember how we used to lift him up?” she’d asked me. “He was so easy to lift up!” Mary Beth Baird had said to me. “He was so light – he weighed nothing at all! How could he have been so light?” the former Virgin Mother had asked me.

I could have told her that it was only our illusion that Owen Meany weighed “nothing at all.” We were only children – we are only children – I could have told her. What did we ever know about Owen? What did we truly know? We had the impression that everything was a game – we thought we made everything up as we went along. When we were children, we had the impression that almost everything was just for fun – no harm intended, no damage done.

When we held Owen Meany above our heads, when we passed him back and forth – so effortlessly – we believed that Owen weighed nothing at all. We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen’s weightlessness; they were the forces we didn’t have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in—and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands.

O God—please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

"Were not our hearts burning within us...?"

(It warms the heart to see a poster from my alma mater here. Apparently this was a nutso performance of 'Hymnen' with planes flying overhead and all sorts of musicians involved.)

If you don't mind a little kookiness, it is very weird here. The last time I was here, of course, Stockhausen was everywhere, and his presence is so unforgettable. Last night, we heard the electronic music from Friday, and during the swinger's party of the 2nd half, I could have sworn that Stockhausen was actually on the stage, looking out at all of us.

The electronic music is presented in a completely darkened hall; so, the mind wanders extraordinarily. And in the middle of this music, I became overwhelmed by the sense of his presence in the hall, almost as if he were speaking directly to us.

In my morning lesson with Marco Blaauw, he said that Stockhausen would appear to him quite often in dreams. He also quite remarkably told of how he died. He explained that Stockhausen came downstairs to breakfast breathing very very slowly. Stockhausen said that he had discovered a new way of breathing which would influence his future music. He was actually having a heart attack, and died almost immediately.

He appeared to Marco in a dream shortly after he died, one last time. Marco said that he and several other of Stockhausen's interpreters felt as if they had gotten their farewells from Stockhausen before he passed via emails that read like goodbye letters, almost as if he knew.

One of the telltale signs that something was up is that there are no sketches for future pieces, not even the unfinished hours of Klang. There were always sketches for future pieces...always.

So, it almost seems as if his death were planned. Not a suicide, per se, but a meticulous conclusion of a meticulous life, as though Stockhausen knew he would pass on in December of 2007 and continue his work in another life.

Scents of the Seven Days

In Sonntag, Stockhausen added another layer to his matrix of symbols for the seven days of LICHT: smells.

Monday: Cuculainn (Celtic fragrance)
Tuesday: Kyphi (Egyptian fragrance)
Wednesday: Mastic (Greek fragrance)
Thursday: Rosa Mystica (German/Italian fragrance)
Friday: Tate Yunanaka (Mexican fragrance)
Saturday: Ud Wood Aquilaria Agarlocha (Indian fragrance)
Sunday: Frankincense (Somalian fragrance)

Opera in Smell-O-Vision?

You bet!

During the fourth scene (Dufte-Zeichen), the various fragrances are burned as singers unfurl the banner for their individual day. The stations looked like this:



(click for more pics)

Yesterday, Kathinka shared that Stockhausen was thinking of these scents just moments before he died. When he knew he was passing, he said to her, "We need to do more with the smells. I hear them like melodies in my head." She wasn't really sure what he meant and wondered if he already had started to cross over to the next life.

Wednesday Farewell

I have a new favorite Stockhausen piece. I fell in love with it during last night's concert.

It's Wednesday Farewell from 1996. This small excerpt of the piece was the cause of one of those magical listening experiences that are so unique to Stockhausen. We hear the sound of children playing for quite a while, and then some random elephants trumpeting, and then we hear the sound of the children doing cannonballs into a pool. It is utterly playful and sonically captivating at the same time.

The piece is in the octophonic projection scheme that Stockhausen favored heavily in the later years. Of Wednesday Farewell he writes:

The element air, and space characterise the music of WEDNESDAY from LIGHT - not only the composition of different acoustic spaces, but also of fantasy spaces.

In all 11 fantasy spaces, air and wind sounds are the unifying aspect: from ventilators via jet-fighters, steam locomotives to sailing-ship-double-bass-rattling.

In WEDNESDAY FAREWELL it is essential to fly along in this tranreal world (which cannot exist in "concrete" human life), and in the free flight of fantasy as a bodiless spirit to hear the Earth as music within and around oneself.

The Scholars Come Out To Play

Another perk of coming to Kuerten is meeting the folks who have done much of the heavy lifting in the musicology of Stockhausen.

I had a chance to talk with Jerome Kohl last night. Jerome has written a half dozen indispensable articles about Stockhausen, including the vital translation of the first chapter of Christoph von Blumröder's book, which is all about his tutelage by Herman Hesse.

After-Oktophonie drinks (and they are most certainly needed after such an intense listening experience) were had with Richard Toop (above) who is the grand old figure in the Stockhausen arena. He could enchant for hours, and a simple question about the process of Plus-Minus yielded an extemporaneous dissertation.

Earlier in the day, I'd listened to the famous recording that Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew did of the piece, which had quite an impact on Stockhausen:

When I heard the tape of the Cardew-Rzewski version of Plus-Minus for the first time, I was, in a truly unselfish sense, fascinated by it...Sounds and sound combinations that, while recognizing their use by other composers, I had personally avoided (prepared piano and radio music), were now being brought by performers into my music, and in exact accordance with the functional sound requirements laid down in the score. The result is a highly poetic quality, reached as a result of the way Plus-Minus is constructed: when such a result is obtained, detailed considerations of sound and material become unimportant."

Getting access to the archive recording of this performance is a true blessing, given its significance to Stockhausen. Toop dismissed most of the performances of the piece as not having anything to do with the score, including Rzewski/Cardew's, and he put his finger on the reason why when he said that the score is 'overdetermined'.

The Death of the Cool

Hymnen always reminds me of News of the World.

Brian May said that, from about 1977 - 1981, Queen really felt like they 'owned the U.S.', like whatever they did here would work. But by the mid-80's, when they were breaking attendance records on just about every continent, their US label had stopped bothering to release their new albums. Something happened, and the US audience just evaporated. But what?

A decade earlier, in the late 60's and early 70's, Stockhausen 'owned' new music, it's safe to say. Adored by famous rock stars, his concerts drew people that current promoters would kill to get. When the Times reviewed his legendary 1971 performance of Hymnen with the NY Phil, the critic was astonished by the amount of young people in the audience. At a subsequent concert in Alice Tully, again, the Times critic noted how many kids were there with long hair and how much they enjoyed the concert.

One of the great things about being in Kuerten is seeing stuff like these costumes from the battle scene of 'Dienstag'. While I understand in theory why Stockhausen disappeared from the radar in the US, it's tough to understand why shit like this isn't still the epitome of cool:

With eight speakers placed in the corners of the cuboid musical space, the electronic music represents the bombs, missiles and aeroplanes of a battle scene around above and below the audience. The stage is blocked off by a mountain side. Lucifer's troops, in red and black, have trombones and are led by a bass singer. They attack the precipice, revealing it as a camoufaged metal wall, with trumpet bells protruding from within. Michael's fighters have trumpets, their commander is a solo tenor and they wear blue and black. Both sides have a synthesizer and a percussion player, carrying amplifiers and loudspeakers with them. During the fierce battle the metal wall is torn down by welding torches and a crystal wall is revealed. It is clear that Luzifer's forces wish to demonstrate that there is no world beyond the wall.

As John McCain would say, "That's crazy...crazy exciting!"

Thou Shall Not Make Any Graven Images (Or Touch That Knob!)

Yesterday, Stockhausen's projectionist Bryan Wolf was discussing how sometimes he would get nervous in performance when he had to make adjustments to the volume. He cited two instances where Stockhausen would urge him to increase the volume: soft passages in Kontakte and the clicking passage in Michael's Jugend.

He recalled, "In Michael’s Jugend, there’s a section where there’s clicks coming from the choir tape, and you have to throw them around the room…I remember Herr Stockhausen saying, “MORE! MORE!”

But, he warned that these types of adjustments aren't acceptable in the music of Stockhausen.

(Hang on a tic, right?)

He warns, "If something like that is not specifically indicated in the score. You just don’t do it. It’s not allowed. This is not Nono…In the Nono performance practice, it’s raw material that you’re allowed to work with. ..This is a completely different performance practice, and that’s exactly what you should not do…"

But, I ask, "Why is it okay for Stockhausen to notice things and bring them out, but not for us?"

Bryan responds, "Because that’s not the way the piece is composed. The piece is finished on tape. That is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s performance material. That is the piece."

Now, to be fair, we are at the friggin' Stockhausen Course. It's not the Jim Bob Course. The whole point of the place is to pass on the tools to perform Stockhausen's music as he intended. But therein lies one of the happier contradictions in Stockhausen's work. As dogmatic as he was, he never hesitated to abandon his principles in favor of practicality.

More later...

Ah, Kuerten...

The first day of the 2008 Stockhausen Course went brilliantly, so I heard. I wouldn't know. I was stuck in traffic driving from Berlin, after seeing the Maulwerker show.

(For which, I was also late. It turns out, there is a lot of experimental music in Berlin, and it's quite easy to walk into the wrong concert, sit down, think you are at a Maulwerker event, and that your fellow blogger is just in the loo, only to find that you are still two blocks away and frightfully late.)

I did manage to catch the 2nd half of the opening concert, which ran:

Studie I
Studie II
Gesang der Jünlinge
-Intermission-
Kontakte

Hearing these pieces in full multi-channel glory is always a revelation. The amount of detail in Kontakte is astonishing, and even this dopey little live recording of the performance picks up things that one never hears on the record, even on the closest listen.

Tonight is the great sound epic Hymnen.

More later.

STOCKHAUSEN'S ORIGINALE ORIGINALE

Just in case you thought the bizarre theatrics of LICHT were somehow new terrain for Stockhausen:

The stage actions consisted largely of normal activities undertaken by actors who were basically playing themselves: a poet played himself as "the poet," reading poetry on stage; a "painter" paints; a "film man" and "lighting man" and "models" go about their normal business, all within their allotted times (hence the title of the piece: "originals" playing themselves). A visual and aural complexity was created by the juxtaposition of these simultaneously occurring activities, creating an aura of absurdity which contrasted with the normality of the events themselves. In addition, some of the performers, such as the explosive performance artist Nam June Paik, went the opposite direction, performing bizarre actions within their roles. And certain elements of the set, such as goldfish swimming in a bowl hanging from the ceiling, contributed to this contrast between the mundane and the absurd.

Stockhausen added another layer of irony to the title by basing Originale on his previous work, Kontakte, rather than composing new music for the piece. So, at the beginning of Originale, we see a pianist and a percussionist (playing themselves, of course) performing Kontakte. However, there is a film camera and a tape recorder present, as well as a stage manager shouting instructions over the music. After a few minutes, the players stop and the tape of their performance is heard, along with the recorded shouts of the stage manager. Thus we see a pianist and percussionist, recording and filming themselves playing a composition which itself contains prerecorded sounds - performances within performances, by "originals" playing themselves...

...at one performance Paik was suddenly handcuffed to the scaffolding by a well-coordinated group of audience members who then disappeared. Everyone thought it was part of the show until Paik called "feebly but only half-intelligibly about his inability to get to the piano." For his part, Paik varied his performance each night, as he had done in Cologne, throwing curve balls to the cast and audience.

Adding to the general unpredictability was the concurrent protest undertaken outside the concert hall by a number of New York artists, including Henry Flynt, Tony Conrad, and George Maciunas, who collectively denounced Stockhausen as a "cultural imperialist." (Maciunas, the leader of the Fluxus art group, also considered Moorman something of a rival within the New York art world, though other Fluxus members were performing in the show.) -- From Ubuweb.

(View or download the film)

Stockhausen Field Guide

With the survey of Stockhausen's compositional career concluded, we thought we'd provide a consolidated list of the various posts. As threatened/promised, we will be delving into more specific issues concerning Stockhausen's work as we prepare for ARTSaha! 2008, which will partially focus on an 80th anniversary tribute to the man and his music.

First up will be the subject of performing Stockhausen, and why musicians should not be scared: Be not afraid!

(Ok, be a little afraid, but mainly...not.)

Posts in the Stockhausen Survey:

1950's
Sound-Cocktails All Around - Gesang der Jünglinge
Master of Both Time and Space - Gruppen

1960's
The World's First Mixtape - Hymnen
Take A Little Trip - Aus Den Sieben Tagen

1970's
Aum Bhūr Bhuva Svaha...Aum Bhūr Bhuva Svaha...Aum Bhūr Bhuva Svaha... - Mantra
Funk Upon A Time... - Tierkreis Melodien

1980's
Blinded By The Light - Donnerstag aus LICHT
Chamber of Secrets - Samstag aus LICHT

1990's
Everybody's Working For The Weekend - Freitag aus LICHT
The Artist Formerly Known As Stockhausen - Helicopter String Quartet

2000's
You Spin Me Right Round - Klang

You Spin Me Right Round

"...what torments much more is the certainty of still not being accepted, of being smiled at, of being absolutely misunderstood." – Karlheinz Stockhausen

In 2004, Stockhausen faced a dilemma with which any composer would be familiar: After spending 27 years writing an avant-garde 7-opera cycle for each day of the week, what do you do next?

Well before he wrote the last note of LICHT, Stockhausen had already determined that his next project would be...(wait for it)...a cycle for each hour of the day.

If God had blessed Stockhausen with the lifespan of Verdi, we could surely have expected to see music for the millisecond. With Carter-esque longevity, perhaps he’d have gone on to write the ultimate spatial masterpiece after a ‘discovery’ of how to write music in the fourth dimension.

KLANG (Sound) occupied Stockhausen from 2004 until his death, and the writing continued in the same haphazard commissioning system as LICHT.

The first hour (Ascension) was commissioned by the Milan Cathedral. It is scored for organ, soprano and tenor. The organist has to play in two independent tempi with each hand (see left), in addition to striking various percussion instruments.

Additionally, Stockhausen required himself (or a sound projectionist) to be seated as per usual in the middle of everything, balancing all the sound to a precious degree.

Here, more so than in LICHT, the attention to the details of sound projection is at the heart of the matter.

Stockhausen explains, "LICHT points always to the divine in respect to the light, to the stars, to the SUN which gives us the light and life, to the visible world, to the eyes. KLANG reminds us of the Invisible; of the ears, the acoustic vibrations, before all of the INNER EAR, for the divine Klang, the mystic sound of the beyond with the voice of the conscience."

KLANG also differs from LICHT in its construction, which returns to the 'Moment Form' which occupied Stockhausen in the late 60’s/early 70’s in pieces like Mixtur and Mikrophonie. No formulas here.

The motley instrumentation of LICHT continued, however. The 2nd hour would be scored for 2 harps, the 3rd for piano:



and the 4th was scored for a giant, custom-made door:



The synthesis of extraneous knowledge and influences also continues unabated in the new cycle. For the color scheme of KLANG (and why wouldn’t it have a color scheme, after all?), he turned to Wilhelm Ostwald’s 1917 color harmony scale.

[The inner numbers are Ostwald’s; the outer are Stockhausen’s. He preferred a procession from dark to light and back again.]

Stockhausen’s unbounded curiosity and his enthusiasm for drawing disparate, unrelated streams of thought (like Ostwald’s color theory) into his music forms one of the many constants in his compositional life. It recalls one of his earliest influences, which was the experience of reading The Glass Bead Game.

In the novel, the titular game is never explained directly. All we know of it is that it is a way of synthesizing knowledge into units which can be manipulated, rather like a mathematical or a musical system. Throughout the book, music is given an exalted place in the narrative, and the idea of being able to incorporate any piece of knowledge he encountered, be it the sound of threshing grain or the physics of nuclear fission, into a larger system with a harmonious purpose was profoundly appealing to the young Stockhausen.

