Stockhausen's Spaceship

[kishnevi]

Sure there are. Have you looked? And it doesn't get more definitive than a major composer running his very own recording label and having complete control over all of the parameters that go into the releases he wishes to put out into the world. Sure the prices may be higher than average, but the releases are very good quality and you get what you pay for. And I'm sure members here who have a lot of them can vouch for them too.

well, yes......but I'm not going to sink more money than I need to to give experimental listens to works by a composer from whom I have yet to hear a single piece I'd be interested in hearing again.   So for now the SV recordings are will safely be passed over.   Which leads me to repeat the question I asked before (which perhaps you missed because it was an edited-in afterthought)--what do you think of the Wergo and EMI recordings?

[not edward]

If I may be permitted to interject some suggestions from my modest Stockhausen collection, these three discs give a good idea of the composer's priorities at the time the works in question were written, and should not be too expensive to acquire:

[asin]B000ENC6P0[/asin]
A much better Gruppen than the Abbado version on DG, combined with a Licht-era revision of the early Punkte


[asin]B002LMKJQK[/asin]
Early chamber music, played as well as you'd expect from Ensemble Recherche.


[asin]B00000E55W[/asin]
A sort of trumpet concerto for the composer's son Markus, extracted from Michael's journey around the world in Donnerstag aus Licht. Gives a good idea of the musical language of the earlier Licht operas.

[kishnevi]

Edward, thank you.   

[Mirror Image]

Stockhausen's legendary Klavierstück (excerpt)

http://www.youtube.com/v/8TFwujEGMyY

Published on May 20, 2014
Marc Ponthus plays Stockhausen

Absolute rubbish.

[Mirror Image]

It's a fabulous performance of a monumental piano solo .. too bad it didn't have the entire solo there. I got my eye on Marc Ponthus now, whoa he's good .. hope he's able to record these groundbreaking piano works and release them on disc one day to cherish over and over. I love Stockhausen's piano solos, they are my favorite.

Said GMG's Stockhausen advocate.

[Brahmsian]

Yesterday, I sampled some of Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet (Arditti Qt.)

Reaction:   

[kishnevi]

The Wergos I already know of, the others go on the list.  Thank you.

[torut]

I don't have many, but Winant/Tenney's Kontakte is my favorite non-SV CD. It gives me surreal and warm feelings at the same time.

[EigenUser]

Absolute rubbish.

I don't really get this either, but don't you think it is interesting to see?

[Mandryka]

It's a fabulous performance of a monumental piano solo .. too bad it didn't have the entire solo there. I got my eye on Marc Ponthus now, whoa he's good .. hope he's able to record these groundbreaking piano works and release them on disc one day to cherish over and over. I love Stockhausen's piano solos, they are my favorite.

There's a fabulous recording of the first two Boulez sonatas by Marc Ponthus, who I also like.

I'm about to put David Tudor's recording of the Stockhausen klavierstucke on symphonyshare, if anyone's a member I hope they'll try it, I think the extremely physical approach is interesting. The recording includes 4 different performances of XI.

[Uatu]

And uatu & Rex are probably intimately familiar with his massive & complex output too. Maybe next month I'll start a weekly .. "guess the Stockhausen work"  trivia thing .

I missed your quiz post...boy this thread really goes in spurts.  Nothing for a couple days, then a Klavierstucke gets posted and boom - critics!
Yeah bring on the quiz, I'm pretty weak on the last 4 operas, but prior to that I think that'd be a fun challenge. 

Speaking of SV, I just got SV 6 - Zyklus/Refrain/Kontakte and SV 88 - Balance & Gluck.  Yes, a bit pricey, but when I opened up my package and saw what was included...well it's worth it, man.  SV 6 comes with a 180 page book!  So yes, the SV editions are expensive, but you get what you pay for.  SV 88 (KLANG 7,8) didn't come with a flat spine book, but did come with a bi-lingual booklet with full-color pictures and copious notes on the compositions and their structure.  The cover is a drawing by the composer himself of an "aha" moment and was originally a Xmas gift to one of his compatriots. 

Another thing to consider is that these are imports and the postage and packaging is included in the price (actually a per order fee is charged for airmail if you're overseas apparently).  Bottom line, you get definitive composer-approved recordings with more text notes than you can shake a college thesis at, coming from overseas in sturdy packaging. 

