Stockhausen's Spaceship

[snyprrr]

Would they not therefore be called "Mittens" ?   

Or does the writer mean that the "fingerless fleece gloves" were actually covers for only the palms of the hands?

[Cato]

You have never heard of fingerless fleece gloves?!?! ..

Now we know!   

Many thanks!

[snyprrr]

How will the next Post go?, how will it go?

[MDL]

Inori is a piece I've never really cared for or warmed up to .. it is Stockhausen at his most conservative, but not to a memorable effect! And it's too long and with not much variety or excitement imo, it would have been so much better if it was shorter (like about 20-25 minutes) ... I'd take take any of his major electronic compositions over it in a heartbeat. And he never focused all his energy on electronic music .. as anyone who is truly familiar with the full scope of his tremendous creative output would know.

Inori is a peculiar piece. When I first heard it 30 years ago or so, I was shocked at how tuneful and old-fashioned parts of it seemed; at the time, I remember wondering if Stockhausen had been channelling Tchaikovsky or Mantovani. But over the years, I've warmed to it. Its distinctive, tightly focused sound world, bright, glittering and always utterly transparent, is vividly realised. The opening half-hour can be a drawn-out ordeal if you're not in the mood for it, but if you're in the right frame of mind, its obsessiveness can be hypnotic. I heard a live performance in the Barbican in London in 2009 when I was going through a bad time, and I left the hall feeling oddly uplifted and comforted.

[snyprrr]

Another piece that is punctuated by silences is Inori - though the parts with notes are longer than the silences.  Like much Contemporary music it is organized around s single note (Dutilleux's "notes-pivot") - so much so much so as to fit the naive, uneducated definition of tonality. I suppose the first four parts are meant as a slow preparation for and build-up toward the more climactic parts. Thus, it is not till near the end of the fourt part (16, Harmonie/Harmony, Echo) that some action & drama occurs. Indeed there Stockhausen displays a talent for Harmony and orchestration (i.e. the flute & wind parts), that he may have not developed as much as one might have wished, presumably because he focused most of his energy on electronics. The musical substance of the piece is rather conservative (see for instance the beginning of part 17): perhaps would it pair nicely in concert with people like Boris Blacher or Hans Pfitzner: perhaps Thielemann should check into this theory. Be it as it may, the haunting harmonies - and those haunting flutes in the background) can work like a drug on some people - but a drug whose effect might be shortened by the gimmicks - like the percussions, which are added from the outside to the music and rather simple-minded (a child could perform, them, it seems), rather than integrated into it.

I thought it was a very long piece. How can it be only one cd?

btw- this is the piece that sounds like 'ritual' music, no? written for/after Japanese?...

[gomro]

I thought it was a very long piece. How can it be only one cd?

btw- this is the piece that sounds like 'ritual' music, no? written for/after Japanese?...

I'm going to say that you're thinking of Die Jahreslauf, which was inspired by Japanese Gagaku. It's only one disc, though.

[petrarch]

Kreuzspiel [Cross-play] (1951)
for oboe, bass clarinet, piano (woodblock), percussion (3 players with 6 tom-toms, 2 tumbas or congas, 4 suspended cymbals)
Original title: Mosaik
Duration: 11'30".




In a letter dated 1 November 1952, Stockhausen outlines a proposal for a new composition for piano and three pairs of timpani: "Two entities emerge from beyond the physically describable and perceivable, into a region bounded by space and time. They are diametrically opposed." This quote grapples with the notion of explaining the birth of an idea as arising from a conjunction or annihilation of opposites, like a burst of energy created by the collision of an electron and positron, particle and anti-particle. It is also a modern formulation of a dynamic view of creation, a belief according to which the natural world is not stable in the sense of being static or inert, but dynamically stable in the sense of competing forces held in a balanced equilibrium.

This image of creative tension, of the Idea born out of a juxtaposition of antitheses, is interpreted literally in Kreuzspiel, an exercise in musical precision engineering, designed to come to life in a magical scene reminiscent of the awakening of Maria, the female automaton in Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis. Stockhausen describes this music as an example of dramatic form, in the classical sense of a developmental process governed by the arrow of time: a movement of pitches from the extremes to the center of the keyboard, where the brittle, "static" sounds of the piano come alive in the expressive, breathing tones of oboe and clarinet.