In so many ways, LICHT was just a formalization of a relationship he already had to his output, which was very much in the spirit of the glass bead game. By the time he began writing under the mammoth rubric of LICHT, he had already been representing his works list as a spiral for several years. The early works were at the tightly wound center, and the later works on the ever widening outer expanses.



The graphic design may be somewhat clunky, but the visual representation of his life's work could not be more eloquent. Spirals imply growth, by their very nature, and his works really did grow, one from the other, along a constant of creative genius. There is no vicious break with a past style, but rather a near perfect harmony with it, as he would so often slide back down the spiral’s axis to grab a concept or a sketch from decades earlier to use in a new piece.

A spiral also conjures up the image of uninterrupted endeavor, which we have highlighted before as one of the truly remarkable features of Stockhausen’s career. Several years ago, he mentioned to an interviewer that he feared passing away with work still to be done on scores and recording projects, and apparently, that is precisely what he was doing the night he died: editing KLANG for publication.

Such enduring consistency is astonishing in a creative artist, and for Stockhausen, the trait was solidified in events that occurred back at the beginning of that spiral. Well before Kontra-Punkte or even the first numbered work, Chore fur Doris, as with many composers, Stockhausen’s studies with a teacher helped solidify his personality and set him on his career path, but surprisingly, it wasn’t Messiaen or Meyer-Eppler. It was the author of The Glass Bead Game: Herman Hesse.

When Stockhausen was 20, he wasn’t sure what he was going to be. If anything, he suspected he might become a writer, and he even spent one summer break writing a novel about the life of Humayun, the Mughal Emperor. Less than two weeks into the writing process, with the set of brass balls only Stockhausen could possess, he sent some samples of his writing, including a few poems to Hesse, who had won the Nobel Prize just three years earlier. Accompanying the samples was a six-page handwritten letter which is a stunning revelation of Stockhausen’s frame of mind:

Dear Mr. Hesse,

That I finally worked up so much courage to choose this means in order to speak to you, I will perhaps come to understand one day later in life, and I believe—were I to gaze into a mirror, it would be found out—that my cheeks are burned scarlet, as though they had been whipped. It may be shame, desperate shame, or a clattering fragmentation of an unconsciously confident, trusting naivete, of a salvaged, forgivable boyish atmosphere. Forgive me nothing, not even the salutation “dear sir,” if you deem it to be immature impertinence. I cannot help but become calmer, once having taken the fatal step.

Why I wanted to write you, I have known at no point in time more exactly, to tell the truth. It may be that I could tell this unfathomable thing to my mother, but she has passed on; I do not even know whether she would have summoned up an understanding for my idle prattling—if so, it would have been for the first time: Where are the dead, who would understand us best? Though she did not relish all this, [she] must really have been very wise, as she voiced the opinion one night in the year 1933: in the loft is Heaven, in the cellar, Hell; at that time I had counted almost five yearly cycles—yet now I no longer know whether Heaven is not Hell and that time is not timelessness. However, this worries me less (I am certainly too stupid, to recognize despairingly that one cannot know anything); what torments much more is the certainty of still not being accepted, of being smiled at, of being absolutely misunderstood. And my father just didn’t understand it at all, as I believed him to know. Might it perhaps be different now, if he were not rotting in some moldy wartime hole in the ground? So there remains the sieved coagulation of people, whom I allowed to force themselves on me yesterday and aforetimes—they have all had enough of associating with each other, just as have I with any of them.

This is the letter of a boy who has lost everything and had nothing come along to fill the void. The mental distress that Stockhausen is under is starkly clear, and in August of 1949, he wasn’t so much reaching out to the Nobel laureate for writing tips as he was searching for a father figure, someone to help him finish the job of forming his personality:

forgive me, if in relation to liberty I cast you in a special role and begged something of you—it is the happiest feeling, the most beautiful experience of all mysteries: 'that love is woven through everything,' if one can ask a great man for something. In the distance the 'ability' is given to me, you have called me with your thoughts…I write down for you now some of my ungainly, most secret endeavours; please, grant me also this impossible effort and say just one word, if they withstand your examination.

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Music student in Cologne

Earlier in the letter, he explains that Hesse’s works seem to him like “thought-islands” which rise up above their author. This is an early iteration of a concept that would be so fundamental to Stockhausen’s work: that his music is greater than its composer and originates from a higher source.

We will unfold this concept in other discussions. However, as we bring this brief survey of Stockhausen’s career to a close, we are only further compelled to look at the way in which Hesse responded to the young composer.

First off, he dismissed out of hand the idea of reading Stockhausen’s writing samples. He wrote, "I am 72 years old, have had eye trouble for years, and am overloaded every day to the point of exhaustion. As for reading manuscripts, this is out of the question."

But to this sprawling, desperate letter from a completely unknown student, he wrote a generous, deeply empathetic one-and-a-half page reply:

It will be best if I say to you in plain words how your letter has pleased me.

What has pleased me is your gift, it promises something: it is not that of a man of letters but that of a poet.

What has also pleased me is the sincerity with which you seek to make clear to yourself and to me the problems of your life and of your generation. Together with that gift, it is something positive and beautiful.

…What has not pleased me…is much about the tone of your letter which reminds me of what the foreigner imagines as "German youth": something extravagant and enamored of pain and desperation, "Faustian" and therefore philosophically Existential, which we foreigners don’t think much of. This youth, intoxicated with tragedy and greatness, was once, when he roamed about with backpack and guitar, half comical and half charming. Soon afterwards, however, he became excellently adapted to warfare: conquering, torturing, and other activities, which we likewise do not think much of.

Something else about your letter which does not please me has more to do with the universal—that which you have in common with your generation—than with the individual. It would make me happy therefore if you would direct all your energy to shaping and bringing to maturity that which is individual, unique, and beautiful in you, and to diminishing as much as possible the other, collective thing, or at least to distrust it; it is a dowry without much value."

With pinpoint precision, Hesse dissects not only the issues that Stockhausen faces in forging an identity in the wake of so much loss but all of post-war Germany. Hesse has little tolerance for self-pity. One of the masters in The Glass Bead Game is blacklisted from giving private lessons to pupils because he has a tendency towards melancholy (maybe even thoughts of suicide). Such indulgences must be avoided in Hesse's world view, and certainly cannot be passed on to students!

But the real kernel of truth that shaped Stockhausen in that letter is Hesse’s urging to cast off any sense of the universal, any sense that he shares a common lot with the rest of his generation. Instead, he pushes Stockhausen to focus on what sets him apart, what makes him an individual voice, and if there is one singular trait of Stockhausen’s writing, it is the uniqueness of his voice.

For the next year, the two stayed in correspondence. Stockhausen openly referred to Hesse as his teacher at one point, and after he had submitted some of his poems to a publisher in October of 1949, Hesse sent him a remonstrance via postcard:

It does not please me that you want to earn money right away with your manuscripts. You have the good fortune to be able to do this with music and thus keep your poetical activities away from this area. If music is more sacred for you than poetry, perhaps then you can earn your bread by writing for newspapers, etc., but that means at the same time a farewell to poetry.

In 1950, the following year, the spiral of Stockhausen’s life work would begin.

The farewell to his teacher came on September 22, of that year. He apologizes for his "helpless bawling", and he thanks Hesse for helping him to form his personality, the same personality which would be such an elemental force in shaping so much of 20th century culture.

Stockhausen uses another metaphor of organic growth to describe the transformation that Hesse cultivated. He compares his newly formed personality to a crystal, formed from the salt of his tears:

"I stumbled over it, when I stole secretly into my garden, whereas my foot stepped nimbly over the other stones…

...Very, very dear do I hold the great, crystalline stone today. You have thrown it to me, and it has blossomed like an eternal rose. Thanks be to you, and thanks be to the God of grace, who let me stumble over it."

The Artist Formerly Known As Stockhausen

"I think that every call to write the next part of LICHT is meaningful. I take any call, any question which comes from outside, as a challenge. And the basic system of LICHT is so abstract and so general that I can make any formation and any music with this formula. For the formula is not bound to material. It is like a genetic code, and then organic works of very different kinds can come out of this formula. A commission is not just a human affair but it is a spiritual call." – Karlheinz Stockhausen

Stockhausen’s most famous commission came from Professor Hans Landesmann of the Salzburg Festival in 1991. He asked for a string quartet, and Stockhausen’s first reaction was to reject the offer based on his nearly career-long avoidance of obsolete 18th century forms. If he hadn’t written for an orchestra in decades, why would he write for a string quartet?

But then Stockhausen had a dream!

No, it wasn’t of the quartet joining in an old Negro spiritual. It was of the quartet flying in the air, with each player isolated in separate helicopters from each other, an almost sadistic riposte to the call to compose for the standard ensemble of chamber music. He even dreamed that the audience was watching the performance on video monitors which showed close-ups of each performer: “When I woke up, I felt strongly that something had been communicated to me which I never would have thought of on my own. I did not tell anyone anything about it.”

The Helicopter String Quartet would form the third scene of Wednesday, which continued the loopy deconstructed narrative of LICHT. Flying musicians was certainly not a new idea in Stockhausen’s head. When he was 25, he wanted to put orchestra members into chairs that would fly out over the audience.

The Austrian Green Party complained about the pollution of the helicopters for such an extravagance as a musical performance, and in apparent solidarity, the general director of Austrian television and radio inflated his rental fees for the necessary AV equipment, pricing the production out of the Salzburg Festival’s range, despite the fact that they were already promoting it for their 1994 season.

The premiere would eventually take place in Amsterdam at the Westergasfabriek, a gentrified industrial complex. A key part of the concert included post-performance debriefings of the Arditti Quartet and the Royal Dutch Airforce pilots who flew the helicopters. Irvin Arditti admitted, “It’s a wonderful experience, but quite distracting, because you want to keep looking out of the window and not at the score.” The cellist’s pilot remarked, “when I saw him playing very fast, I tried to turn and fly faster to influence him,” and Irvin Arditti’s pilot actually admitted to trying to mess him up with “sharp turns and loops”.

The piece itself is all surface material from the superformula. The counting and glissandi from Lucifer and Eve’s formulas are the main musical materials as the strings match the rising and falling of the helicopter rotors. It is astonishing to think that Stockhausen managed, over several decades, to complete LICHT by fulfilling commissions in this patchwork manner. Nearly every moment in the opera pulls double duty as a separate concert piece which fulfilled some commission and allowed him to keep writing what he wanted, and therein lies the most overlooked portion of Stockhausen’s legacy: his entrepreneurship.

Beside the twin accomplishments of inventing electronic music, and pioneering total serialization, a third landmark in the career of Stockhausen stands out as a chief girder of his legacy, and that is the career itself. Depending on their bias, historians will point to either Mozart or Beethoven as the first freelance composers. Stockhausen is the first major classical music figure to control every aspect of his intellectual property. The control was hard-won and a product of life lessons that have been repeated innumerable times by artists of all genres.

Everyone from Ike Turner to Billy Joel has been on the ass end of an exploitative publishing deal. As a very young man, Stockhausen entered into a contract with Universal Edition that was not as beneficial to him as it should have been. As his scores grew more complex, he grew frustrated with UE’s inability to print them in the manner he envisioned. Those shortcomings, coupled with an imperfect contract, lead him to part ways with his publisher and set up his own imprint in 1969. For the rest of his life, Stockhausen was fond of repeating the mantra that all profits from his Verlag go to paying off the original loan he took to set it up.

Twenty years later, his one and only record label, Deutsche Grammophon, dumped him from its roster. So ingrained was the pairing of DG and Stockhausen in the collective imagination that the label even saw a Greatest Hits package as a viable product. As the 90’s beckoned and CD’s began their domination of the market, the label could no longer justify the math, as Stockhausen explained, “Deutsche Grammophon keeps telling me, that a record MUST sell at least 50,000 per year because DGG MUST pay 15,000 employees per month.”

So, with the freedom from overhead that only an indie label can provide, Stockhausen set about printing his own CD’s back home in Kuerten along with his scores. His goal was to record his entire catalogue to his own exacting specifications, and truth be told, Karlheinz Stockhausen and the mass marketplace were never a good match to begin with. In the absurd parlance of our times, Stockhausen was always after an ‘artisanal’ product that no record company or publishing house, no matter how committed to quality, could spare the time or money to execute. One gets the sense that UE and DG missed Stockhausen about as much as he missed them. According to one executive, Stockhausen was “self-inflated, self-obsessed. He makes Wagner look like a shrinking violet. He’s impossible to do business with. He strips you bare. He’s relentless in his demands.”

In so many ways, Stockhausen’s move to self-publishing would foreshadow the conventional wisdom of the 21st century. By his own estimate, an artist as uncompromisingly experimental as himself had exceeded all expectations of similar figures from previous generations:

“…with my work, I reach incomparably more people than Webern did in his time. Even when one ignores the political obstacles. That happens also as a result of the explosion of the means of reproduction: photocopying machines and cassette-copying machines and tape recorders and record companies, radio, television.”

Had Stockhausen kept pace with online innovations, perhaps he’d get more credit as a trailblazer. In actuality, the development of his Verlag is roundly pilloried as an example of his increasing detachment from reason. Rather than recognizing Stockhausen’s publishing innovations as a groundbreaking way to insure both the quality and the legacy of his scores and recordings, they are seen as just one more way in which the grand old wizard of high modernism cut himself off from the world. The lack of digital distribution only deepens this misperception, and hopefully, the Verlag will quickly catch up in this arena (although major labels have hardly been ahead of the curve, and music publishers can’t even fathom the concept of e-scores).

Indeed, it is laughable that any publishing outfit in 2008 would operate entirely by mail order, but the Verlag products are not as exorbitantly priced as most people complain, and the staff is impeccably responsive, shipping orders without delay and replying to all queries almost instantaneously.

The through line in all of this entrepreneurial activity was Stockhausen’s abiding desire to have his meaning be understood. Take or leave the pieces themselves, he did not want them to be dismissed for want of clarity. The final step he would take with this concern in mind was to establish an annual performance seminar on his music.

Beginning in 1998, when he was 70, Stockhausen would take a few weeks out of the summer to occupy the local grammar school in Kuerten with his phalanx of interpreters. Markus, Kathinka, and Suzanne would all be there, along with academics like Richard Toop.

Anyone could pay a modest registration fee and audit any course. Performers would get daily lessons on Stockhausen repertoire for their instrument, and each midday, everyone would gather for a composition lesson from the composer himself. Each year, a different work would be discussed in mind-numbing detail. As tedious as Stockhausen’s lectures invariably were, they offered priceless access to his mind. Every evening would feature a concert of Stockhausen’s music, and the students who he thought performed his music the best would win cold hard cash.

In the final decade of his life, Stockhausen was opening the vaults to anyone and everyone who wanted to take a peek. He was the model of generosity at these courses, taking the time to entertain all queries, giving away his scores to students, and looking as happy as a clam to be surrounded by artists who had a genuine interest in learning as much as they could about his work. During the course, he would often claim to be training Stockhausen missionaries, performers who would go out and spread the word after he was gone.

We are products of these courses, and in fact, the very first ANALOG arts ensemble concert began with us surrounding a tiny stone church in the Maryland countryside playing ‘Thursday’s Farewell’ as the audience arrived. While it’s far from our only mission, we can’t see ourselves ever abandoning the effort to proselytize on Stockhausen’s behalf. Though we tone down the fervor and we rarely see eye-to-eye with him on any subject, ANALOG finds an embarrassment of riches in this man’s catalogue of work. As he would say, ‘several lives aren’t enough to get near it’.

RIP, Dorothy Stone

How tremendously sad. Dorothy was a founding member of the California EAR Unit, with whom echo has performed.

