Sigfrid Karg-Elert, "Hommage to Haendel, Op.75b"

This album stopped me in my tracks when I came across it, mainly because those pipes on the cover looked awfully familiar. It's a selection of pieces performed by Paul Wisskirchen on the organ in the Altenberg Cathedral, which is nestled in Bergisches Land between Düsseldorf and Cologne. The cathedral is an imposing presence in the narrow valley formed by the Dhünn river, a tributary of the Wupper which flows into the Rhein.

I'd been to the cathedral in 2008 (photos below) as a sort of mental health break during the Stockhausen Courses. Your brain gets so overworked from the constant stream of information that an afternoon or an evening away from Kuerten is inevitable. Turns out, I hadn't strayed as far from Stockhausen as I'd thought.

In 1935, Stockhausen's father was transfered to Altenberg, which is nothing more than a handful of buildings around the church. By that time, the family had been whittled down to three by the commitment of wife and mother Gertrude and the death of second son Hermann-Josef, both of which occurred within the span of a few months. Simon moved his remaining children, Katherina and Karlheinz, into an apartment in the village school. Their view was of the western front of the cathedral, which is dominated by a massive stained glass window.

The rest of the windows are strikingly different. The church was built by the Cistercians, who were an offshoot of the Benedictines. The split occurred because the Cistercians felt the Benedictines had strayed too far from their founding principles of austerity. Though the cathedral at Altenberg is quite grand, it is not ornate. Aside from that main western window, the rest of the windows are essentially clear glass. Each one has a miniscule splash of color at its base in the form of a stain glassed crest, but aside from that, the windows keep with the theme of simplicity that dominates the cathedral's design.

Of those windows, Michael Kurtz writes in his biography:

The changing play of light inside thus reflects the passing phases of the day more than in other cathedrals. Karlheinz often watched as the whole church was bathed in gold when the sun set and the evening light flooded in through the golden west window. The medieval cathedral, the woods and the surrounding peaks form the backcloth for the next years of Stockhausen's life.

It's tempting to think that the transmutable essence of the cathedral's interior light is one of the subconscious drivers in Licht. After all, everything else in his subconscious seemed to make its way into the cycle, and Stockhausen did compare his compositional process in Licht to the refraction of light through a prism.

Regardless, as Kurtz points out, the cathedral in Altenberg, and the town itself, played a major role in his life. It was where he had his First Communion. The cathedral's organist Franz-Josef Kloth was his first piano teacher. By the time Karlheinz was in grammar school, he was granted permission to play on the cathedral organ.

And Altenberg is where his father became a  block leader for the Nazi Party. Karlheinz left for boarding school due to a clash of wills with his stepmother, but Altenberg essentially remained his home until he moved to Cologne for his professional studies. It was in Altenberg where he met with his father for the last time. Kurtz again:

In February 1945 he fled with his school certificate from Bedburg to meet his father, who was on leave from the front, in Altenberg. As block leader amidst the petty quarrels of village life, his father had become more and more ensnared in the service of the party; he had even been denounced twice, and knew what to expect after the war. He bade his son farewell with the words, 'I'm not coming back. Look after things.'

Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Mixtur 2003 (Forward Version)"

for 5 orchestra groups, 4 sine-wave generator players, 4 sound mixers, with 4 ring modulators and sound projectionist

From the Musica Viva Festival
Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Lucas Vis
Recorded January 27, 2008
Muffathalle, Munich

The essential aspect of MIXTUR is, on one hand, the transformation of the familiar orchestra sound into a new, enchanting world of sound. It is an unbelievable experience, for example, to see and hear string players bowing a sustained tone and to simultaneously perceive how this tone slowly moves away from itself in a glissando, the pulse accelerates, and a wonderful timbre spectrum emerges. Orchestra musicians are astonished when they hear the notes they play being modulated timbrally, melodically, rhythmically, and dynamically. All shades of the transitions from tone to noise, noise to chord, from timbre to rhythm and rhythm to pitch come into being from such ring modulations, as if by themselves.

Finest micro-intervals, extreme glissandi and register changes, percussive attacks resulting from normally smooth entrances, complex harmonies (also above single instrumental tones), and many other unheard-of sound events result from this modulation technique and from the variable structuring.

Secondly, the ring modulation adds new overtone- and sub-tone series to the instrumental spectra, which can be clearly heard, especially during sustained sounds in MIXTUR. Such mixtures do not occur in nature or with traditional instruments. Through these mirrored overtone harmonies, one is moved by alien, haunting sensations of beauty, which are completely new in art music.