Kreuzspiel began life as a sketch for a song for high soprano voice and piano, and was subsequently revised for high female voice, male voice, and piano, before Stockhausen finally settled on the present instrumentation, originally for four percussionists, later edited down to three. Inherent in the oboe and clarinet parts is the notion of wordless vocalise. The original song was to have been based on the sound elements or phonemes that make up the name "Doris," an idea that already seems to prefigure the condensation of language out of a cloud of vowels and consonants that drives Gesang der Jünglinge. That would explain Stockhausen's original choice of percussion, tambourines and snare drums, musical equivalents of the consonants [d], [rrr], [ss] (in "Doris") and [k] and [tz] (in "Karlheinz"). After changing his mind and deciding not to include voices, Stockhausen altered his choice of percussion to sounds of "more resonance" in imitation of the natural percussiveness of the piano--the audible thump, or for the higher notes more of a click, of the hammer hitting the strings, carefully matched and imitated at various pitch levels by accompanying tom-toms and congas. All the same, they still function perfectly well in the role of attack consonants to the vowels of the solo woodwinds, the tumbas imitating [d], drum rolls [rrr] and cymbal strokes [k] and [ts].

Karel Goeyvaerts has introduced Stockhausen to register form, and also to "interversion:" Messiaen's method of varying a series by turning it inside out. The Belgian composer objected to voices in principle, on account of their "imprecision." For the same reason he would also have disapproved of approximately-pitched percussion. Stockhausen was following an alternative agenda, interpreting their imprecision as necessary "human" and "fallible" antitheses to the austere and uncompromising pitch- and time-values of the keyboard. In addition to providing a parallel complementary sound-world, the percussions serve also as an image of chronometric time, like the whirring clockwork drive of a musical box or pianola. In time-honored musical tradition, percussions also emphasize physical action, while the woodwind melodies convey emotion.

Kreuzspiel falls into three sections with introductions, link passages, and coda. In 4/8 time, MM 90, part I is preceded by a 13-measure introduction articulated by tumbas in triplets (twelve pulses per measure). In his commentary, Stockhausen remarks "each time notes and noises occur at the same point in time--which happens fairly frequently--the note in some way or other drops out of the series, alters in intensity, transposes into a different octave-register or takes a different duration from the one preordained." During the opening measures, tumbas beat out an identificatory duration series in sixteenth notes: 2-8-7-4-11-1-12-3-9-6-5-10, followed by the scale 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12, a touch reminiscent of the Asian practice of identifying the mode at the beginning of a performance. At this point the tempo changes to MM 136 and the piano part to two widely-separated lines teetering toward each other as if on stepping-stones. Each statement of the series occupies a fundamental duration unit of thirteen quarter-note beats, or 6 1/2 measures. In part III this unit changes to a duration of thirteen eighth-notes. At 28, after two statements of the duration series on tumbas, the woodwind instruments appear, and after three further rotations a woodblock signal by the pianist triggers another serial accelerando, to the mid-point of measure 52 (13 x 4). From this point the form is retrograded and inverted, so that by 91 the piano parts have retreated to the extremes of the keyboard, but with the original pitches transposed, the six highest at the beginning now lowest, and vice versa.

Part II follows without a break, introduced by a new statement of the duration series, played this time by suspended cymbals. Unlike I and III, where interest is created mainly by distributive interaction, in II the emphasis is on consolidation and coordination: here the woodwinds take a more active, leading role, an opportunity to make the two melody lines "speak" in a kind of wistful dialogue that nevertheless remains true to the dynamics of the score. The movement of notated dynamics between f and pp is a little misleading for a music intended to be performed more in the intimate style of close-microphone song. Achieving the same level of intimacy on piano can be done through a trade-off between dynamic levels and microphone positioning. In the detailed positioning of percussion around the piano, like violins around a harpsichord in a baroque orchestra, the composer makes it very clear that they are to be heard as "interior resonances" of the keyboard.