Their body of work is vast. Here they are, with Dorothy, performing Stockhausen's Dr. K-Sextet.

'Dr. K' is Dr. Alfred Kalmus, who turned 80 in 1969, when Universal Edition asked several of the composers on its roster to compose short works for a concert in his honor to be performed by, coincidentally enough, Fires of London.

Stockhausen Remembered

There are two posts left in our look back at Stockhausen's career (pardon our brief hiatus from that effort).

In the meantime, Artforum has turned to far more eminent acquaintances than ourselves to reminisce about the man in its March issue. Before it hits newsstands, substantial excerpts from the retrospective are previewed on their site, such as this wonderful picture from Dienstag and accounts from Robin Maconie, Morton Subotnick and Bjork:

Robin Maconie

Imagine Stockhausen as a quintessentially American composer. Think of Feldman, Brown, Charles Ives, Henry Brant, and Harry Partch, all of whom are refracted to some degree in his music. Forget the recordings he is alleged to have made with Miles Davis for Columbia, which nobody has ever heard: This is a composer whose imagery of freedom was forged in the weird hybrid jazz of Friedrich Hollaender and Kurt Weill in the decadent ’20s, nourished by the spread of black music throughout Europe in the flapper era of Josephine Baker, and reinforced at boarding school during the war by British Army radio broadcasts of American jazz, to which the teenager listened surreptitiously late at night. Energetic and raucous freedom is the message of the sardonic big-band interruptions of the song Frei” from the Drei Lieder for alto voice and chamber orchestra, a student work from 1950.

Morton Subotnick

Stockhausen was well known for his incredible ego, which I found fascinating, even charming. Once, in the early 1970s, we happened to be staying at the same hotel in New York. He had just read an interview I had done with the New York Times, and over breakfast he said to me, “That was a wonderful interview in the paper.” I thanked him, and then he leaned toward me very sweetly, shook his index finger at me, and said, “But you didn’t mention my name once!”

Bjork

stockhausen is gone

i feel sad

not only because of his exit but also i felt sad reading obituaries from a lot of classically educated music critics that talked about his greatness many years ago and then his failure later on . i couldn’t understand how measuring how much his repertoire is played in the world’s biggest classical auditoriums could show his impact on the world . for me , his greatness lies elsewhere .

Helicopter Quartet

Tonight's Programme

Improvisation II, Joseph F. Di Ponio
Almglocken Melodien, Thomas Kozumplik
Lecture on Indeterminacy, John Cage
Songs of a Bad Seed; mvt. 1 - innocense, in a sense, Josh Schmidt
Entrance and Formula, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Capricorn, Leo and Aries from ‘Tierkreis’, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Lecture on Indeterminacy, John Cage
Songs of a Bad Seed; mvt. 2 - escalatings of agression, Josh Schmidt
Walls of Waves, Lorne Watson
Lecture on Indeterminacy, John Cage
Songs of a Bad Seed; mvt. 6 - torch song of a latch-key kid, Josh Schmidt
Variations #2, John Cage
Chickchi, LOOP 2.4.3

Music From Almost Yesterday
Barrow Street Theatre
January 15, 2008, 8:30 PM
27 Barrow Street @ 7th Ave South
New York, New York 10014
info@barrowstreettheatre.com

Joe Drew (trumpet), Edward Ludvigson (guitar), Steve Gilewski (bass), Thomas Kozumplik (percussion), Josh Schmidt (reader), Tim Splain (keys), Lorne Watson (percussion)

NOTE: 'Entrance and Formula' contains Michael's formula from LICHT in its entirety.

Everybody's Working For The Weekend...

"…art consists also of craft—that is to say, complete technical mastery. As for music, several lives aren’t enough to get near it." – Karlheinz Stockhausen

It's counterintuitive to think of Stockhausen as a facile genius, like Mozart who claimed to write music 'as a sow piddles' or Dylan who once said, "My songs were there before I came along...I just sort of took them down with a pencil." The logorrheic composer, who never failed to back up a new piece with a rationalization and whose liner notes define excess, seems the furthest thing from the type of prodigy who simply writes down what he hears. However, he was more Gregorian than anything else, but instead of one dove dictating to him, he had dozens:

"Often I find myself overwhelmed by thousands of visions, too many for me to make them all come to life...I'll never be able to realize the flood of ideas that assaults me day by day."

His attraction to systems was a byproduct of the information overload, a way to corral the psychotic din:

"I am not interested in serialism as such. It's just a technique which I have found, myself, to express the thoughts I have, or to organize the masses of images and sounds that come into my head."

From Mantra on, he would call his system formula composition. Its roots lie in the early orchestral piece Formel (1951), which bore all the incipient traits of this late style, and it bears much in common with serialism. The theme is often heard in inversions, transpositions and more rarely retrograde form, but in a substantial departure, its Schenkerian skeleton plays an enormous role, particularly in LICHT.

The cycle is centered around three themes for Michael, Eve, and Lucifer. Together, they aggregate into a superformula, which Stockhausen mines for musical material, but they also reduce to a Schenkerian kernel called a nuclear formula , which reveals how much of the final formula is ornamental.

Notice how, unlike Michael and Eve, Lucifer's melody is incomplete, almost deficient. It starts with eleventuplets (recalling the Mantra formula) and ends with 'colored silence'. In case you've ever wondered what's up with all the counting in LICHT, it's because that silence at the end of Lucifer's melody is colored by the instrumentalist counting aloud to the number 13. So much of the clicking and hissing and extended technique of LICHT is derived from this foreground ornamentation.

Stockhausen calls on everything from the intervallic character of these themes to their rhythmic durations to generate the material in his operas. In fact, the length of the entire cycle was calculated in advance by Stockhausen on the basis of his superformula. The composer typically found that the operas would be one-third longer than he had intended, because, as was his wont from the beginning, he broke freely with his plan to accommodate complete musical gestures.

Hearing him explain how he works all this out is a little like Alice encountering the White Rabbit: the intense flurry of activity and concentration attracts our attention while only part of our brain registers the nonsense of it all. Still, we follow him down the rabbit hole. Once, when a student struggled to identify the formula embedded in a passage of LICHT, he took exception to a repeated pitch that fell outside the formula structure. Stockhausen's explanation was simple, "Well, I wanted to repeat that note."

For Stockhausen, this superformula was a liberating force. He often compared it to a Gestalt or a genetic code. He said that he could spend the rest of his life composing with it by 'regarding individual elements, pieces, sections, moments, or scenes as dialects, and formulating them in a style of their own; thus coloring this abstract formula image and making each one into a local music."

He broke Wagner's record for Most Operas in a Cycle in 1996, when Leipzig staged Freitag in four sold-out shows. That same year, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival would host Stockhausen as its centerpiece (Bjork was there, and apparently loved it). Oddly, critics who had seen Freitag staged just weeks before, found the same material sorely lacking at Huddersfield, especially when paired with older masterpieces.

It's hard to cry foul, though, as performing these pieces outside of their larger framework is indeed challenging. One of the chief rewards of Stockhausen's entire canon is that of submitting to his will. The sheer strangeness of LICHT all makes a kind of sense when you let go and follow its internal logic. And make no mistake, Freitag didn't let up on the strange.

That 15-minute 'greeting' from Thursday? It's now over an hour in Friday, and the lobby is lit entirely by candles.

That giant statue in Monday of Eve with her legs spread? Okay, it's hard to top that, but in Friday Stockhausen manages the trick by portraying a swingers' party onstage with various objects engaged in sex acts, like a pencil and a pencil sharpener.

Did the first four operas seem infantile in spots? Well, Stockhausen ups the ante with an entire children's orchestra (white, representing Eve) in a race war with a children's choir (in genuine blackface, representing Lucifer, no less).

This is narrative stripped of context and pared down to essential moments, like Boris Godunov on a diet. Paul Griffiths captured the essence of the Freitag experience in his review for The Times:

Imagine that beings from another planet have picked up a television broadcast of a play from Earth. The signal is badly corrupted: not many of the characters can be made out, almost none of the text, and whole scenes have been lost. Still, the beings decide to put on their own performance of what they can piece together. Their drama, like the original, lasts for three hours, but the only characters are a man in black, a woman in white with flowers, and a king, all moving through elongated versions of the scenes that could be partly deciphered: Ghostly Apparition, First Self-Communing and so on.

This is approximately the impression made by Stockhausen's Freitag."

Chamber of Secrets

"Look at all the radio and television programmes, the endless series of programmes meant to explain everything about everything. Do you know what’s come into the mind of my gardener these days? He’s gone along to West German Radio and said: ‘Look, here I am. My business is gardens and I want to talk about gardening.’ I assume that the chap hasn’t done anything up to now except spend his time putting manure on my roses and looking after them and those of other employers like me; but now he’s gone up a step, and from this moment he’ll be a radio panelist. Instead of manuring and cultivating, he’ll talk about manuring and cultivating; he’ll explain how and why his tomatoes are redder and bigger than anyone else’s. In a word, endless chatter. The point is this. Can you tell me how it is that all of a sudden the craze for knowledge has sprung up, this verbal mania, while the thing that counts above all is intuition: understand the secret of a work of art and, why not, the mysteries of a rose? Excessive reasoning will end up destroying the faculty of understanding and knowing about things in depth. Words are often misleading and therefore dangerous…I’ve always believed, and I still believe, that in order to describe a bird, you first have to kill it." – Karlheinz Stockhausen

For a guy whose own published writings extend to ten volumes at present, endless chatter should hardly offend. Stockhausen could talk you into the ground, and his manner of speech was far from helpful. After his first trip to Astoria, he'd probably describe it like this, "Through a process I invented of experimenting with the New York City subway system, I have discovered a new borough called Queens." He could then regale you with separate 3-hour talks on Queens itself, the experience of discovering it, and how to use the process he'd invented.

Stockhausen was only interested in what he discovered for himself, and that insularity, coupled with the childish innocence that marks so many creative spirits, lead him to think he was discovering a lot more than he really was. That same sense of wonder made him internalize events as psychic landmarks that would re-emerge all over LICHT.

When he was all of five years old, his mentally ill mother announced that the cellar of their house was Hell and that the attic was Heaven. Sure enough, Eve would do as much in the first act of Donnerstag. During the production of that first opera, the chorus at La Scala struck over the writing in the final scene, which they felt was soloistic enough to warrant a different scale of pay. The dispute was resolved, but only after several performances of the premiere went by without that final scene.

In the final act of the follow-up, the choral strike is dramatized, replete with Italian comedian Piero Mazzarella playing the heavy. That same final scene pairs a text by St. Francis of Assisi with the coconut smashing ritual of the Kataragama festival, wherein supplicants light a coconut and throw it to the ground, hoping for it to split neatly in two as a good omen. By mashing up the ancient traditions of Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism (not to mention those of striking musicians), Stockhausen creates a sort of hybrid exorcism rite that's hopped up on steroids and which climaxes with the release of a giant black bird.

The scene is so chaotic that during a performance in Holland, two animal rights activists walked off with the bird cage, intending to free it (apparently unaware that this would happen with or without their help). Stockhausen gave chase, eventually wrestling the bird cage from them, and the audience thought it was all part of the show.

The plot, as it were, centers on Lucifer, but this is Milton's Lucifer, the fallen angel, brought low by his ambition. This is the same Lucifer who shows up in the Urantia book...sort of. It's easy to see why Stockhausen would be drawn to the Urantian cosmology. Its byzantine bureaucracy puts Lucifer as one of the 'three System Sovereigns in Nebadon, the domain of Christ Michael', which contains 'ten thousand systems of inhabited worlds', of which Lucifer is 'chief executive' of 607. Stockhausen had the kind of brain that could keep that straight, if he were so inclined, but he was probably also attracted to the explanation given in the book for Lucifer's fall. "At some point in his experience he became insincere, and evil evolved into deliberate and willful sin." Insincerity is most certainly a trait Stockhausen lacked, and one he wouldn't suffer gladly.

Samstag is dominated by three massive solo works for piano, trumpet, and flute. In the opening scene, Lucifer dreams about destroying time and is bewitched by piano music. This is Stockhausen's Klavierstück XIII, and it is a doozy. The pianist has to do a great deal of vocalizing, in addition to playing all sorts of bells and strumming the strings with a bone mallet. But that's not the half of it, before K XIII is over, the pianist has played tone clusters with her ass and shot bottle rockets out of the soundboard.

This is all meant to take the piss out of extended piano techniques, and like the orchestra strike as well as countless other things in the opera, it is intended to be funny. It is a deadpan gallows humor that, again, calls Burroughs to mind. After all, K XIII bewitches Lucifer to death. No matter how obviously funny the sight of someone shooting fireworks in the middle of an opera is, it's easy to miss the joke with such a bone-dry delivery.

While it's not clear how much of the Urantian dogma Stockhausen believed, it is clear that he believed in reincarnation, or a much larger existence after death. Lucifer has only appeared to die. In the next scene, he is guided through the end of his physical existence by a tour de force for flute called Kathinka's Chant (aka Lucifer's Requiem). In it, Stockhausen mixes up the traditions of both the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead as the flutist (dressed as a cat) guides Lucifer's spirit to the afterlife.

When he reemerges onstage, he does so on stilts, and a wind ensemble is arranged on a scaffolding to look like a face. Stockhausen wanted the ensemble to move in coordinated ways that would make the face appear to dance, as though Lucifer were giving it lessons. That proved unrealistic, but the scene is an expansive big band jam, like the climax to Gruppen spread out over 20 minutes. Woven throughout is a disjointed trumpet obbligato which represents Michael's resistance to Lucifer. At one point, it seems as though Michael may win the day, but he is eventually chased offstage, which leads to the final exorcist rite.

This second installment of LICHT lead one critic to despair, "the thought of Stockhausen devoting his talent to this gargantuan pantomime for another 15 years is not a happy one." The public was grasping at straws, trying to make sense of a nonlinear narrative, searching for meaning in throwaway devices, and in the case of Samstag, wondering why the hell a La Scala premiere was being staged in a football stadium. At this point, Stockhausen was well and truly the only one in on his secret discovery: LICHT was not so much an opera cycle as it was a template for his compositional life.

It was a thematic playground for a brilliant and restless mind. Though we were all welcome to come in and play with him, it was almost as if our invitations got lost in the mail. Stockhausen seemed to sense that he was bollocks at illuminating his inner life (ten volumes notwithstanding), and it was a deficiency he'd seek to rectify in the following decade.

As a sequel, Samstag fails completely, but it is not intended to be one. Though it was written second, it is actually the final opera in the cycle, as Samstag (Saturday) is the final day in the week. Despite being chock full of astonishing music, the ultimate strangeness of the staged opera obscured the continuing quality of Stockhausen's writing. If Gesang der Junglinge, Hymnen and Mantra were wrapped into some cosmically trashy concept album (say, Kilroy Was Here), their aura would certainly dim. Such was the fate of the music from LICHT.

Blinded By The Light

“It’s the same with all those conductors who shut themselves off from everything new. I look upon them as undertakers, exploiters of dead composers. They’re the Herods of modern music.” – Karlheinz Stockhausen

When Donnerstag aus LICHT premiered at La Scala on March 15, 1981 it was conducted by Peter Eötvös , directed by Luca Ronconi, and Stockhausen was credited with having composed the 'music, libretto, dance, actions, and gestures'. The composer sat, as per usual, in the middle of the hall, manning an enormous sound projection desk, the location a matter of utility, surely, but also a not-so-subtle illusion which made the entire production seem to materialize before its creator. The first act would only reinforce this atmosphere of megalomania as it dramatizes the deaths of Stockhausen's parents (played by Eve and Lucifer). The composer would be represented by no less than Michael the Archangel, who, in turn, is a stand-in for Christ.