Only such renewal in how music affects us imbues new techniques with meaning. -- Karlheinz Stockhausen

A Tantalizing Argument

While reviewing David Stubbs' Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen, Philip Ball offers up a truly tantalizing explanation for the phenomenon:

...the understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of music that has emerged in recent years implies that it is not enough to tell ingrates bemused by Stockhausen to try harder.

There are certainly parallels in the way we make sense of acoustic and visual information. Chief among these rules are the “Gestalt principles” identified by a group of German-based psychologists in the early 20th century. These are a series of implicit mental rules that help people to make good guesses at how to interpret complex sensory stimuli by grouping them together. We make assumptions about continuity, for example: the aeroplane that flies into a cloud is the same one that flies out the other side. We group objects that look similar, or that are close together. Although the Gestalt principles are not foolproof, they make the world more comprehensible. Both in sound and in vision, the ability to interpret sensory data this way must have had evolutionary benefits. -- Philip Ball

That's a nifty argument, which immediately brings to mind Steve Martin, of all people.

In his recent memoir about his stand-up career, Martin explained how he set about doing precisely what Ball describes. Instead of delivering jokes with punchlines that cued the audience to laugh, he deliberately tried to avoid a punchline for as long as possible. His idea was simply to keep the audience's tension so high as they looked for a punchline to laugh at that they'd start to laugh at anything. His act got so big that he ended up doing balloon animals in stadiums like a jerk. You can abandon Gestalt principles and still make a killing.

And come to think of it, Stockhausen was selling out venues all over the world in his prime. The dude walked away from his rock star status to write Licht, which highlights the critical blind spot of all these endless arguments about the problems with new music:

taste

An old professor of mine was fond of relating a horror story from the board meetings of a chamber orchestra he founded. One of the trustees insisted that the orchestra not play Schubert. No matter how my professor tried to explain the importance of Schubert and the absurdity of an orchestra eschewing his music, the trustee was insistent.

Those kinds of divisions exist all over classical music. I inherited a distaste for Mahler from my mother, which I didn't shake until I was in grad school. At any classical music concert, you'll find people who can't stand Wagner or think Bach is dry, and if you go further afield, even the most popular classics leave the general public totally unmoved.

There are no hard and fast rules for taste. Popularity gaps can be both big and small. Many fans of popular music would consider gangsta rap and hardcore metal to be 'noise'. One could just as readily hear a Garth Brooks fan say that they don't 'get' why anyone would like George Jones.

Plenty of people 'get' Stockhausen. The assumption that if Stockhausen had written in the style of Mozart or Beethoven he would have been more widely understood is specious. It's a nice way to sell books and perpetuate academic debates. Sadly, it's also often a crutch by performers to not engage with their audience.

I'm not ready to say that all this theorizing is tiresome, but it does strike me as wide of the mark. The market for contemporary classical music in the Stockhausen vein has established itself as small but devoted, akin to some sub-genre of indie rock or jazz. I'm not sure why people keep banging their heads against the wall over why it's not more popular. It's doing just fine.

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

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

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

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

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

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




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




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




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



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

Stockhausen's Still Being Premiered

musikFabrik is premiering Erwachen today in Brussels. Erwachen is the 12th hour of KLANG, Stockhausen's unfinished cycle of pieces for each hour of the day. It's one of the chamber pieces that derives its material from Harmonien, the solo piece from the 5th hour of the cycle.

John Lennon & Yoko Ono, "John & Yoko"

“In my eyes, John Lennon was the most important mediator between popular and serious music of this century.” -- Karlheinz Stockhausen

Agree or Disagree?

From Justin Davidson's review of the Mostly Mozart festival in New York:

Some attempts at making connections strain good will. The pianist and conductor Pierre-Laurent Aimard tried valiantly to lend some Classical-era cred to the avant-garde iconoclast Karlheinz Stockhausen by leading the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in his 1953 Kontra-Punkte. Aimard offered a persuasive if apologetic introduction (“You may not love this piece,” he warned), emphasizing the counterpoint, the gamesmanship, and the satisfying lucidity of form that, he said, resembled Haydn’s. Then the music began and the links dissolved. I can imagine Mozart sitting at the piano and improvising a blistering parody of Stockhausen’s skittering melodies and nattering outbursts, which barely speak to the 21st century, let alone the eighteenth.

Does 'Kontra-Punkte' have anything to say to the 21st century?
	Yes
	No

How Not to Win Friends and Influence People

(Excerpts from a letter written to David Robertson on June 20th 1997)

Dear David Robertson,

yesterday I received the program for the "saison musicale 97/98" of your ensemble.

Programming is an art: please change several programs with my works!

March 23rd: Klavierstuck VI will die in your program. I have heard this work recently twice: the first good interpretations (played by Ellen Cover). In your program the only possible order for listening to Klavierstuck VI would be

Klavierstuck VI
Refrain
--Intermission--
Zeitmasze
Klavierstuck VII [NOT the other way around!]