A change to compound time and return to MM 136 marks the transition to part III, announced again by an identifying statement of the duration series. This time the accents describe a crescendo, to be matched by a corresponding diminuendo at the end: yet again the music displaying the scales on which it is composed. For a pointillistic work, the suggestion of dynamic continuity in a crescendo or diminuendo is also consistent with the development of a sense of melodic continuity through the emergence of the woodwind voices. This final section combines elements of I and II, a procedure suggesting limitless possibilities of extension.

(from Robin Maconie, Other planets)

[petrarch]

Formel [Formula] (1951)
Movement for orchestra (3 oboes, 3 clarinets in a, 3 bassoons, 3 horns; 6 violins, 3 cellos, 3 double basses; vibraphone (glockenspiel), celesta, piano, harp
Original title: Studie für Orchester
Duration: 13'



Originally intended as one movement of a projected three-movement work (the other two comprising Spiel für Orchester), Formel belongs to the same family group of compositions as Kreuzspiel, Spiel, Schlagquartett, Punkte 1952 (the original version), and Kontra-Punkte. In all of these works an initial gestalt, or pattern of notes describing fundamental interval and time relationships, is transmuted by degrees into something else. The evolutionary process characteristically depicted in these early instrumental works can be compared to a game of chess, in that an initial symmetrical, static arrangement of elements is systematically rearranged, move by move, until a self-governing dynamic situation is created, leading to the eventual dominance of one element or element combination. Two types of displacement are found: a note may be dislodged vertically from its octave register, or it may be pushed aside from its original position in the time frame. In Formel, complete melody or harmony units (the latter understood as "vertical melodies" are manipulated in the same way as individual "points" in other pieces.

Formel describes a chevron-shaped unfolding from the center to the extremes of pitch, first broadening outward to fill the pitch space, then systematically withdrawing from the center (middle c, to be exact) to the outer extremes. The time-structure is based on an additive series. The expansion procedure is itself an "interversion" (or turning inside-out) of Kreuzspiel, in which the musical tendency as we recall is from the extremes to the center.

The musical aim of this quirky but interesting piece is to reconcile the x and y coordinates of musical space-time in a manner perhaps suggested by the analysis of the Webern Concerto Op. 24, a field in which melody expresses the horizontal and harmony the vertical orientation of the series. Two reciprocal processes unfold simultaneously. They are defined instrumentally by bright metallic sonorities (vibraphone alternating with celesta and glockenspiel in the high register, representing white light), and the darker textures of the remaining instruments (6 + 6 high and low winds, 6 + 6 high and low strings, high piano, and low harp) representing tone colors, or simply colors. Out of a starting point in the center, a melody for the crystalline tones of the vibraphone (shared with glockenspiel and piano) opens up by graduated stages, moving from a middle c occupying a duration of 12 sixteenth-notes, to two notes oscillating within two durations of 11 sixteenth-notes, then three notes in three units of ten, and so on, ending with a statement of a full twelve-note melody adding up to twelve units, each one sixteenth-note in duration. Simultaneously, vertical collections of notes converge, starting from a single chord of 12 notes, followed by two of eleven notes, to three of ten notes, to culminate in a succession of twelve single notes, the same as a melody. A cumulative process or stretching of a single note into a melody in the horizontal dimension, is matched to a compression or flattening of a vertical twelve-note harmony into a one-dimensional melody. A visual impression of the two processes on the page is of an accented counterpoint of layered tempi, all reducible to a common pulsation: 11 in 2, 10 in 3, ..., crossing at 7 in 6, 6 in 7, and so on (the nominal duration values are altered from time to time, to avoid too mechanical an effect). It is as though the composer had tried to create a serial idiom that would "swing" spontaneously in the manner of big band jazz, and then, finding it didn't work quite as intended, set the piece aside. When the score was finally published in 1971, the precisely notated tempo-structure had been overlaid with a thick layer of expression marks: "moderate"-"slow down"-"not too fast"-"broaden out"-"much faster!"-"very slow", etc.