The easy label for this is egocentric (and it has been unsparingly applied), but credit Stockhausen with at least having an operatic childhood. Most of us would have mini-traumas of dead goldfish and divorce to put onstage, Stockhausen's mum was euthanized by the Nazis for being mentally ill and his father died in the war. He left out his own experience tending to wounded and dying soldiers at a military hospital, but if the egoism of this prelude to LICHT is really to be considered a sin, let's bear in mind that the very act of composing is self-centered. And writing an opera after Wagner? Well, that's every composer's white whale. Stockhausen may set the bar, but he's hardly alone in the ego department.



By most accounts, the audience warmly received Donnerstag. The thought of the Stockhausen of pure electronic music, suffocating serialism, and unrepentant modernism premiering an opera on the stage at La Scala is strange indeed, almost as strange as the opera itself. To get to their seats, the audience would've had to walk past a chamber ensemble in the lobby which was playing a Thursday Greeting. Once in their seats, they would have been surrounded by a ring of speakers, which would project the voices of an Invisible Choir throughout the opera. Afterwards, trumpeters would play a Thursday Farewell from separate balconies above the theater's square.

In discussing LICHT, it's helpful to remember that opera originated as a marriage of disciplines. LICHT owes far more to Monteverdi than it does to Wagner in that sense. The chief contributor to its strangeness is the fact that Stockhausen's frame of reference is so vast. LICHT vacuums up the traditions of film, dance, mime, Western and Indian classical music, Noh theater, astrology, and Christianity, with tips of the hat to everyone from Bach to Brecht.

In Donnerstag, there are only three characters, but they each play multiple roles and have multiple identifying features. Stockhausen takes the tradition, so familiar through Bach's Passions, of pairing a solo instrument with a solo voice to the extreme. For long stretches of the opera, the only manifestation of the characters we see onstage are their instrumental doppelgangers.

Forget the leitmotif; it's for lightweights. Stockhausen's idea of total serialization is translated into a matrix of characteristics that he bestows on his three leads:

	MICHAEL	EVE	LUCIFER
Voice:	tenor	soprano	bass
Instrument:	trumpet	basset horn	trombone
Body:	dancer	dancer & speaker	dancer-mime & speaker
Primary Color:	blue	light green	ice blue & blue green
Secondary Colors:	purple & violet	off-white, opaline & silver	black green, black blue, & gray

In keeping with operatic tradition, Stockhausen's characters are well-worn archetypes, but as with a pitch set, the composer wrings as much meaning out of them as he can. Eve is not only the first woman, but she also slips into the role of Jocasta, seducing her son in the first act. Michael is at once the Archangel (Prince of Light in the apocrypha), Jesus Christ, and Stephen Dedalus. Donnerstag's loose narrative is his bildungsroman. Stockhausen would often compare these multi-layered characters to refracted light. So much of the writing in LICHT is the musical equivalent of a prism, shattering a single beam into its stunningly varied components.

After he is orphaned, Michael auditions for the conservatory, and the four-person jury is played by (who else?) Eve and Lucifer. Very rarely in the course of its three hours does Donnerstag sound like anything but a chamber opera. This economy of means is part of what many critics thought put the opera at odds with itself. In one moment, the staging is sparse, in another, absurdly grand. The entire second act is dominated by a giant globe, which opens in various spots to reveal the trumpeter Michael as he journeys around the world. A grand gesture indeed (the first of many in LICHT), but in a lowbrow visual pun, the orchestra, which sits at approximately the South Pole, are all dressed up as penguins.

From a dramatic viewpoint, the disparities continue. The odd but intelligible libretto of the first act is abandoned in the second for a completely abstract ballet set to a trumpet concerto. In the third act, snatches of scripture are sung in Hebrew and German by the invisible choirs as Michael ascends into heaven. Stockhausen summarizes the journey with an execrable acronym:

[Michael] experienced the
Melodies of CHILDHOOD with mother and father
Intensity of love through MOON-EVE
Chromaticism of the soul during EXAMINATION
Harmony of the languages on the JOURNEY AROUND THE EARTH
Audiogrammar of the emotions in the CRUCIFIXION
Ecstasy of polyphony in the ASCENSION, the
Light of the resurrection at the RETURN HOME.

The critical response to all of this was bewildered but admiring. Paul Griffiths titled his review for The Times, "A great creative mind talks to itself". He summed up the production as "an evening that is breathtakingly spectacular yet honest in taking account of the opera's discrepancies of vision and its weird mixture of cosmic imagination with juvenile smut and artistic shodiness."

Covent Garden bet on 60% of capacity when it gambled by opening its 1985-86 season with Donnerstag, and the final box office beat their wager by 20%. It is difficult to imagine an opera this bizarre captivating critics and audiences in 2007 as Donnerstag did in the early 80's. The level of engagement with Stockhausen's work puts the lie to the popular current narrative of a composer who cloistered himself in the last 30 years of his life.

As an opening salvo in a heptology, Donnerstag is a bundle of contradictions. It holds precious few clues as to what the rest of the cycle will entail, while at the same time, it neatly outlines all of its major devices. There is no cliffhanger or even dramatic tension which hints at the need for a series of sequels, yet its self-containment is clearly stretched to its limit as the opera all but bursts at its seams. For a variety of reasons, Donnerstag would be the last that most people would hear of LICHT. It is the most widely accessible of the seven operas, as it was released in a 4-disc set by Deutsche Grammophon. For most, LICHT took on the aura of a massive art project like Roden Crater after 1985, some bizarrely gigantic work that would eventually see the light of day in a few decades. Even now, four years after its completion, the entire cycle remains shrouded in mystery and most likely will for some time to come.

Stockhausen on the Internets, IV

We saw a similarity in Burroughs. Others are drawing parallels between Mailer and Pound.

Full list here.

OBITUARIES

Brijit
Economist
Free Times
Variety
The Week in Germany

TRIBUTES

aaronovitch watch
Boring Like a Drill, II
Cardiff Respect
Comment Is Free
continentaleconomics
definecoolforme
Edwin Outwater
Flying Squid
Free Times
The Gazette
Guardian Unlimited
Guardian Unlimited, II
hellospiral
Idiolexicon
it was lost
LA Times
Music For Grown-Ups
Music Matters
New Zealand Herald
Not a Blog
Paul Dirmeikis
Pep Boy Auto Parts
Sonic State
Stephen Pollard
Tom McGee, II
Toppled Idols
Under the Radar
unterkayness
Wall Street Journal
Whip It! Whip It Good!
XTerminal

Funk Upon a Time...

"The whole movement [in America] toward a so-called pop art, in the visual arts as well as in music, I see as a disaster, really shameful for mankind, once orientated toward the highest, whose only goal in art was to glorify the divine and the cosmic spirit, and for whom everything in the human world was related to these invisible worlds. That this is now replaced, generally speaking, by garbage art, which celebrates material impermanence and decay, is a disgrace. It needs a tremendous mysticism to adore God through garbage; it is possible, but when you reach a point where images of a lipstick or hot dog have the same significance as the crucifix or Madonna in earlier cultures, it shows where a country is heading." – Karlheinz Stockhausen

There are loads of people who'd say of Stockhausen's music after 1975 that he was adoring God through garbage. He just simply lost people and did precious few favors for himself. Every time he opened his mouth, there were more and more bizarre statements coming out. The showstopper was the claim that he was from Sirius, the binary star system that, at 9 light years distance, is one of our nearest interstellar neighbors.

Stockhausen was fond of saying that he could travel with his mind to distant places. He'd say that he could close his eyes and transport himself to the French Riviera by focusing his mind on the scene. If you pressed him on whether or not this was imagination or actual transportation, he would insist the trip was real not virtual. Certainly, a psychiatrist would have a field day with the issue of whether or not Stockhausen was projecting himself into a fantasy world when he claimed to be from Sirius.

But his fascination with the cosmos was genuinely profound. He clipped any newspaper article he came across that had to do with space, especially the discovery of new stars. One of the things he was fond of doing was pronouncing prerequisites for musical education ('Every composer must spend time in an electronic music studio'), and after that book of photos from the Hubble came out, he became dead certain that every musician should look at it, because it 'is the best dictionary for musicians to compose by'.

Pedagogical theories aside, what matters to us most in this brief survey of his music is how this extraterrestrial fascination actually manifested itself in his work.

There are clunkers, to be sure, in Stockhausen's catalogue, and a disproportionate number of them come in the late 70's, after the composition of Tierkreis (1975), the twelve melodies for each star sign.




These melodies would turn up everywhere in subsequent pieces. In Aries (1977, for trumpet and electronic music), the tape part is a mix of noise and various electronic versions of the Zodiac tunes. The trumpet meanders between fragments of the various songs until it arrives with the tape in a unified final statement of the title tune. This naked appearance of ordinary, tonal melodies in Stockhausen's music would have been noteworthy had anyone been paying attention.

But by then, Stockhausen had almost completely transformed himself into some sort of Germanic Sun Ra, churning out risible quasi-theatrical music like the epic Sirius (1976). In fact, it was in discussing this piece where Stockhausen would so often repeat his infamous claim:

"I think that the culture of this planet has been mainly formed by visitors from Sirius, especially in the time between 9000 and 6000 B.C...I think that our main sources of present-day culture, as decadent as it may be in most parts of the planet, stem from visitors from Sirius whose main representatives were Isis and Osiris. Through a series of revelations which were at first quite nebulous, but have become more clear during the past few years, I know (as little as I know about details) that I have come from Sirius, myself."

Was this a giant put-on? Stockhausen almost always spoke earnestly. There's no reason to not take him at his word.

However, there is no reason to let such words scuttle his musical achievements. Neither Schoenberg's inane terror of the number 13, nor Prince's absurd name change make a dent in their standing as musical geniuses of the first rank. If this is what Stockhausen truly believed, is it really a big deal? The more important question, it seems, is whether or not the music is still good.

And it was. Though the late 70's was by no means a peak for Stockhausen, it was far from the end. Amazingly, there were still 30 more years of unrelentingly creativity ahead of him. In turning to LICHT, it's helpful to look at Stockhausen's program notes for Sirius, as they illuminate part of the aesthetic principles underlying the massive opera cycle:

SIRIUS, the alpha star of Canis Major--8.7 light-years distant--is the sun of our local universe. Two hundred million suns with their planets and moons circle around it and live from its light.

For the inhabitants of Sirius, music is the highest form of vibration. For this reason, music has attained its highest development on Sirius. Every musical composition is linked to the rhythms of the stars, the time of year and day, the elements, and the existential differences of the living beings.

The music, which I have composed and named SIRIUS transfers some of these principles of musical form and creation onto our planet.

This aesthetic statement of purpose is a veritable thesis for LICHT, which we'll discuss in upcoming posts.

Though the soup of cosmic electro-jazz schlock that germinated from Tierkreis is one of the least interesting part of Stockhausen's output, the Zodiac melodies themselves are a phenomenal starting point for musicians who are interested in adding the composer to their rep list. The melodies can be played solo or with the simple accompaniments provided, and they can be played in any octave on any instrument. They are a fantastic way to begin your musical acquaintance with the wondrous musical mind of Stockhausen.

Aum Bhūr Bhuva Svaha...Aum Bhūr Bhuva Svaha...Aum Bhūr Bhuva Svaha...

By 1970, Stockhausen had been composing almost exclusively non-notated music for six years. There were the text scores of Sieben Tagen, the titular arithmetic symbols of Plus-Minus, and the coded gestures of Spiral. Stockhausen was deeply immersed in music that owed a lot to John Cage's interest in handing over some of the authorship to the performer.

Spiral would be performed some 1300 times in the breathtaking pavilion at the Osaka World Fair. In classic Stockhausen fashion, he had built a spherical auditorium where the audience could be completely immersed in his music, having the sound come at them from a full 360 degrees, doubling the spatial feat of Gruppen.

[Also typical was Stockhausen's complaint that the platform for the audience was not built exactly in the middle of the sphere as he had envisioned.]


As we mentioned earlier, his attraction to intuitive music was to discover a method of crafting the ideas in his head more completely before he aired them. His return to fully notated music, would be a thoroughbred of a piece that demonstrated how completely he had achieved that goal.

Mantra is for two pianists, who also play wood blocks and antique cymbals, as well as manipulate sine-wave generators and ring modulators. The demands on the performers are profound, but the final result is a mystical experience 'above and beyond any criticism' as Paul Griffiths put it. Stockhausen calls the piece a 'miniature model of the stellar constellations', but more importantly, it is the first full-fledged work to use his formula method.

Unlike a tone row, a formula can, and does, have pitch centers. For instance, the formula for mantra begins with four repetitions of the same note:



This formula and its permutations were worked out during his time in Osaka, and in a flurry of activity, Stockhausen wrote out the entire piece in one 5-week stretch. If you ever get a chance, peruse the score for Mantra, and it'll give you a profound sense of what an extraordinary clarity of mind he possessed in order to do this. Stockhausen said of this period that it was 'the happiest composition time that I have ever spent in my life'.

Stockhausen insisted that Mantra is not a set of variations, but it is. The mantra (or formula) is repeated some 300 times in forms that stretch it to the limit. The variations are derived from the 13 characteristics that Stockhausen assigns to the formula. Factor in transposition and the sound processing, and the piece sounds infinitely varied, yet entirely cohesive.

Cage's prepared piano has nothing on Stockhausen's processed one. Mantra is a riveting concert experience, and a little over an hour doesn't seem enough time to fully encounter its brilliantly imaginative sound world.

Stockhausen on the Internets, III

We've updated the original list, as the postings keep rolling in. We should also point out that all we have done is link to English posts and articles. If this list seems large, multiply it by four, and you'll start to get a sense of how many Japanese, German, Spanish, and Italian bloggers (to name only a few) were affected by the news.

OBITUARIES Gramophone Liverpool Daily Post Socialist Worker TRIBUTES 2 depressed 2 get dressed 33/45 Allmusic Alterdestiny anglofritz As a Dodo Audio Lemon Beat Portal Bonobos Hump to Music Bravo juju Click Opera Fader Fred Sampson's Radio Weblog The Gramophone & Typewriter Company (II) Hearing Test The Independent, Chris Schuler Iron Tongue of Midnight

Jottings from the Wired Landscape Into Art Ludickid Mcmurray Musings Noise noizone notazionist Notes from a Defeatist Petulant Rumblings Pillage Idiot Playback Reactor Ready Steady Blog Riskingit Roger Bourland La Scena Musicale Stereo Kinetics Surviving the Crunch Synthesis Blog Tampon Teabag Thomas Moronic Vleeptron_Z Workingthrough Wry on Rye

Take a Little Trip

"Play a sound with the certainty that you have an infinite amount of time and space" – Karlheinz Stockhausen from UNLIMITED

Now things get tricky. Not as if they weren't tricky before with all the total serialization and whatnot, but this is the point where most people stopped paying attention to Stockhausen, and it's tough to blame them.

In May of 1968, the composer's second wife left him. He'd just premiered Kurzwellen, and returned home to a letter from Mary Bauermeister informing him that their marriage was over. His reaction was understandable. He had a nervous breakdown.

He stopped eating and barely slept, and in the hyper-reality that surrounds such a psychological state, he sat down at the piano and played a sonority that he likened to a received signal on a shortwave radio. He felt that he had not played the piano, but rather that someone else had played the piano through him. He was just the conductor of a signal.

Stockhausen had experienced suicidal thoughts for years, but the break that occurred in '68 triggered an awakening in him that lead to what he called 'intuitive music'. He'd been searching for a more immediate method of composition, one where ideas weren't assembled from sketchbooks. He wanted a method where more fully composed ideas were developed all at once in the mind by first emptying it out.