I send you a copy of my performance score of Refrain: please show it to the musicians: there are a lot of corrections, changes in this score. They should read the booklet of CD 6.

April 2nd, etc. Gruppen etc.: It would have been infinitely spiritually better to program Klavierstuck IX instead of X between the two Gruppen-performances. I know what I am talking about: X is much too long for being played before the 2nd performance of Gruppen (X lasts usually 26 minutes), and the end of X has reached in a good performance a spiritual state which is in another, higher world. One should never lead back to the vital world of Gruppen. So, please replace X by IX.
----------------
Perhaps pgrogram 39 can end with X in case the two Solo-Versions are not too long. What are their durations?

April 23rd: Who is the pianist? Is the intermission after the first version of Klavierstuck XI? If one wants to compare two 'versions', nothing should come in between, which means:

Klavierstuck XIV - Aries - Klavierstuck XI
-intermission-
Klavierstuck XI - In Freundschaft!!

The vocal part of XIV is not easy, the sound projection difficult!
Attention: I send you a new score of XIV with corrections. Do you have the new score and parts of Zeitmasze with the new performance instructions?

April 24nd: This is causing my whole being to protest: Please change forever this terrible program:

a) after Kontakte nothing should be performed in the same program! Once should leave, after this celestial ending in outer space, the hall, go to sleep and dream of a lighter world!!

b) Therefore: you could either make a program as I have tried out several hundred times:

Zyklus (15')
Klavierstucke I-V (13')
Refrain (12')
-intermission-
Kontakte

Or: I give an introduction to Kontakte with musical examples played by the performers or only tape, but this should be rehearsed 2 hours!!!

c) Klavierstuck XII belongs to a completely different sound wolr.d
First of all it is a reduction of a work for tenor, trumpet, dancer, piano, basset-horn (soprano, bass ad libitium), tape. As your ensemble seems to be unable to perform this original version of Examen, Klavierstuck XII belongs into a context of Michaels-Gruss, Halt or Mission und Himmelfahrt, Mondeva, Drachenkampf, Vision (all works which could be performed by your ensemble).
These are formula compositions: you should teach our listeners, not make them sick!

d) Klavierstuck XII I have heard twice in concerts during the last few weeks, played by Majella St. and Ellen Corver, and we have recorded it for a CD with Ellen Corver (both excellent!): This work needs a very charming performer with Schumannesque technique and style, a good vocal formation and talent of acting. It also needs a perfect sound projection (transmitter-microphone, 3 microphones inside the piano, experienced sound projectionist).

e) So, Klavierstuck XII does not fit together with Kontakte - never.
I had dinner with you in Baden-Baden: you were very careful in composing your meal. Therefore I wonder why you can make such fundamental mistakes in programming.

f) Herve Boutry asked me yesterday if I could come to a rehearsal and performance of Kontakte:
...I would like very much to help in rehearsing Kontakte. Boutry proposed Marco Stroppa as sound projectionist. I don't know Stroppa, but I have done the sound projection of Kontakte circa 600 times and I made many mistakes! I don't know where Stroppa studied (practicing!) the sound projection of Kontakte.

Dealing with electro-acoustic music in general does not mean that one is able to take over the sound projection of works which one has not learned!

Therefore I would very much like to assist in at least 2x3 hours of rehearsals of Kontakte plus general rehearsal...

g) Do you - do the musicians - have the new score of Kontakte?

h) Do you have the new 8-channel tape for Tascam DA 88 digital play back of Kontakte (I made a completely new mix with time code!). Scores and new tape are available at Stockhausen-Verlage, also CDs 3 Kontakte without instruments (cue numbers as in the new score) and CD 6 with instruments (also with cue numbers). The CDs are necessary for rehearsals.

i) In case you need advice for the right percussion instruments, lighting etc., you should ask the percussionist Andreas Boettger who has performed it many times together with me.

Please be so kind and answer this letter soon -- I am really worried about your programming.

Friendly and hopeful yours
Stockhausen
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This letter was distributed in a packet of materials with the sound projection class at this year's courses. It summarizes Stockhausen's personality fairly well: there's the extreme generosity (sending scores, a detailed reaction to an artist's interest in his music), the exacting discipline, the devotion to his personal vision, as well as the condescension and the direct personal insults.

It's astonishing that he was able to maintain as many professional relationships as he did with such a tendency towards nastiness. There are a dozen other ways to make the points in this letter without resorting to the language Stockhausen employs.

My BELOW-LEFT Symphony was here.

Someone must have torn it off.

Now will no one ever hear it?

Stockhausen
March 15th 2003

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
Uploaded by MYVID4LIFE

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.