Despite a feeling of awkwardness, this is an intriguing piece, not only because it is Stockhausen's first "formula" composition before Mantra, but also because the relation of rigid structural durations and more fluid internal figurations makes it a significant precursor of Gruppen, and eventually the formula structures of Licht.

(from Robin Maconie, Other planets)

[petrarch]

Schlagtrio [Percussion trio], (1952, restored in 1973)
for amplified piano and antique cymbal, and 2 x 3 timpani with triangle and bongo
Original title: Schlagquartett für Klavier und 3 x 2 Pauken
Duration: 16' at MM 90



Schlagtrio is music for a piano, in the revised version an amplified piano, playing a role similar to the piano in Kreuzspiel. In attendance are a group of six tuned timpani, a uniform timbre substituting for the various unpitched percussion of the earlier work. The timpani are tuned to quarter-tone pitches in an attempt to locate them outside the pitch regime of the piano. They correspond to six "reverberant spaces" or virtual echo chambers selectively set in vibration by a variety of carefully defined piano attacks (a rationale looking ahead to the solo tam-tam of Mikrophonie I). The timpani here are clearly passive resonators of fixed tuning, so their behavior acoustically resembles six resonating chambers.

Though couched in esoteric terms, Stockhausen's description of the work, reproduced in full in Texte 2, describes it as a process in which the two sound-worlds, one clear and precise, the other shadowy, approach from different directions, make contact, eventually overlap, then withdraw. Like Kreuzspiel, the zone of contact generates a new musical entity (a twelve-tone melody). Unlike Kreuzspiel, the contact is between the piano and percussion--in the earlier work, the "two approaching entities" were both represented in the piano part. What Stockhausen is clearly trying to achieve is a reconciliation of extreme and median values; also of interest is his modification of series durations to incorporate degrees of silence, or rests.

The work is a considerable challenge to the interpreter, but productive all the same. The revised score is less intimidating and beautiful to look at, but the real attraction lies under the surface: how to realize the interplay Stockhausen has in mind. Yet again the answer seems to lie in maximum discretion and "close-microphone" technique; timpani coperti for a quieter tone, and smaller "Mozart" sticks for sharper accentuation. The register and precise pitch of timpani raise a number of issues in principle: in their role as instruments "of the center" (imitating the role of the vibraphone in Spiel, but passive rather than active), they seem rather low in pitch, and perhaps too close in pitch to be perceived as alternates to the octave registers of the piano. The counter-objection might be that Stockhausen needed large and deep resonators to simulate actual spaces, in which case a set of "gong" drums might be the answer: wonderfully deep and ringing bass drums, a sound heard to great effect in Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie and in Bartók's Sonata for two pianos and percussion.

(from Robin Maconie, Other planets)

[Cato]

Truly, some things are self-satirical!

Concerning Eliot Carter's Symphonia Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei: I used the work with an 8th Grade Latin class a few years ago.  We translated the text, and then listened to excerpts of the music.

The reactions from the students ranged from boredom to amazement: some had interesting interpretations of how the music connected to the text.

In contrast to that exercise, I had in an earlier year played excerpts of the Stockhausen Helicopter Quartet to a European History class of high-school students, and the reaction was less than favorable.  "Was this supposed to be serious?"

I posed the counter-question: Was it perhaps a musical counterpart to some of Salvador Dali's humorous stunts of surrealism?

[petrarch]

The only thing that is well documented is Robert Craft's role in winning Stravinsky over to twelve-tone composition & Stravinsky's professed admiration for Schoenberg & Webern.  Stravinsky's interest in the music of his juniors (Boulez and Stockhausen) is obvious from his interviews with Craft but there you will find him analysing a handful of works from the outside, not looking for formulas to reproduce in his own work.

That is correct; the "influence" I was thinking of was of the sort that led to Stravinsky being accused of selling out to the younger generation and of trying to please Boulez. That the level of interest was more or less superficial is well-known, however someone recently found Boulez's series from Structures 1A among Stravinsky's sketches for Threni, even though the finished score shows no trace of it.

[PaulSC]

Maybe, instead of Stockhausen's Spaceship, we could rename the thread Karlheinz's Kindergarten, and everything would fit?