The set of 15 text compositions that make up Seven Days are centered around this idea of stopping conscious thought to get at a deeper musical consciousness. From 'It', the most notorious of the set:

think NOTHING
wait until it is absolutely still within you
when you have attained this
begin to play

as soon as you start to think, stop
and try to reattain
the state of NON-THINKING
then continue playing

The epigraph is another score from the cycle in its entirety (well, aside from the little graphic swoosh that is printed beside the text).

While this cycle fits neatly into the framework of the fluxus movement, or the concomitant riots, it is of a seperate piece. The cycle contains some of the most challenging musical instructions in the entire Western canon.

Take any group of musicians not used to playing this way, set them loose on 'Unlimited', and after about 7 minutes of noodling, they'll think they've played for 30. Stockhausen would forbid even considering a performance by an ensemble that hadn't played together for many years (but then he would happily coach novitiates). Like Lukas Foss and other composers dealing in improvisation, their bullshit meter got set off by recognizable riffs. If Stockhausen heard something he already knew, he figured people weren't playing this music right.

The habit of self-quotation is a major part of the cycle as well. In a quasi-theatrical piece ('High and Low') he instructs the musicians to prepare themselves for each rehearsal and performance by playing 'Kurzwellen'. The piece turns up again in 'Litany':

My last experience was KURZWELLEN;
I came as close as I could to you
and to what there is of music in the air.
Now comes the difficult leap:
no longer to transmit man-made signals,
music, tintinnabulation,
but rather vibrations which come
from a higher sphere, directly effective;
not higher above us, outside of us,
but higher IN US AND OUTSIDE.

It's impossible to not read that as an open reply to his ex-wife's letter. And in the final piece of the cycle ('Arrival'), Stockhausen opens by saying to himself, "Give up everything, we were on the wrong track."

Which track? Who knows.

As we pointed out earlier, there would be no clear break with past styles. The steamroller that was Stockhausen kept right on rolling, but the sea change that happens in '68 is the emersion of a cosmogoly which made so many people dismiss Stockhausen that, in less than a decade, he was in the 'Where Are They Now' file. Like his own mélange of musical styles, the spirituality that would dominate the last four decades of his life was a dense slurry of everything from Sri Aurobindo to the obscurantist Urantia book. At one point, Stockhausen would become fixated on the idea that he was actually from Sirius.

For so many, this understandably became the pretext for dismissing Stockhausen as a kook who had cloistered himself outside of Cologne. But this is clearly unfair, and to use a ready example, the folks who would not vote for Mitt Romney because his faith asserts that Christ will return to Missouri are turning a blind eye to the identical irrationality embedded in the belief that Christ will return to Jerusalem.

Fear and trembling doesn't come with a side of logic.

Stockhausen's earnest attempts to balance his spirituality with his work are not unique, even among 20th century composers (we're looking at you, Messiaen). The problem simply became for Stockhausen that the raw materials of his faith were so alien.

[There are recordings of Aus Den Sieben Tagen out there, but none of them do it enough for us to share.]

The World's First Mixtape

"If you discover something really new, which affects human experience, I mean, there’s no discussion, that’s just the way it is. All the rest is minor talk about little details." – Karlheinz Stockhausen

After the twin peaks of his 50's music, Stockhausen would continue his hot streak with an unrelenting stream of work. In fact, the ceaseless nature of his enterprise was one of his hallmarks. There was scarcely a pause. Every year brought forth several new compositions, and almost every year saw the birth of a major work. Every year for six decades.

In the 60's, two pieces stand out as being 'really new'. The first of them could have been a recipe for a Hallmark factory's worth of dreck: Take a bunch of national anthems and turn them into a sound collage.

It was 1967, an entire season of which would be dedicated to Love. If there were ever an opportunity to churn out some truly awful music, this would be the time and the this would be the premise.

But Hymnen is a masterwork. Like Gesang, it is a seminal work of electronic music. However, Stockhausen would employ a utilitarian approach to the piece that would become the norm for the rest of his career. Hymnen wasn't just a piece of electronic music. It was also a piece for 4 soloists and tape. In 1969, he'd craft an orchestral version.

[The original electronic version can be heard in its entirety on Oshin Saginian's adorable site.]

Perhaps the most famous performance came in the Jeita grotto in Lebanon. In the picture above, the musicans are situated on the ledge in the center, and the audience trails away along the paths. To get to this performance space, they had to walk for 15 minutes, and they were lucky to be within 80 meters of the sound source.

Hymnen is divided into four Regions. The first is dedicated to Pierre Boulez and centers on the Marseillaise and the Internationale as well as the tuning of short wave radios, those devices that are such a major part of the Stockhausen aesthetic. The second Region is dedicated to Henri Pousseur and employs the anthems of West Germany and Austria. A synthesized version of the Russian anthem comes out to play towards the end.

The third Region is dedicated to John Cage, and it sees the Russians playing with the Spaniards and Americans. The fourth Region is a return to neutrality with the Swiss anthem and found sounds, most recognizably a croupier who, more than anything in Gesang, will make you think you are hearing the rough draft of "Revolution #9".

Hymnen lasts for nearly two hours, and it is one of the all-time great sonic adventures. It's like going to the dark side of the moon, or reaching the liebestod.

Stockhausen on the Internets, II

The blog posts keep rolling in, and the Verlag has set up a tribute page where the public is encouraged to post a memorial comment.

OBITUARIES Holland Sentinel Sky News Spacelab Stereophile Sydney Morning Herald Wiki News TRIBUTES 3282 Aisle Be Seeing You And Flowers Pick Themselves Attic Fantasist Bad Education Blog Bilong Adam Brainiac Conspiracy Cat Synth Cavemanifesto ccokzsblog Celebrity News chuck7 Clarinet Music & Scores Cologne. Chris. Kelly. Köln. Crosscut Saw Daktari's World Dead, Not Forgotten disquiet Dodgy Stereo The Eastside View The Echoes Blog Emvergeoning Erik's Rants and Recipes The Errant Aesthete Felsenmusick Funeral Pudding Gary Gomes Hit By A Thought Karlheinz Stockhausen Memorial Laissez Faire Left-handed Compliment

Mad Martin Millard Fillmore's Toenail Monotonous Forest Moon of Alabama Musepaper Musician on Music The Musings of a Culture Vulture N. The Nine Pound Hammer No Fear of the Future Norwegianity (II) News From Third Angle and Beyond Nice Tunes Nonalignment Pact Out to Lunch ¡Oye Billy! Patricks Cafe Pop Matters Prayer in Tone PYLB Quiet Thoughts Regen Magazine Renaissance Research Renewable Music Robert Philen's Blog Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Scott's News Silverlake Blvd. Someday Even This Will Be a Pleasant Memory Succinct Moliere thizzled Tom McGee Trudeau on Shreveport Urban Modes Vinyl Junkie Wales on Sunday Wenatcheethehatchet Whitechapel World of Seduction (ugh!) Young Manhattanite

Master of Both Time & Space

"It happens every once in a while, in music as in other fields, that you find people specializing in one new aspect of musical forming, and becoming famous because they just specialize. A composer like Ligeti specialized for years in microstructures, the detailed composition of textures; or Xenakis, who has concentrated on stochastic distributions; or Penderecki, who was the cluster specialist for a long time. Every once in a while music produces its specialists, people who go very deeply into their narrow specializations, and vary them all the time. This is something we take for granted in painting, more than in music. Everyone has his so-called personal style. By which is meant that he has narrowed down his field of activity so completely that it only takes a fragment of a work for you to say, ah, that’s so and so.

And we can really say that universalists are becoming very rare in all fields, all the sciences. I tell my own students, if you want to become famous just take a magnifying glass and put it to one of my scores, and what you see there, just multiply that for five years. For example, if you see snare drums, then you start composing around twenty pieces only for snare drums. Snare drums of all different sizes: for fifty snare drums, for twenty, for thirty – snare drums on the roof, snare drums in the basement, big snare drums and very tiny snare drums, snare drums amplified and intermodulated. Then he will be the snare drum specialist, he will be know in Japan, he will be famous everywhere." – Karlheinz Stockhausen

Stockhausen was every bit the universalist, able and eager to write in almost any style, but he's no Beethoven. There will be no clear sorting out of middle vs. late. Techniques that were developed with the obsessive fervor that was his trademark were rarely abandoned. They simply took on different forms. For instance, the LICHT cycle is written with a system of formulas, which are melodies that govern the music in the same way a tone row does.

Like Berio, Stockhausen was a musical magpie, but the most appropriate comparison lies outside of music with William S. Burroughs, because unlike Berio, Stockhausen didn't steal from other composers. He stole from himself. The bulk of his canon is obsessed with time, whether it's the hours of the day, the days of the week, or the months of the zodiac, the theme of time keeps turning up like a character straight out of Interzone.

One of his earliest compulsive takes on time involved its relation to space. Stockhausen's fixation on this concept would become a brutalizing force in modern music, much to just about everyone's dismay. It all starts, more or less, with Webern:



See how each group of 3 notes is essentially the same? Half-step and a third leap.

Instead of creating a random order for all 12 notes, Webern devised a way to make even smaller groups of notes aggregate into a complete tone row, and this was the snowball that started the avalanche of total serialization. For, if a trichord could generate a row, couldn't it also generate rhythms, and dynamics, and all sorts of crazy things?

By the time Stockhausen got his hands on the idea of total serialization, he'd much bigger plans for it. In his mind, the parameters of a piece should extend to how it is perceived in three-dimensional reality. Anyone who's felt their dinner get rearranged in their stomach by Metallica's amps in the front row knows it's a helluva lot different than hearing the concert from the nosebleeds.

So, in August and September of 1955, in response to a commission from the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Koln, he retreated to the Swiss village of Paspels to spend two months devising a piece that would realize this new concept of spatial organization. At this point, he'd already begun work on Gesang, and amazingly, he had yet to turn 27.

What he came up with was a piece for three orchestras arranged in a horseshoe around the audience. He'd call it Gruppen (Groups), not after the separate ensembles, but after the mathematical term. With his usual irrepresible zeal, he devised a system for organizing space which he saw as the equivalent of a musical scale:



At the premiere on March 24, 1958, the three orchestras were conducted by Stockhausen (I), Bruno Maderna (II), and Pierre Boulez (III). For most of us, that seems an electric line-up, a moment which we'd feel privileged to witness, but it's tough to fault those folks who'd see it as a virtual fountainhead for the noxious dogmas that would choke off musical innovation in the following decades, terrorizing young composers in the academy most of all.

What we've touched on in this already too long post is not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg. The complexities of Gruppen are enough to fill dozens of articles and book-length studies. After all, those two months spent in Switzerland weren't wasted on crafting melodies and hammering out orchestraions. They were spent working out the serial organization scheme of the piece.

But what's important to bear in mind as we continue our tribute to Stockhausen's massive body of work is that the much loved climax in Gruppen is a departure from the rigid schematic which organizes the rest of the piece. The composer was great for a variety of reasons, one of which was that he knew his audience needed a big finish. Yes, the climax that Alex Ross aptly called 'a thirteen-bar freak-out, free jazz or avant-rock before the fact' and that David Schiff called 'Gabrieli rewritten by Stan Kenton' was a gimmick, tacked on to assure an ovation.


Always up to something...

Stockhausen on the Internets: Obituaries & Posts

The range of bloggers who paused to post about him is an intriguing indication of how wide-ranging his influence was.

OBITUARIES AFP AHN, Linda Young Associated Press, Melissa Eddy Baltimore City Paper, Michael Byrne BBC Billboard, Jonathan Cohen Bloomberg, Mike Bleach & Mark Soifret Brijit CBC DPA, Yuriko Wahl Earth Times Economist eFlux Media, Chris Georg Evening Post Find a Grave Free Times Gramophone The Guardian, David Ward Holland Sentinel The Independent, Emily Duggan & James McIntyre INQ Liverpool Daily Post Los Angeles Times, Mark Swed Metro The Money Times, Daisy Sarma New York Times, Paul Griffiths NPR, Paul Huizenga PC Music Pitchfork Radio Netherlands Reuters Sky News Socialist Worker Spacelab Stereophile Sydney Morning Herald Telegraph The Times The Times, Nico Hines Variety Washington Post, Matt Schudel The Week in Germany Wiki News TRIBUTES 2 depressed 2 get dressed 3282 33/45 86400 Seconds aaronovitch watch Airform Archives Aisle Be Seeing You Alex V. Cook All Along the Watchtower Allmusic Alterdestiny And Flowers Pick Themselves anglofritz As a Dodo Asian Dan Astronation Attic Fantasist Atomicelroy's Trinity Project Audio Lemon Augmented Illusions Bad Attitudes Bad Education Bagatellen Baggage Reclaim Bara Birth Beat Portal Because They Are Dead Big Ideas Blog Bilong Adam Bloomberg, Mike Bleach Boing Boing Bonobos Hump to Music Boring Like a Drill Boring Like a Drill, II Brainiac Conspiracy Bravo juju Brooklyn Vegan Cardiff Respect Cat Synth Cavemanifesto ccokzsblog Celebrity News chuck7 Clarinet Music & Scores Classical Drone Classically Hip Click Opera Coilhouse Colicky Baby Cologne. Chris. Kelly. Köln. Comment Is Free Conductor's Notebook continentaleconomics Create Digital Music Crosscut Saw Cycling '74 Daily Kos Daktari's World dammit. Darcy James Argue Dead, Not Forgotten Deceptively Simple definecoolforme Democratic Underground disquiet Dodgy Stereo DuckRabbit The Eastside View The Echoes Blog Edwin Outwater Emvergeoning Erik's Rants and Recipes The Errant Aesthete Fader Fail Feast of Music Felsenmusick Filmmaker Magazine Flying Squid Fred Sampson's Radio Weblog Free 103.9 Free Times Fresh Bilge Funeral Pudding Gary Gomes The Gazette The Gramophone & Typewriter Company The Gramophone & Typewriter Company (II) Green Cine Greg Sandow The Guardian, Andrew Clements The Guardian, Readers Guardian Unlimited Guardian Unlimited, II

HarsMedia Hearing Test hellospiral Hex Message Hit By A Thought Idiolexicon The Independent, Chris Schuler indierocket! Iron Tongue of Midnight it was lost Jeffrey Quick's Blog Jessica Duchen Jottings from the Wired Just Outside Karlheinz Stockhausen Memorial Laissez Faire LAist LA Times Landscape Into Art The Lebrecht Weekly Left-handed Compliment Lerterland Lineout, Christopher Delaurenti listen. Loose Poodle Ludickid Mad Below My Feet Mad Martin Marginal Revolution Mcmurray Musings Millard Fillmore's Toenail Modernclassical MOG, DJ Ivi Monotonous Forest Moon of Alabama Mostly Opera Musepaper Music For Grown-Ups Music Matters Music Thing Musician on Music The Musings of a Culture Vulture N. Natura Moderna New Zealand Herald News From Third Angle and Beyond Nice Tunes The Nine Pound Hammer Noise noizone Nonalignment Pact normblog Norwegianity Norwegianity (II) Not a Blog notazionist Notes From a Defeatist Notes From a Defeatist, II Obscene Jester Of Mild Interest On a Pacific Aisle On An Overgrown Path Orpheus Music Out to Lunch The Outward Spiral ¡Oye Billy! Pato News Patricks Cafe Paul Dirmeikis Pep Boy Auto Parts Petulant Rumblings Philosophy of Music Phronesisaical Pillage Idiot Playback Pop Matters Prayer in Tone PYLB Quiet Thoughts The Rambler Reactor Ready Steady Blog Regen Magazine The Rehearsal Studio Renaissance Research Renewable Music The Rest Is Noise Ricercares Riskingit Robert Philen's Blog Roger Bourland La Scena Musicale Science, Culture and Integral Yoga Scott's News Sequenza 21 Sid Smith Silverlake Blvd. Soho the Dog Someday Even This Will Be a Pleasant Memory Sonic Arts Network Sonic State Startling Moniker Stephen Pollard Stereo Kinetics Stephen Yi Steve Lawson Stockhausen Verlag Memorial Booklet Succinct Moliere Surviving the Crunch Synthesis Blog Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing Tampon Teabag Telegraph, Damian Lanigan Telegraph, Ivan Hewett thizzled Thomas Moronic Tiny Mix Tapes Tom McGee Tom McGee, II Toppled Idols Trudeau on Shreveport Under the Radar Underwire unterkayness Urban Modes Vice Vinyl Junkie Virgin Media Vleeptron_Z Wales on Sunday Wall Street Journal Washington Post, Tim Page Wenatcheethehatchet Whip It! Whip It Good! Whitechapel William Vine Workingthrough World of Seduction Wow Cool Wry on Rye XTerminal Young Manhattanite

Sound-Cocktails All Around!!

