Stockhausen's Spaceship

[Uatu]

Hey Uatu .. what is your favorite piece of music from the Lichtwerke franchise .. and what is your favorite Opera proper?

That's a tough question.  It changes alot.  It's like saying your favorite Beatles song or your favorite movie star (fav Shostakovich string quartet?).  I suppose in recent times I've really enjoyed Der Kinderfanger/Entfuhrung.  That's just so much fun (and has a great tune).  Lucifers Tanz is always good.  I probably need to make a list of top 5 later.  My favorite text is Kindheit from Donnerstag.  If you have the libretto you know what I mean.  It's brutal, funny and surreal.  It's a real pity it's not more available to the public. 

Fav opera - again changes depending on my mood.  Last year I would have said DIENSTAG, but I'm kind of getting over-exposed with that, so now maybe SAMSTAG (for nostalgia).  Or MONTAG - that's really deep.  FREITAG is always good to put on anytime. very easy to follow.  After studying Welt-Parlament and Orchester-Finalisten I've been getting more into MITTWOCH, lately.  SONNTAG is another mountain I'm eager to climb, it's impenetrability makes it very attractive to me.  What was the question?

And you?

[Uatu]

I've never viewed any of it as impenetrable, it is hardly that. More later ..

Ah yeah, "impenetrable" may have been a little hyperbolic - make that "strange and fascinating"

[Uatu]

Honestly .. I've never heard it as "strange" either.

I say "strange" as the opposite of "normal" or "typical".  I love strange things.  Beethoven's Grosse Fugue is pretty strange, and I've even analyzed that piece like 3 times already!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TjEZ-xpk9o

[ibanezmonster]

Been listening to a few different Stockhausen works lately... not sure if I can say I enjoy them, but whatever. Just looking for something different. Never really cared for him, but I don't hate his music and it's better than listening to nothing when doing homework. 

[ibanezmonster]

Which ones .. ?

Relistened to Mantra after probably a decade, listened to Inori today, Momente yesterday, Trans, Kreuzspiel, and possibly another that I've forgotten. Currently 22' into Mixtur (2003).

Momente was the first Stockhausen piece I can say that I actually enjoyed, but it seems like there's two versions. Maybe if I spent more time understanding his catalogue, I'd get the difference, but the one I listened to was over an hour and 50 minutes, while I see another version for ~54 minutes.

[EigenUser]

Relistened to Mantra after probably a decade, listened to Inori today, Momente yesterday, Trans, Kreuzspiel, and possibly another that I've forgotten. Currently 22' into Mixtur (2003).

Momente was the first Stockhausen piece I can say that I actually enjoyed, but it seems like there's two versions. Maybe if I spent more time understanding his catalogue, I'd get the difference, but the one I listened to was over an hour and 50 minutes, while I see another version for ~54 minutes.

Other than that stupid irritating yelling in the middle of the piece, I actually really like Mantra quite a bit.

[not edward]

Relistened to Mantra after probably a decade, listened to Inori today, Momente yesterday, Trans, Kreuzspiel, and possibly another that I've forgotten. Currently 22' into Mixtur (2003).

Momente was the first Stockhausen piece I can say that I actually enjoyed, but it seems like there's two versions. Maybe if I spent more time understanding his catalogue, I'd get the difference, but the one I listened to was over an hour and 50 minutes, while I see another version for ~54 minutes.

Short version of the long story:
- First there was an initial 1962 performing version with only some of the intended material.
- There was also a 1964 version with some further additions (this is the 54-minute recording on Wergo).
- And a 1972 version with many further additions, including a completely new 25-minute first mo(ve)ment (this was recorded on DG).
- And a 1998 revision (recorded on Stockhausen Verlag).

[ibanezmonster]

Short version of the long story:
- First there was an initial 1962 performing version with only some of the intended material.
- There was also a 1964 version with some further additions (this is the 54-minute recording on Wergo).
- And a 1972 version with many further additions, including a completely new 25-minute first mo(ve)ment (this was recorded on DG).
- And a 1998 revision (recorded on Stockhausen Verlag).

Thanks. I really hate when composers do this. Boulez and Bruckner, for example, don't know when to finish a work...

[petrarch]

Thanks. I really hate when composers do this. Boulez and Bruckner, for example, don't know when to finish a work...

Boulez's works are almost always in a completed state by the time they are performed, regardless of later revisions. It is part of his philosophy of composition to revise works--they are organic and evolve over time and it certainly does not mean earlier versions are lesser finished or valuable, even if it does mean that work abc from year x is potentially quite different from the version of year y.