Anyway, Webern was clearly the key influence in Stravinsky's adoption of twelve-tone techniques. Another important figure was Krenek, whose method of rotating hexachords became a regular part of Stravinsky's late practice. If we see a little bit of the Darmstadt generation in Stravinsky's last works, it shouldn't surprise us, because after all there is a little bit of Stravinsky in the DNA of those younger composers. (Possibly, it's there in spite of their efforts to flush it out.)

[Cato]

Salvador Dali's sense of humor is well-documented, e.g. he said he wanted to be Charlie Chaplin AND Velasquez.   

Stockhausen of course came from the Planet Sirius      and cannot have a sense of humor!   

[snyprrr]

the humor of Stockhausen is one of the main reasons why I like it so much. Same applies to Ligeti. Boulez on the other hand, doesn't have that.

This aspect I find very interesting, because the Atomic Age Composers were all supposed to be about Science, and not any subjective human experience (which yea, Boulez does fit that 'cold' aspect), so, how they dealt with it (or not), and incorporated it,... definitely Ligeti takes the macabre route,... Stockhausen's does come across more as German Art Haus Humor, which may or may not translate?

Kagel? Bussotti? Globokar? (but,... is it funny?)

[petrarch]

Spiel für Orchester [Game for orchestra] (1952, revised 1973)
two movements for orchestra
Duration: 16'



Spiel was originally planned as second and third movements of a three-movement work, with Formel, but having completed all three, Stockhausen became dissatisfied with what he felt to be the imbalance of a thematic orientated opening followed by two pieces of a more pointillistic tendency and on a larger scale. The three pieces form a set nevertheless, each being a formulation of a relationship of a central instrument embodying light and brilliance, and the orchestra which seems to circulate around it like a planetary system and draw energy from it. In Formel and Spiel I this radiant sonority is represented by the vibraphone and glockenspiel, timbres that glisten rather than glow hot; in Spiel II Stockhausen introduces a real crystal goblet with the idea of producing a stronger and more lasting ringing tone at the work's climax. It is interesting once again to recognize the composer's attachment to imagery of a generated and reflected light at this early stage in his career.

Both pieces display a greater sense of physical energy and texture after the relative coolness of Kreuzspiel; even Formel is more lyrical, despite the extreme registers. In his layout of the orchestra, Stockhausen follows Kreuzspiel in locating the bass instruments to the bass register side of the piano, and the higher instruments to the treble. The arrangement is once again reminiscent of baroque music, and Stockhausen's primary purpose seems to be for the orchestra to be perceived as fractionated timbres of an extended keyboard.

This is Stockhausen's first unambiguously pointillistic work. Like Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et d'intensités, it can be appreciated and studied as a test case for serial practice, with the difference that Messiaen's modes are designed for the piano, and the series of Spiel for a much larger and less homogenous ensemble. A piano is a chamber instrument and also an acoustic environment defined as a uniform pitch-space, within which the performer at the keyboard can control a range of dynamic and other distinctions considerably greater than can be heard in a concert hall. An orchestra by contrast is a "broken consort": a collection of timbres defining a nonuniform pitch domain, and occupying rather than defining a much larger acoustic enclosure.

Messiaen's mode of attacks for Mode de valeurs is a rough and ready affair, even in terms of the piano, through it is worth noting how carefully he distributes dynamics and attacks through the three pitch and duration registers in the layering of the three modes. Stockhausen expended an enormous effort in selecting percussion instruments to improve on Messiaen's mode of attacks (so many revisions, in fact, that even today they are not specified in the publisher's catalogue). His attention to attacks is telling, given that Stockhausen makes no other change to Formel's textbook orchestra of 4 x 3 winds, 4 x 3 keyboard registers, and 4 x 3 strings--and with the same hole in the middle too: no violas. In Kreuzspiel, the ultimate function of the "complementary zone" percussion is limited to imitating the sound of the piano action and the hissed intake of breath of the wind instruments; for Spiel I Stockhausen reverts to an earlier plan to create a vocabulary of attack possibilities based on spoken consonants. From the 1952 manuscript of Spiel I the percussion listed consists of 6 unpitched metal resonators, one for each of the six octave registers, and 4 x 3 ancillary groups: pitched metal, wood "click," wood and drum "trill," and low drums, each of the latter centered in a defined register. For Spiel II in 1952 this formidable array of attack instruments is reduced to the glistening sounds of eleven cymbals (the glass making twelve), and four low drums (with the addition of an extra tom-tom).