“And at a stroke I became aware that all the differences in cultures and languages, and in the compositions of individual composers, are dialects, and that the fundamental measure of them all is the same: the intervals.” – Karlheinz Stockhausen

The French school of electronic music which relied on pre-recorded samples as raw material stood in staunch opposition to the German school which relied on purely electronic source material (oscillators and whatnot). It wasn't quite East Coast v. West Coast. No one got shot or anything, but there was a yawning gap between the two, one that seems silly in hindsight.

Actually, it seemed silly the moment people heard Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths) [1956], which deftly used both techniques. (Not so deftly, it was an attempt at the total serialization that would choke off musical innovation for decades to come. This was almost entirely Stockhausen's invention/fault, but more on that later.)

There are a lot of legends surrounding the piece, many of which expand on the whole French/German 'feud'. Another ripe one is that Karlheinz's son Markus is the boy heard in the recording, even though he'd yet to exist.

The text is affiliated with the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three Jews who get thrown into a furnace by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. But the text is obliterated by Stockhausen's processes. The dialect is torn apart, as the furnace was meant to do to those young men. Of course, after old Temple-destroying Nebuchadnezzar sees those three Jews walking around in the fire that was supposed to kill them, a fire he'd ordered them into because they wouldn't worship his pagan idol, he orders everyone to worship their Jewish God.

It was 4 years before the 60's, and a solid decade before hippies were anything close to a movement, but the essential elements of the movement are all there: the destruction of traditional values (time, space, language, religion), and the free loving we-are-all-one aesthetic. Stockhausen, more than just about any other modern composer, would become the darling of the movement. He is, after all, fifth from the left, top row on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, between Lenny Bruce and WC Fields (Hang on a tic, was KS a comedian? Did he amuse the Beatles?!). John Lennon was so enamored of the genre that he would pay tribute to it on The White Album with "Revolution 9"



Originally composed for five channels of sound, a stereo recording wasn't released until the 60's, and in reviewing it, Kurt Stone aptly summed up the piece:

"...there is no denying that in addition to being the work of an unusually ingenious mind, it is the realization of a deeply serious and imaginative artistic vision. Whether one calls it "music" or something else is immaterial; what is important is that the work makes a strong impression on its listeners. Whether one considers it an entertaining tour de force, a maddening yet arresting, an irritating yet occasionally indavertently funny sound-cocktail, or a work of religious fervor and devotion, it commands one's attention. Its sound and general character are unique; its details, the timbre, the stereophony, the dynamic range, the levels of distance, the spliced, chopped-up, and multiplied boy's voice, all come through with almost awesome perfection."

RIP, Karlheinz

August 22, 1928 - December 5, 2007

This is tremendously sad news. Apparently, he died on Wednesday, and the AP has not picked it up yet. Information is very scarce, at the moment.

We'll be posting a great deal more in honor of the amazing life and work of Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Bernd Alois Zimmerman, "Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu"

From Bestellnummer DMR 1013-15 (Zeitgenössische Music in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 5):

Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu (1966), Ballet noir en sept parties et une entrée

Rundfunks-Sinfonie-Orchester Köln, conducted by Michael Gielen. A recording of the Westdeutschen Rundfunks, 1972.


BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN

Bernd Alois Zimmermann was born on the 20th March 1918 in Bliesheim near Cologne. He completed his studies at the Schools of Music in Cologne and Berlin with the teachers H. Lemacher and Ph. Jarnach. He received a scholarship in 1957 to visit the Villa Massimo. From 1958 onwards he taught composition and held a seminary for film and radio music at the Cologne Musikhochschule. He was awarded the Forderungspreis (for music) by the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen. Zimmermann died on the 10 August 1970 in Lovenich near Cologne.

"I am presumably a mixture, typical of the Rheinland, of monk and Dionysus" - "... as the oldest of these young composers" : two self-revelatory sayings of Bernd Alois Zimmermann. In both of them there is not only a concentrated charge of psychological problems, of pessimistic estimation, of clear vision; two famous quotations of the composer who was regarded as being "difficult" in his lifetime, to whom success was denied - apart from his opera "The Soldiers" - who could be so ecstatically joyful and profoundly dejected; an all-round mind and, as many have put it, the last composer who was a master in every field. Perhaps Zimmermann is so popular with younger composers, because they find in his works concrete material, comprehensible compositions, first-rate craftsmanship and well-formed material; a composer who, in spite of his basic philosophic tenet, never suppressed "inspiration" or a "flash of insight" but encouraged spontaneity. Although precision of the microscopic and microcosmic detail formed the groundwork of his composition, he combined the “pedantic precision and almost scientific thoroughness" in the processing of the material with the spontaneous musical thought and used the material in the sense of the inspiration, not of the construction.

The antithesis goes further: side by side with those strictly organized scores - admired still today for their magic - with immense orchestral resources, there are always - and almost designedly - works for solo instruments or at least small ensembles; Zimmermann constantly set himself the task of reducing the unlimited diversity, the plurality of means and possibilities to a minimum. His method was to experiment, thereby not getting out of his depth, to work hard with the material, to discover its manifold features and to probe every possible sound that an instrument could produce. From the earliest stages of his career as a composer Zimmermann often used the same basic material for these contrasting dimensions as, for example, the same twelve-note row or serial framework (the row in "Die Soldaten" is used with a minimum of modification in "Dialoge" for two pianos and large orchestra, in the solo version "Monologe" and in the piano trio "Présance"; the same row is used for the piano pieces from “Enchiridion II", the “Metamorphosen/Konfigurationen", the orchestral work "Kontraste" and others). Zimmermann goes even further and takes whole structures as quotations and thus provides the same material with quite different contexts. This reveals how important to him a basic idea was once he had found it and how many possibilities he was able to wrest from it. And this in the most undoctrinaire manner as, for instance, in his treatment of the twelve-tone technique. The "organisation" of sound was for him the most "sacred" and to this end every technical means had to submit. This entailed demands on the performers which at the time seemed impossible to fulfil. (The Sonata for Cello solo, 1959/60 for instance, was classified as being unplayable; the original version - unfortunately destroyed - of the opera "Die Soldaten" contained insoluble problems for both the interpreters and the stage technicians; the exorbitant demands as regards the seating disposition could not be satisfied [the original version of ,,Dialoge"].) Further factors came to light: the use of the simplest and most obvious means with corresponding effect. Contrasting elements - ab initio. Also in the titles of his works, between the works. "Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu" (1968) is followed by the abstract work "Stille und Umkehr" (1970); in the opera "Soldaten" Sturm und Drang expressiveness forms a contrast to the profoundly depressing contempt of mankind; the early, elegant Ballet Suite "Alagona" (1940/45) to the "Sinfonie in einem Satz" (1947/ 1952) which is full of self-doubts and the desire to overcome the past. Elements of tension can also be seen in Zimmermann's classical education; its development was characterized by an incredible thirst for knowledge, a knowledge of the highest order, an education in the best sense which he received over a long period as a boarder at Steinfeld (Eifel) and at the (catholic) Apostelgymnasium in Cologne where the foundations were laid for his great interest in the classics, in philosophy, German philology and musicology. His interest in the kindred arts, above all the fine arts and the theatre, his inclination for philosophic reflexion and deduction, the comprehension and the adaption [sic] of the musical past, can be seen repeatedly.

His mind and his entire oeuvre were furthermore moulded by a profound sense of religion and Catholicism. One indication of this are the letters, to be found at the end of almost every score, O.A.M.D.G. (Omnia ad maioram Dei gloria). A symbol, a sort of dedication or gratitude, a confession or declaration which constantly gives expression to the close association with Zimmermann's faith. How often do quotations not appear from "Liber Ecclesiastis" (the preacher) ("Antiphonen", "Omnia tempus habent", "Ekklesiastische Aktion" etc.) the manifold musical quotations are expressive of great intellectual and spiritual movements and associations. Tension in relation to his contemporaries, his colleagues who like him started out from zero after the second world war, and who had to catch up with the times and took in everything new like sponges. Tension on account of his deep, spiritual, musical conscience and the experiences which he himself had had as "the oldest of these young composers". He was ten years younger than, for instance, Wolfgang Fortner and Olivier Messiaen, on the other side ten years elder than Luigi Nono, Giselher Klebe and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In spite of all unfavourable and political circumstances, Zimmermann was forced to make up - in quick time - for that which his younger colleagues had already assimilated or which did not burden them through direct experience. This meant: to study and adapt Hindemith, Strawinsky at the same time as Schoenberg and, above all, Webern. It was to Zimmermann's advantage that his immense spiritual strength was always turned towards the future and that he therefore felt himself to belong to the younger generation. But, being older than they, he was ahead of them in experience, knowledge, and ideas so that the awareness of his generation's handicap remained. The mixture of monk and Dionysus is an antinomy, an antithesis which is expressed in all of Zimmermann's works and was present in himself. Bacchic features of a highly expressive, rhythmically emphasized language alternate with musical figurations and metamorphoses of the most refined tenderness and intensity. The contrasts and tensions can be freely extended to those of the ascetic and the magician, the polemic, satirist and analyst, the student and the teacher.

Zimmermann was a lone fighter and individualist. His musical education with Heinrich Lemacher and Philipp Jarnach immediately after the war was traditional, discursive and very thorough. Up to about 1950 Zimmermann's composition remained within traditional limits, within the bounds of tonality. The influence of Hindemith and strong neo-classical tendencies are readily detectable in his works ("Sinfonie in einem Satz"; "Violinkonzert"; "Oboenkonzert"), He experienced at first hand the beginnings and the development of the New Music. As he often wrote, even at the end of his life, he was a mediator - a guardian and champion of tradition and a strong advocate of the new. The essence and specificity of music may not be neglected on account of technical mastery." . . . for even if one knows how it is done, one is still far from being in possession of that which determines music at the very roots" (Zimmermann).

In the fifties, when Zimmermann earned his living by making countless arrangements of light music for films and radio plays, he concentrated his studies on the technique of serial music. The "Canto di speranza" as a largely organized work, the "Perspektiven" for two pianos in its infinite diversity of timbres, the sonatas for solo violin and for solo viola were works that made Zimmermann known and in which he addressed himself to the public. His sense of tone colour changed from the broad, brilliantly orchestrated expanse of sound to the single sound, the single note, the pointillist moment, the microstructure - and thus also to the transparency of his musical declamation.

This development made it possible for him to establish his idea of the "pluralistic method of composition" on the basis of the single tone illumined from all sides, an idea based on musical philosophy, a kind of superstructure in Zimmermann's world of ideas which was already in embryo in the middle of the fifties and matured, and was put into musical practice, between 1957 and 1960.

In his pluralistic method of composition the concept "time" is of prime importance. This is closely bound up with Zimmermann's general view of the world, with his spiritual background and his intellect. His pluralistic edifice evolved from the desire to overcome the phenomenon of "time" - that experience of the subconscious which is immeasurable in time. He found parallels in many variations in the kindred arts, in literature, philosophy and religion. Zimmermann even quotes sources such as St. Augustine (5th century), James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Immanuel Kant, the painters Max Ernst and Paul Klee, and, as already mentioned, often the third book of Solomon from the Old Testament: "Omnius tempus habent". It is all a question of the broad background of Western culture. Zimmermann made it his aim to make people aware of the problems of the times - of the past, present, and future - in his music, as music for him is the "art of time" par excellence. He invented the Kugelgestalt der Zeit (the spherical form of time), time as a sphere, equidistant from all times, present - nolens volens. The consciousness of the composer and the listener who are in the midst of it, makes it possible for them to experience all three times simultaneously, with the same intensity, equally near and equally far.

Zimmermann calls the corresponding "moment of experience" in the multi-layered simultaneity his "pluralism". In order to realize this he uses the serial technique. Its proportional involution of the individual notes within the 12-tone row and all-interval row serves him as a framework. All the different qualities (parameters) of the notes are thereby strictly organized; the form and individual structure, and thus also the actual course of the piece of music in question result from this organization as a basis of all the parameters and the row.

The subconscious, the presence of all three times comes to the surface on account of the "open spaces" which are created in the serial concept - scraps of reminiscences in the form of extraneous musical quotions [sic] of varying duration. When several quotations are to be heard simultaneously or if several layers overlap, Zimmermann calls it collages - a notion which has long been in circulation in the arts, — a montage of pre-existing material. Things both unfamiliar and from everyday life from the surrounding world are introduced into art and produce new combinations. Collages are equally well-known in literature, whereby the arbitrarily collected materials are here seen as literary arrangements. Zimmermann's ideas of quotation and collage have more to do with the time aspect: quotations that are combined in a collage are "witnesses from the most various epochs of musical history", which "are present in the filing cabinet of our consciousness like a micro-film" (Zimmermann) and intimate the various dimensions of time.


Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu (1968)

While the "Monologe" are representative of the period in which Zimmermann's "pluralism" was at its most intensive - the almost unbounded multi-layered structure of an entire world of ideas, Zimmermann pushes his idea of quotation and collage ad absurdum and this culminates in the "ballet noir" "Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu", a piece that consists solely in quotations from others, witty, humorous and full of bitter cynicism, almost misanthropically set to music; it is a most opulent music with hair-raising impact and reality which radiates with some coarseness a desperately macabre merriment and yet which turns into bitter earnestness at the end. Without doubt one of the few pieces of music combining inspired imagination and perfect mastery of his craft. In 1966 Zimmermann became a member of the Berlin Akademie der Künste. The music for "Ubu" was written for this occasion and first performed in 1968. Zimmermann: "The piece is a 'ballet noir' which is performed at a banquet at the Court of Ubu. The Academy of the country in which the piece set is commanded to attend the banquet - and at the end in the 'Marche du decervellage' is dispatched through the trap door: symbolic of the fate of a liberal academy under the reign of a usurper. In order to show up our absolutely disproportionate intellectual and cultural situation, musical collages of the most amusing and hardest tone are used; the piece is pure collage, based on dances of the 16th and 17th centuries, interspersed with quotations from earlier and contemporary composers. A farce which is seemingly merry, fat and greedy like Ubu himself: apparently an enormous prank, but for those who are able to hear beyond this it is a warning allegory, macabre and amusing at the same time." In the 20-minute work the basic features and actions of the main character are adapted from the surrealist novel by the French author Alfred Jarry. Ubu is the incarnation of a depraved bourgeois, a tyrant and mass murderer, boorish and coarse, who has made his way by murder from being a captain of a regiment of dragoons to become the Head of State. Zimmermann's work is divided into seven parts with an Entree in which all the colleagues of the music academy are "quoted". A work that surpasses by far Zimmermann's musical pluralism and without doubt is intended to have a political function. The climax is the "Marche du decervellage": a collage of quotations from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyrie", Stockhausen's "Klavierstuck IX" (from which a chord on the piano is repeated, not as in the original 280 times but 631 times) and Berlioz's "March to Scaffold" from the "Symphonic fantastique". Hardly ever can descriptive music have been crueller, more destructive, more implacable; biting attacks against his contemporaries, musical marking time taken to absurdity, giving rise to brutality. The orchestra consists of large wood-wind, brass and percussion groups and only 4 double basses.