I suppose the other problem is that this makes it difficult for people unfamiliar with Stockhausen to get into his works.  I mean you can buy many a no-name contemporary composer's stuff on NAXOS for 9.99, so why bother with the expensive imported Stockhausen stuff?  I guess it's like, why buy fine French Wine when I can drink Cosco/Grocery store wine?  I think once one develops a taste for Stockhausen it makes it hard to go back. 

Personally there are only a few composers whose work I consistently listen to: Beethoven, Debussy, Stockhausen.  That's it.  (OK, I'll add Stravinsky in there, but he's not as consistent as the other 3 I think.)  To me those 3 guys are the geniuses of European art music.  Leonard Bernstein said about Beethoven 'he never fails you, you can trust that you're in good hands' or something to that effect.    I feel the same way about LvB, Debussy and KS.  It may take some work, but once you "get" him...well the Stockhausen courses in Germany DID get 160 students last year, and this is even 7 years after he died.  He's probably more popular now than in the last 15 years, judging by how many performances are scheduled around the world. 

Not all music is worth 16.99.  Some are worth more....

(Actually one of the main raisons d'être of my blog is to "explain" Stockhausen's music and ways to approach it from an uninitiated perspective.  Diving deep into these things also reveals many amazing things I never realized before as well, so it's not totally altruistic )

http://stockhausenspace.blogspot.com/

[petrarch]

Speaking of SV, I just got SV 6 - Zyklus/Refrain/Kontakte and SV 88 - Balance & Gluck.  Yes, a bit pricey, but when I opened up my package and saw what was included...well it's worth it, man.  SV 6 comes with a 180 page book!  So yes, the SV editions are expensive, but you get what you pay for.  SV 88 (KLANG 7,8) didn't come with a flat spine book, but did come with a bi-lingual booklet with full-color pictures and copious notes on the compositions and their structure.  The cover is a drawing by the composer himself of an "aha" moment and was originally a Xmas gift to one of his compatriots. 

Good for you, enjoy the ride... I lost count of how many SV CDs I have . That, the scores and the books, it's certainly an engaging adventure.

[listener]

someone else on S.---  Tim Page in the New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/may/23/stockhausen-moment/

[Uatu]

My newest blog entry is up INVASION – EXPLOSION, Oktophonie, Pieta, from Act 2 of Dienstag aus LICHT:

http://stockhausenspace.blogspot.com/2014/05/opus-61-invasion-explosion-mit-abschied.html

Here's something interesting I learned:  On CD Stockhausen translates the 3 dimensional 8-channel sound space into a 2-channel stereo mix using some very novel ideas.  In order to create rotating sound events (left-right/front-back) he causes different amounts of phase shifting to occur as sounds come around the front or the back while moving horizontally.  Phase shifting occurs when a speaker set up is wired "backwards", and the stereo field sounds "wrong".  By changing the proportional amount of "wrongness" during a sound's duration, Stockhausen simulates a feeling of changing depth.  In order to translate the horizontal (up-down) movements of 3 dimensional space into stereo, Stockhausen increases the brightness of the sound as it goes higher in space.  He noticed this effect when birds would fly up or down outside his window

Personally I never got this to really work without using a good bit of imagination.  Anybody else?  Some guys at Huddersfield in the paper they wrote about Oktophonie said it didn't really work for them either.  Stockhausen says to use a 4 speaker set up home, but frankly that's just too much work.

[Karl Henning]

Yesterday, I sampled some of Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet (Arditti Qt.)

Reaction:   

Maybe it's better if we climb aboard? . . .

[snyprrr]

Maybe it's better if we climb aboard? . . .

How dare you Post here when we've got work to do in the other Thread!! chop chop!!

[Karl Henning]

A passing helicopter wafted me here . . . .

[EigenUser]

How dare you Post here when we've got work to do in the other Thread!! chop chop!!

Richard Karl, go compose!

[not edward]

Maybe it's better if we climb aboard? . . .

To be fair, I don't think the Helikopter-Quartett is a good work to judge Stockhausen by. I'd regard it as one of his weakest efforts.

[amw]

According to a few people I know who attended the Mittwoch premiere, "oh my god, suddenly the Helikopter-Streichquartett makes sense now!". However they were also raving about camels and trombones and planets so I didn't take them too seriously.