[ritter]

In an interview some years ago in a French magazine, Boulez was asked whether he had any regrets. His reply, much to the intreviewer's surprise, was that he had not been "adventurous" enough (perhaps the exact word was "inventive", I don't remember well). He then went on to say that Stockhausen had been much more adventurous. Later on, he qualified his statement by adding: "I said he was more adventurous than me, not that he was self-critical". Elsewhere, Boulez had acknowledged Stockhausen as "his only peer".

I think this more or less sums up both men's approach to composition: Stockhausen, on one hand, deployed his inventiveness on a vast (the Stockhausen Verlag CD edition in still incomplete at volume 103!) and fascinating body of works, but of variable quality, while Boulez's output is much more limited (13 CDs in the DG box of last year), but with a painstakingly slow gestation process, subject to constant revision, withdrawals from the catalogue (Polyphonie X, Poésie pour pouvoir) or with works left in fragmentary state (the Third piano sonata).

[petrarch]

Published on Sep 9, 2014
Bass singer and Stockhausen collaborator Nicholas Isherwood discusses performing the interplanetary
Sirius at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music alongside sound artist Myles Mumford.

With Sirius, I really think he went off the deep end. It was quite an excessive piece. He told us that he came from Sirius, that he didn't come from planet earth but from the stars. Many people, myself included, wondered what got into him. This ego tripping. Looking back, I think he more or less had his feet on the ground until the end of the 60s.

[snyprrr]

WOO HOO!!

PARTY TIME!!

EXCELLENT!!

STOCKHAUSEN THREAD TURNS 100!!



EVERYONE IS OBLIGED TO LISTEN TO AT LEAST 100 SECONDS OF STOCKHAUSEN AND RE[PORT!

[snyprrr]

nailed it

[snyprrr]

not only that...

[snyprrr]

this is...

[snyprrr]

Post "1984"!![/u]

[Karl Henning]

Livin' large!

[Uatu]

Analysis of MICHAELs REISE (Michael's Journey Round the Earth).

http://stockhausenspace.blogspot.com/2014/09/opus-48-michaels-reise-um-die-erde.html

     This was one of the first pieces from LICHT that I really enjoyed, since both Acts 1 and 3 of DONNERSTAG were too text-heavy for me to really "get" when I first heard them.  It's too bad the video from the Milan performance is not available, I actually prefer the old school "papier mache and wires" aesthetic to all the digital screens people are using nowadays.  Also the usage of 9/11 footage for the NY part by MusikFabric is..eh..somewhat questionable in taste I think, all things considered (one would think that any Stockhausen production would shy away from any kind of evocation of the 9/11 attack, for fear of promulgating more false rumours).

     But anyways, MICHAELs REISE is a really fun trumpet concerto.  Though the initial structural idea of using the 3 formulas of MICHAEL, EVE and LUCIFER may seem a bit sterile and "formulaic" , the way Stockhausen orchestrates the whole thing and molds it into a very accessible music drama is extremely well done and effective.  The trumpet and double bass duo is a nice highlight as well, probably another example of Stockhausen "breaking out" of his own structures.

[Uatu]

I have 3 versions on my iPod: Edition 30, the ECM soloists one and the one from MusikFabrik.  They each have their own strengths.  Sometimes the trombones come out more clearly on one or the double bass comes out more clearly in another.  In any case this is a really ferocious work as far as balancing out the forces so that everything is heard.  The only way I could confirm/contest some of the things Stockhausen claimed were happening was by following the score and finding all the formulas myself. 

Analysis aside, I think it's one of the best "programmatic" works ever written.  Up there with the Berlioz Symphony Fantastique.

[Uatu]

Ring modulated Orchestra

MIXTUR

http://stockhausenspace.blogspot.com/2014/09/opus-16-mixtur.html


     The very first time I heard MIXTUR I actually thought there was something wrong with the record.  It really sounded to me like the vinyl grooves had deteriorated in some way.  Over time I got used to it and became very fascinated by the new textures obtained from the ring-modulated instrumental groups.  However I personally feel the effect works better in the later piano pieces, such as in MANTRA or MICHAEL's REISE.  Somehow the timbral complexity of the orchestral instruments almost makes the additional ring modulated sounds almost too complex for me.  However what I probably enjoy even more than the ring modulation is the orchestral writing itself.  In fact I think MIXTUR could stand perfectly well on its own even without the electronics.  Stockhausen uses a real smorgasbord of textural composition techniques to get these 20 Moments to sound independent and have their own identity.  In fact I may like this collection of Moments even more than the primary "moment form" work, MOMENTE.  In any case, there are many depths to plumb in this piece.

Refrigerator circuit.  No wait - it's MIXTUR!