The use of musical quotation and the resulting quotation collage in imitation of literary and artistic collage reached its peak in the sixties in Zimmermann's "Ubu". The practice of quotation is thus overcome. The sorting and ordering of existing musical material as composition - and in this connection the composer's self-orientation in face of tradition and history, achieves a point of culmination in the works of the last five years of Zimmermann's life which is to remain unequalled. Quotation and quotation collages are extended in his works to higher and extra-musical significance within his peculiar philosophic "pluralistic method of composition".

Brain Readjustment, Courtesy of Karlheinz S.

Odd that two very different sources would reference Stockhausen's 9/11 comments today. From Mother Box:

In what follows, I would like to pursue a line suggested by a remark by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in reference to 9-11: his much-quoted comment that it was “the greatest work of art of all time.”

Despite the repellent nihilism that is at the base of Stockhausen’s ghoulish aesthetic judgment, it contains an important insight and comes closer to a genuine assessment of 9-11 than the competing interpretation of it in terms of Clausewitzian war. For Stockhausen did grasp one big truth: 9-11 was the enactment of a fantasy — not an artistic fantasy, to be sure, but a fantasy nonetheless.

From Osvaldo Golijov:

I don't know if you remember around that time, there was this horrible controversy generated by Karlheinz Stockhausen, when he said that the terrorists actually mounted the greatest opera of all time, because they rehearsed and it ended in death. It always disturbed me, what he said. But our friend Peter Sellars once said, "You know what's the beauty of opera? It's that at the end the dead rise and take a bow." And that is why Stockhausen is wrong. An operatic gesture is not the one that destroys the most; it's the one that allows for learning.

Still with this nonsense? The story was as misreported as WMD's in Iraq. Just as no educated person would still insist that Saddam (may he rest in peace) was sitting on stockpiles of mustard gas or that the smoking gun could, in fact, be a mushroom cloud, no one who continues to condemn Stockhausen's 9/11 comment can be taken seriously on the subject.

To recap, Stockhausen's spent the last three decades of his life writing the most monumental work in the history of classical music, a 7-opera cycle whose main characters are Michael, Eve, & Lucifer. He's a deeply religious man, and clearly, much involved with his operatic subject. So, when, in the course of an interview, the question was posed of whether or not these characters are merely historical figures, Stockhausen insisted they were not.

As evidence that Lucifer is not simply the fellow who offered Jesus some junk in the desert, he pointed to 9/11. (Lucifer is alive and well and compelling people to fly planes into buildings.) As a man who has written seven massive operas on the subject, he understandably delved a little deeper. It was his discussion of Lucifer's motivation that garnered the infamous comment,

"What happened there is - now you must readjust your brain - the biggest artwork of all times. That spirits achieve in a single act what we in music cannot dream of, that people rehearse ten years long like mad, totally fanatical for a concert and then die. This is the biggest artwork that exists at all in the whole universe... I couldn't match it. Against that, we - as composers - are nothing."

No one in the room misunderstood what he meant, but the antagonistic streak in European journalism quickly whipped up a storm in a teacup by stripping the quote of any context, which was, to be fair, a press conference for the Hamburg Music Festival.

It's tough to picture anything approaching this scenario happening in America. (Remember how shocking it was to see that Irish reporter put the screws to Bush?) If you held a press conference with John Adams, you'd be lucky to have people show up.

Complete Stockhausen 9/11 Hobby Kit: Transcript of Press Conference (German), Stockhausen's Response to the Controversy, Suzanne Stephens' Account of the Press Conference

ANALOG Projections '06

A festivity for Urania, Muse of Astronomy & Astrology
In the form of an electronic music concert
Presented in the Mallory Kountze Planetarium



Henry Jacobs, "Sounds for Radio"/
ANALOG arts ensemble, Prelude
Istvan B'Racz, Froggus Housatonicus
Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry, Bidule en Ut
Heather Frasch, Context, Opposition, Mechanics
Henry Jacobs, "Time Compression Tests"
Peter Milligan, Not I
Coen Brothers, "Enter the Dame"
Henry Jacobs, "Monotone"
Oznog Petersen, Slideshow
Henry Jacobs, "Flooidoodle"
Pierre Henry, "Transformation"
Bernard Parmegiani, Échos/mélopée"

Henry Jacobs (1924) is a pioneering force in American electronic music, though his underground work has escaped the attention of the public at large. In the 1950's, he hosted world music radio shows, and began assembling tape collages. Much of his music uses comedy as its material. Henry was a gifted improviser, most notably creating background effects and dialogue for THX 1138.

Istvan B'Racz comments on Froggus Housatonicus:

You are listening to a thin slice/rendering of a 3 CD spatial surround project (called "Froggus Housatonicus") done in conjunction with visual artist Joy Wulke for an exhibit at the Housatonic Museum in Bridgeport, CT. It uses frog sounds that have been manipulated, sculpted, and vastly digitally altered. The more "real" sounds of water, and bamboo ritual-flute plays in stark contrast above the digital-franken-frog soundworld- yet it all seems to meld in a hyper-real fashion. The three CDs were created so that their lengths are different, and when they were put on infinite loop, the whole work would not repeat for an enormous span of time. For me, Nature is the ultimate true "minimalist": same materials, different timings, different sonic interactions, different experience.

Pierre Henry (1927) was a pupil of Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), the inventor of musique concrète. Their collaborative composition, Bidule en Ut , is a fugue, built off the sounds of a prepared piano.

"Transformation" is an excerpt from Henry's The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Book of the Dead is the name given by Egyptologists to a group of mortuary spells written on sheets of papyrus covered with magical texts and accompanying illustrations called vignettes. These were placed with the dead in order to help them pass through the dangers of the underworld and attain an afterlife of bliss in the Field of Reeds.

Heather Frasch comments on Context, Opposition, Mechanics:

Context: Perceptions shift as sounds are placed into an assortment of contexts. Projecting physical interpretations into an indistinct world.

Opposition: Concrete and abstract- intrinsically distinctive sound worlds averse to fusion. Gradually lines between the two become blurred, one unfolding into the next. Formal coherence created by the interaction of their conflicting character, their independent evolution, and their momentary amalgamation.

Mechanics: Exploring mechanical timbres- their innate brute quality and their potentiality to transform into various textures. I would like to thank George Cremaschi, the bassist I've collaborated with and whose sounds are heard throughout this piece.

Peter Milligan's (2003) Not I is a text collage, comprised solely of a reading of Samuel Beckett's notoriously difficult play for an illuminated Mouth and a shadowy Auditor.

"Enter the Dame" is a scene from The Hudsucker Proxy, the fifth film by the Coen Brothers (1954/19957). It is a perfectly composed vignette, which marries sound and vision and narrative with the Coen's signature virtuosity. The 'Dame' is a reporter trying to scam information out of Norville Barnes, newly appointed President of Hudsucker Industries and complete unknown.

Francois Bayle (1932) studied with Messiaen and Stockhausen before joining Pierre Schaeffer's Group of Musical Research (GRM), which he would eventually lead. The gyroscopic disorientation of Motion-Emotion (1985) forms the centerpiece of tonight's program.

Of Slideshow, Dolf Kamper has this to say:

When I asked my friend Oznog Peterson if he wanted to contribute anything to ARTSaha! this year his answer, after a long pause, was "I've got a slideshow that's fun to watch."

"What, like pictures of your travels?" I asked.

"Well… you can learn a lot about people from pictures they take, like reading someone's wallet… It may not sound interesting but it can be just as interesting to hear an everyday story about them. That's all stories are anyway, nothing but what happens to someone, or what someone sees."

I immediately tried to imagine what Oznog's wallet might look like, then I tried to imagine what his photo album might look like. When I realized I couldn't possibly imagine either I got really excited about seeing his slideshow at ARTSaha!

Oznog is impossible to describe in one or two words. You will get a much clearer picture of who he is by watching his slideshow. I remember him telling me a story once about when he lived above a movie theater in Frankfurt. The theater only showed home movies all in video or Super8 with no sound and was mostly frequented by lonely Alzheimer's patients looking for clues. That might be where he got the idea for sending us this program – he told me after an evening of those movies he began to feel a real empathy towards the people on screen. I think Oznog was deeply intrigued by the flickering screen filled with family picnics and Christmas-tree gatherings. Eventually, he even met a girl who reviewed the movies for a local column.

Bernard Parmegiani (1927) is also a pupil of Pierre Schaeffer's. "Échos/Mélopée" is an excerpt from his 1984 composition La Creation du Monde.

event pictures by Molly Fitzpatrick

More significant Works from the last two decades....

The discussion is winding down, but not without more significant mentions; so, we've updated the list, including its first annotation.

Adams, John - Naive and Sentimental Music; Harmonielehre; Violin Concerto; Chamber Concerto; Shaker Loops (1983); Dr. Atomic; Book Of Alleged Dances
Anderson, Laurie – O Superman (for Massenet)
Andriessen, Louis – Writing to Vermeer
Aphex Twin – Windowlicker
Baird, Tadeusz - Voices from Afar
Barrett, Richard - Vanity ('90-'94)
Beauvais, William - Incoming Light (for prepared classical guitar; gets the sound of a gamelan out of the instrument)
Bell, Shawn - Currents II (a lovely classical guitar piece; post-minimal with lots of energy and pretty use of very dissonant harmonies; a lot of harmonics)
Benjamin, George - Antara
Berio, Luciano – Notturno; Sinfonia (1969)
Birtwistle, Harrison - Pulse Shadows; Gawain; Earth Dances (1986); Theseus Game
Boulez, Pierre – Répons (1984)
Braxton, Anthony
Budd, Harold
Cage, John - Apartment House 1776 (1976)
Carter, Elliott - Symphonia: Sum fluxae pretium spei; String Quartet No. 5; Oboe Quartet
Cooper, Lindsay - Face In the Crowd (sax quartet, played by Rova)
Crumb, George
Curran, Alvin - Inner Cities #1 - 12
Czernowin, Chaya - Dam Sheon Hachol
Davies, Peter Maxwell - Eight Songs for a Mad King; Symphony No.5; Naxos Quartets
Dempster, Stuart - Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel
Dench, Chris - Sulle scala della fenice ('86-'89)
Dillon, James - Windows and Canopies ('85)
Drumm, Kevin – Sheer Hellish Miasma
Dumitrescu, Iancu - Galaxy (1993); Pierres Sacrees (1991)
Dutilleux, Henri - L'arbre Des Songes
Eastman, Julius - Unjust Malaise (CD)
Emsley, Richard - Flow Form ('87)
Eötvös, Péter - Atlantis (1995); Three Sisters
Feldman, Morton - For Samuel Beckett (1987); Rothko Chapel (1971); Piano and String Quartet (1985); Bunita Marcus; Triadic Memories; String Quartet No. 2
Fenn O’Berg (Members: Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg and Jim O'Rourke)
Ferko, Frank – Hildegard Organ Cycle
Ferneyhough, Brian - Mnemosyne ('86); Cassandra's Dream Song (1970); Etudes transcendentales (1985)
Finnissy, Michael - The History of Photography in Sound (2001); Recent Britain ('98); Folklore II (1994)
Firsova, Elena - The Mandelstam Cantatas
Fox, Christopher - A Canonic Break ('02-'03)
Frith, Fred – Upbeat; Ayaya Moses
Galas, Diamanda - Vena Cava
Garland, Peter - Sones de Flor
Glass, Philip – Symphony No. 3; 1000 airplanes; Freezing & Liquid Days; Music in a Similar motion; Music in 12 parts; Einstein on the Beach; Koyyanisqatsi; String Quartet #2; Aphex Twin remake of Hero's Symphony
Golijov, Osvaldo – Ayre; La Pasion Segun San Marcos
Goebbels, Heiner - Surrogate Cities
Gordon, Michael – Decasia; imreadywhenyouare; the light is calling; Tinge
Gorecki, Henryk - Symphony no.2 (1972)
Grisey, Gérard - Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1998)
Gubaidulina, Sofia - Johannes-Passion; The Canticle Of The Sun
Harbison, John - Requiem
Harvey, Jonathan - Inquest of Love
Holt, Simon - Sunrise’ yellow noise
Howells, Herbert - Take him, earth, for cherishing (1963)
Hyla, Lee - We Speak Etruscan
Ikeda, Ryoji - Op
Kilar, Wojciech - Krzesany (1974)
Kline, Phil - Three Rumsfeld Songs
Kurtág, György – Kafka-Fragmente; Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova (1980); Ligatura: Message to Frances-Marie (The Answered Unanswered Question) (1989); Officium Breve In Memoriam Andreae Szervánszky
Lachenmann, Helmut - Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (2002)
Lang, David
Ligeti, György - Violin Concerto; Atmosphères (1961)
Lindberg, Magnus – Kraft; Clarinet Concerto
Lutoslawski, Witold - Chain 3;Chantefleurs et Chantefables; Livre pour orchestre (1968)
Messiaen, Olivier - Éclairs sur l'Au-delà; Sept haïkï (1962)
Monk, Meredith - Atlas (1992)
Nishimura, Akira - Into The Lights of the Eternal Chaos for symphony orchestra, 1990
Nono, Luigi - La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura
Nørgård, Per - Symphony No. 6, "At The End Of The Day"
Normandeau, Robert - Clair de Terre
Otte, Hans - Das Buch der Klange (1982)
Pallett, Owen
Part, Arvo – Litany (1996); Festina Lente; Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977)
Partch, Harry - And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma (1966)
Penderecki, Krzysztof - Threnody - To the Victims of Hiroshima (1960); Violin Concerto No. 2, “Metamorphoses"
Pritchard, Alwynne - Craw (1997)
Radulescu, Horatiu – String Quartet No. 4
Reich, Steve - Different Trains; It's Gonna Rain (1965); Six Pianos (1973); Music for 18 Musicians (1974); You Are Variations; Drumming; Tehillim; It's Gonna Rain
Rihm, Wolfgang - Jagden und Formen
Riley, Terry - In C (1964)
Rzewski, Frederic – The Road; The People United Will Never be Defeated (1975)
Saariaho, Kaija - L'amour de loin; Amers; Grammaire des rêves (1988); Graal Théâtre
Saunders, Rebecca - Albescere ('02); Cinnabar (1999)
Sciarrino, Salvatore - Studi Per L'intonazione Del Mare
Schnittke, Alfred - String Quartet No. 4; Peer Gynt
Sharp, Elliot - Abstract Repressionism
Sheng, Bright - H'un (Lacerations) (1988)
Stockhausen, Karlheinz – Hymnen (1967); LICHT; Helicopter Quartet; Kontakte
Stone, Carl
Takemitsu, Toru - I Hear the Water Dreaming; riverrun; From Me Flows What You Call Time; To the Edge of Dream (1983); Spirit Garden
Tavener, John - The Apocalypse (1993)
Tenney, James - Critical Band (1988)
Tippett, Michael - The Rose Lake; String Quartet No. 5
Twining, Toby
Ustvolskaya, Galina - Piano Sonata No. 6
Vierk, Lois
Walshe, Jennifer - "as mo cheanne" ('00)
Wilson, Ian - ... wander, darkling (2000)
Wolfe, Julia
Yi, Chen
Ziporyn, Evan - Tire Fire
Zorn, John – Spillane (1987)

What are the most significant classical works of the last 15-20 years?

That simple question always proves not so simple. The usual garden-variety 'what is classical music' issue sprouted up, but amidst all the distractions, there's quite an impressive list of pieces, several of which are outside the timeframe of the question.