The combination of a more pointillistic texture and added percussion puts Spiel already some distance ahead of Formel. Stockhausen has clearly taken on board some of Messiaen's ideas about "attack" and "resonance," and organization of register and dynamics, from Mode de valeurs.

Spiel I, of 100 measures, depicts a gradual accretion of melodic chains from atomistic "points." The tempo is a brisk 12/8 at MM 96, later altered to 120. It is a music of high contrasts between the brilliant flashes of percussion and the muted glow of the sustaining instruments: a nocturne with exploding shells. Out of a hovering background of sustained strings and ringing keyboards, one by one the wind instruments appear as if picked out by the searchlight of the vibraphone. A rising inflection in the opening measure recalls a similar gesture in Formel, but here the dynamic range ppp-ff is more extreme. In fact, extreme dynamics prove to be the rule, with the vibraphone struggling to reach sfff from the very start. Periodic repeating sixths on d#/b enter very quietly from measure 2 at both extremes of range and continue to the end. The middle ground is occupied by percussion alternating sharp attacks and pop ringing or tremolo resonances. High and low pairs predominate. A suggestion of a theme from the oboe at 21, in unison with the vibraphone, is taken up by violins at 31; gradually more links are added to the chain until at 42 the vibraphone articulates a complete series minus the b natural, which continues to ring on celesta and piano. At 40 strings sustain high and low pitches, and at 49 the vibraphone begins a statement of the series in two-note groups, provoking a full entry of percussion in their different periodicities. At 56 the vibraphone is more "pointed" and sharp fff pitches on strings and woodwinds begin a process that leads to gradually more sustained pitches collecting in the mid-range, restoring uneasy calm.

Spiel II, of 114 measures, is visibly a leap ahead technically. In 4/2, with a given tempo of MM 48 (altered in performance to MM 40), this movement begins quietly with sustained ppp pitched and unpitched percussion in three parts at extremes of high and low register, a resonant background out of which point and group formations condense and are transferred to wind and strings. The distribution of elements within the pitch space reaches a maximum at measure 56, the midpoint in the original score, where the clear crystalline tone of the glass was originally due to ring out, a moment of climax after which the music would decline to a calm ending. For the premiere performance under Hans Rosbaud the valuable crystal goblet donated for the purpose was struck rather too vigorously with a metal beater and shattered. That the premiere ended in confusion at this point is a story that  has passed into myth; according to Stockhausen, he and Rosbaud had already decided to curtail the performance there, though it had not been their intention to mark the conditional ending so unexpectedly.

(from Robin Maconie, Other planets)

[MDL]

33.57
Musik Im Bauch ("Music in the Belly")
for 6 percussionists & music boxes

I borrowed this from a record library in Manchester in the early 1980s, recorded it on cassette and gave it a few whirls.

I didn't get on with it at all.

Having not heard it for a quarter of a century (and apart from a lot of boring swishing and tinkling, I can't remember a thing about it) I am obviously ill placed to to comment. But Stockhausen certainly had his off days (Helicopter Quartet, anyone?), and I think Musik Im Bauch is one of his less interesting works.

[petrarch]

Sirius is majestic, and regal, a truly stellar work, a glittering jewel in the crown of the composers achievements. -Justin Patrick

And totally insufferable, nowadays as much as 20 years ago when I saw it live (the pre-concert talk was good though).

[snyprrr]

re-visiting it with fresh ears

A....HA!!!

[petrarch]

Trans is another work of his that does absolutely nothing for me ..

Same here; it may have to be heard live to be fully appreciated (like Inori and most of Licht, I would venture).

[MDL]

Trans is another work of his that does absolutely nothing for me ..

NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!

Oh, well, each to their own. I adore Trans and was thrilled to see it live in 2008.