Here's the complete list of pieces & composers mentioned so far:

Adams, John - Naive and Sentimental Music; Harmonielehre; Violin Concerto; Chamber Concerto; Shaker Loops (1983)
Andriessen, Louis – Writing to Vermeer
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
Baird, Tadeusz - Voices from Afar
Barrett, Richard - Vanity ('90-'94)
Beauvais, William - Incoming Light (for prepared classical guitar; gets the sound of a gamelan out of the instrument)
Bell, Shawn - Currents II (a lovely classical guitar piece; post-minimal with lots of energy and pretty use of very dissonant harmonies; a lot of harmonics)
Benjamin, George - Antara
Berio, Luciano – Notturno; Sinfonia (1969)
Birtwistle, Harrison - Pulse Shadows; Gawain; Earth Dances (1986)
Boulez, Pierre – Répons (1984)
Budd, Harold
Cage, John - Apartment House 1776 (1976)
Carter, Elliott - Symphonia: Sum fluxae pretium spei
Cooper, Lindsay - Face In the Crowd (sax quartet, played by Rova)
Czernowin, Chaya - Dam Sheon Hachol
Davies, Peter Maxwell - Eight Songs for a Mad King; Symphony No.5
Dench, Chris - Sulle scala della fenice ('86-'89)
Dillon, James - Windows and Canopies ('85)
Dumitrescu, Iancu - Galaxy (1993); Pierres Sacrees (1991)
Dutilleux, Henri - L'arbre Des Songes
Eastman, Julius - Unjust Malaise (CD)
Emsley, Richard - Flow Form ('87)
Eötvös, Péter - Atlantis (1995)
Feldman, Morton - For Samuel Beckett (1987); Rothko Chapel (1971)
Ferko, Frank – Hildegard Organ Cycle
Ferneyhough, Brian - Mnemosyne ('86); Cassandra's Dream Song (1970); Etudes transcendentales (1985)
Finnissy, Michael - The History of Photography in Sound (2001); Recent Britain ('98); Folklore II (1994)
Fox, Christopher - A Canonic Break ('02-'03)
Frith, Fred – Upbeat; Ayaya Moses
Galas, Diamanda - Vena Cava
Golijov, Osvaldo – Ayre; La Pasion Segun San Marcos
Goebbels, Heiner - Surrogate Cities
Gorecki, Henryk - Symphony no.2 (1972)
Grisey, Gérard - Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1998)
Gubaidulina, Sofia - Johannes-Passion
Harvey, Jonathan - Inquest of Love
Holt, Simon - Sunrise’ yellow noise
Howells, Herbert - Take him, earth, for cherishing (1963)
Ikeda, Ryoji - Op
Kilar, Wojciech - Krzesany (1974)
Kline, Phil - Three Rumsfeld Songs
Kurtág, György – Kafka-Fragmente; Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova (1980); Ligatura: Message to Frances-Marie (The Answered Unanswered Question) (1989)
Lachenmann, Helmut - Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (2002)
Ligeti, György - Violin Concerto; Atmosphères (1961)
Lindberg, Magnus – Kraft; Clarinet Concerto
Lutoslawski, Witold - Chain 3;Chantefleurs et Chantefables; Livre pour orchestre (1968)
Messiaen, Olivier - Éclairs sur l'Au-delà; Sept haïkï (1962)
Monk, Meredith - Atlas (1992)
Nishimura, Akira - Into The Lights of the Eternal Chaos for symphony orchestra, 1990
Nono, Luigi - La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura
Normandeau, Robert - Clair de Terre
Otte, Hans - Das Buch der Klange (1982)
Pallett, Owen
Part, Arvo – Litany (1996); Festina Lente; Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977)
Partch, Harry - And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma (1966)
Penderecki, Krzysztof - Threnody - To the Victims of Hiroshima (1960)
Pritchard, Alwynne - Craw (1997)
Reich, Steve - Different Trains; It's Gonna Rain (1965); Six Pianos (1973)
Rihm, Wolfgang - Jagden und Formen
Riley, Terry - In C (1964)
Rzewski, Frederic – The Road; The People United Will Never be Defeated (1975)
Saariaho, Kaija - L'amour de loin; Amers; Grammaire des rêves (1988)
Saunders, Rebecca - Albescere ('02); Cinnabar (1999)
Schnittke, Alfred - String Quartet No. 4
Sharp, Elliot - Abstract Repressionism
Stockhausen, Karlheinz – Hymnen (1967); LICHT
Takemitsu, Toru - I Hear the Water Dreaming; riverrun; From Me Flows What You Call Time
Tavener, John - The Apocalypse (1993)
Tenney, James - Critical Band (1988)
Walshe, Jennifer - "as mo cheanne" ('00)
Wilson, Ian - ... wander, darkling (2000)
Ziporyn, Evan - Tire Fire
Zorn, John – Spillane (1987)

Marginalizing Stockhausen

There's no question that no one marginalizes Stockhausen better than he marginalizes himself, but to invoke an oft-cited parallel, the mountains of execrable prose, not to mention the vast catalogue of woeful misdeeds, that were Wagner's non-musical legacy have done little to obscure his rightful place in the pantheon [Hell, the Nazis used him as a poster boy]. Scholarship has even gone out of its way to play the apologist for Wagner, and no doubt, one day it will for Stockhausen as well.

Karlheinz' only real sin has been a simplistic sort of honesty. He's been a bit too forthright about his internal life and his estimation of his own work. That's been the handy excuse to dismiss him ever since he fell out of fashion, but it's also the key to countering that same critical groupthink.

In his review of Robin Maconie's new book, David Schiff offers a rather concise summary of Stockhausen's impact and artistic trajectory. He demonstrates how Stockhausen stood well apart from his contemporaries in both the singularity of his music and his ability to sustain the myth of progress

Stockhausen, however, promoted each new work as a dialectical step forward and convinced many composers and critics that his own evolution set the pace for all the music of his time. Pointillism, the result of serial micro-management of pitch, duration, articulation and dynamics, gave way to “group” composition in which the statistical jumble of these elements was prolonged into phrases. These phrases then grew into serially determined “moments” that floated freely in an indeterminate ocean of time. Determinacy now morphed into indeterminacy, and serial calculation gave way to intuitive music-making.

This, dear friends, is where history should depart from the good composer's intentions. Just as scholarship has taken the teeth out of 'Judaism in Music' by unearthing Wagner's warm correspondences with Jewish colleagues and more fully developing a social narrative where such racism is a priori, so will scholarship have to do a fair bit of work in untangling Stockhausen's music from Stockhausen's words.

Ironically enough, it's those words that are integral to that process. By his own account, the birth of his intuitive music was a clarion moment more spiritual than it was musical. He'd suffered a nervous breakdown after his wife left him. He'd not eaten or slept for days when he sat at the piano and made a sound that he recognized did not come from him but was transmitted through him by a larger power.

That's not the kind of story that goes over well at cocktail parties. If some accountant you'd just met told you the story, chances are you'd edge away and try to find some folks who were talking about their fantasy baseball teams. Moreover, it's not the type of story that fits well into one's own personal narrative. It's difficult to switch from such mystical head space to the grocery store to pick up diapers and formula. So, it should be understood that, almost out of necessity, Stockhausen would invent a narrative where the singular experience that lead to his 'intuitive' music was incorporated into some sort of master story arc that leads up to his writing of LICHT.

Schiff points out that the climax in Gruppen was not born out of the process that Stockhausen claimed, but rather, it was ready-made to please the audience, and it is that process of weeding out the Stockhausen from the Stockhausen, if you will, that is the key to restoring the lustre to the most important canon of the contemporary era.

ANALogus Mundi

The classical music community is grappling with an identity crisis, which we don't presume to solve with our simple prescription, but we do think that the ANALOG approach neatly circumvents most of these issues by recognizing concert music's constituent elements.

By way of example, Stockhausen went through one of his phases of prophetic zeal (there have been many) back when he was composing music solely out of sine waves. He'd struck on the root elements of sound, and took to synthesizing new works (Etude, for instance) out of the most base materials.

And that is, in a nutshell, the process of concert music. No matter how rigorous a composer's process, or how complex his forms are, they are based in something terribly primal, and the extermination of class barriers (or the rise of populism, depending on how you see it), could just as easily be viewed as a tremendous liberation of classical music, as it is an invasion of the barbarian horde.

We're free now to bring our base materials out into the light and play with them. There's an audience for it. It just remains to be seen if there's enough of an appetite for it among the artists.

The tipping point

So we come to it, the one piece that Webern wrote that is a verifiable fulcrum in music history. Like The Art of the Fugue or the Ninth Symphony, it is the apotheosis of its own moment. Webern had mastered combinatoriality, letting the tiniest three-note fragment generate his row, but in his Concerto for Nine Instruments, he took that germinative process to its extremes. Dynamics and tempi were also regulated by the row, a total serialization that would resonate so profoundly with Stockhausen and Boulez that it would lead to a near total indoctrination in compositional circles.

Indeed, if you talk to anyone who studied composition mid-century in Europe or America, you are bound to hear stories of how rigid the grip of the complexity doctrine was on composition pedagogy, and many have profound identity narratives. In fact, many gay composers who also had to come to grips with their sexual identity found that easier to do than to admit that they were tonalists.

The backlash has been nearly as severe as the complexity movement was. Minimalism and neo-romanticism have a stranglehold on music today, from a programming standpoint. Academia has not followed suite, thankfully, allowing for a tremendous range of style.

The piece itself is over in seven minutes. It is a wisp of a thing, with more blank space in its score than notes. But it's a sphinx, always inviting new looks and never revealing the same answers.

I. Etwas Lebhaft
II. Sehr Langsam
III. Sehr Rasch

First page with Glenn Gould's annotations:

Aeromusic

One of ANALOG's strongest benefactors flew in to ARTSaha! this year on a private plane, and when I asked if we could incorporate the pilot and the plane into this year's festival, I must admit I was a bit surprised at how alien the idea seemed to her. Surely, everyone knows that aerial music is a standard genre now, a decade after Stockhausen's Helikopter String Quartet.



It's downright commonplace to put musicians into aeromobiles for remote performances these days! Why just the other day, the entire New York Philharmonic squeezed into a hot air balloon to perform Bruckner 7. We're aiming for a rocket or space shuttle, but if we have to start with our sponsor's Cessna, that'll be ok. You can start helping ARTSaha! 2006 by clicking through our Google ads, but if you happen to know anyone who owns a Class III rocket (or four), shoot us an e-mail.

Just one quick note on the Stockhausen: I love the guy, warts and all. And in this case, it's that same-old issue of his inflexibility of vision. He started his own publishing company because he simply couldn't tolerate scores that didn't appear exactly as he pictured them, and here too, his concept for the piece moves quickly into the realm of masochism when he instructs that the staging include an initial introduction of the performers by a moderator who then must describe "the technical aspects of the forthcoming performance".

Putting performers into helicopters is gag enough, dude. The audience is gonna have plenty to chew on without a spec sheet.

Musique Concrete and '70's Industrial

I just learned about Throbbing Gristle from an old RE/search (1983) . You should definitely check out this interview containted therin where Genesis P-Orridge talks about his relationship with William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

Industrial Introduction
Slug Bait
After Cease to Exist

To me, the connection between this music and the work of folks like Pierre Schaeffer, Luigi Russolo, Kurt Schwitters, and Karlheinz Stockhausen is inescapable - but you can draw your own conclusions after you listen to soundbites from UBUweb when they come back online.

Lessons in Transcriptions

SAMPLE A:
Willie Nelson joining Johnny Cash in a rendition of "Ghost Riders in the Sky". This is my favourite version of Ghost Riders, the rambling and roaming guitars substituting admirably for the original upbeat and grandiose accompaniments of band, trumpets and chorus.

What strkes me the most is the subtle clipping of meter, not quite a demonstration of rhythmic displacement such as what Stravinsky would do. Perhaps suggesting the oldtimers maybe getting too wary to continue ...


SAMPLE B:
In Ének, Michael Finnissy references Hungarian gypsy music (no particular region or style). The violinist is instructed to play "very flexibly and spontaneously" as Finnissy takes advantage of the opportunity to construct somewhat fluid rhythmic cells which stagger around the ictus. Throughout the piece, this relentless rhythmic pulsing is interrupted by mournful and lamentful lyrical outpourings.

[Finally, inspired by jodru's post, here's one in tribute to dear Stockhausen and for the road!]

Aries

One of the not so insignificant issues with Karlheinz Stockhausen is his stewardship of his own cult of personality. While not amoral in the slightest, there are some strong parallels to the ultimate exemplar of compositional egotism, Richard Wagner. Stockhausen has always suffered from the bad combination of a confrontational press corps and an unflichingly honest tongue. He is well aware of his own merits and not hesitant in the least to expound on them.

Then, as if that weren't enough of an impediment to public acceptance, he decided that he was from another planet. Rather, that's how his mysticism is parodied, but it's not too gross a distortion of the truth that Stockhausen espouses. Before he embarked on the epic composition of LICHT, he was obsessed for quite some time with celestial themes, producing scores that were overrun with zodiacal references and motifs. His 1981 piece for trumpet and tape, Aries is a signature recontextualization of his Tierkreis melodies (each of which symbolizes a star sign). The titular melody is the most dominant one, iterated several times in its entirety, where the other melodies appear in fragmented or distorted forms.



All that extra-musical symbolism is as lost on a listener as a tempo marking like 48.5 bpm [His own son (far left, above), who is heard on this recording, admits that there is no recourse for a musician except to simply rehearse at either 48 or 49 bpm], and what's important, of course, is what is discernible by the uninformed ear. Bach's numerological jokes aren't necessary for a listener to enjoy his music, and so too is an understanding of, or even, sympathy for, Stockhausen's cosmology immaterial to a meaningful experience with his late-period music.

I'll be performing Aries on my recital at ARTSaha, and presently, I'm in love with sonorities at the 7' mark (headphones required for full enjoyment).

invisibly performing

as bodily functions inspire music... Adam Overton presented the Invisible Performance Workshop, 5 days of historic and current body, mind & sound-related performance scores by Richard Martin, Yoko Ono, Nat Slaughter, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jason Thomas and himself in the Calarts ROD Recital Hall.







These were taken from Solo for violinist, violist, cellist or contrabassist with violinists Johnny Chang and Eric km Clark, and violist Cassia Streb.

Covers

Stockhausen once said that he was so brilliant that any composer could choose just one phase of his artistic development and merely imitate that to form an entire career. Set aside the hubris and Stockhausen actually provides a fine analysis of truly great art. Prince's "When U Were Mine" follows that template with its multiplicity. The music itself is so simple and solid that it lends itself to almost any treatment. Then there's Prince's falsetto delivery which melds with his ambiguous lyric to form a truly androgynous song that works equally well in the hands of an artist of either gender. It's little wonder that the song has been covered so many times in so many different ways. Here are three that come to mind:

Tegan & Sara

Crooked Fingers

Cyndi Lauper

Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego

Not only did Stockhausen's "Gesang der Junglinge" put to bed the East Coast/West Coast-style feud over electronic music (Things got so bad that Pierre Schaeffer put out a contract on the entire Cologne studio), by marrying the two competing styles, but it, more than any other piece, launched the second great revolution in 20th century music (Jazz being the first).

Any schmo who gets up on his two turntables and cuts between a Chic record and a James Brown break is in debt to Stockhausen and his contemporaries. This was Paul McCartney's favourite piece. The text ostensibly deals with the story from Daniel of the three men who survive an execution by furnace. But that's not the point, of course. The point is to encounter the sound of this kid's voice as an entity unto itself. It's still a fantastic listen all these years later (that would be 49, in case you're counting).