Topic: Stockhausen's Spaceship

[Al Moritz]

By the way, nice title for this thread, Cato.

[bwv 1080]

Stockhausen wrote on of the few early electronic pieces I really like - Gesang der Jünglinge

It is available to listen here:

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/werke/gesang-der-juenglinge/audio/1/

[Cato]

By the way, nice title for this thread, Cato.

No problem!

And please tell us more about your personal conversations with Herr Stockhausen!

Or are they too personal?!   

[Cato]

Concerning Stockhausen's ideas on various concepts:

http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/stockhauseninterview.html

See above for the entire interview.


Q: How do you see the dichotomy between noise and sound?

A. When I worked in the electronic music studio I was, as I said before, also studying phonetics. And in phonetics there is at the beginning only quantity, which means how many vibrations are superimposed, how close together they are in order to produce a voiceless consonant, a half-consonant, or a vowel. And when I started to study phonetics, I made a whole series of sounds between what we call "pure sounds", like sin-wave sounds, and spectra, which are harmonic spectra of overtones of harmonics. And on the other hand, colored noise, for example. So I used a series from one of these sound elements to another one in order to transform one into the other. That is very interesting to me.

I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language. There's a tribe in Africa, the Xhosa; they make only clicks (imitates sound). So I used these clicks, and I had even to transcribe the language; I didn't know at all what it meant. Language is already extremely rich concerning all kinds of sounds. We can sneeze, we can bark, we can make or imitate all the sounds in a factory, traffic, animals, etc. And I became aware that this can all become musical material. Already after 22, 23 years I knew that the traditional limitation of musical sounds was finished and that we enter now a new era where everything, all the acoustic world, can be transformed into art. That is the point. So that in the future, when we walk through an airport or a large hall, what we hear is artfully shaped as sound, and not just a mixture of garbage. I've even proposed at a certain moment in my life to invent "sound swallowers" so that one could make certain sections in a city silent. There would be microphones everywhere with a computer. One produces the counter-wave of the sounds which are produced. And then, even if you speak, one cannot hear anything. And there should be only areas in a city where you can talk or scream, whatever you like, but in most of the parts there would be no sound, because there would be sound swallowers everywhere.


Q: What is the role of intuition in your work?

A. Intuition transforms. . . every normal action into something special that one doesn't know oneself. So I am a craftsman, I can start working with sounds, with apparatuses and find all sorts of new combinations. But when I want to create something that amazes me and moves me, I need intuition. I don't mean an intellectual idea. I need a sound vision, or I need to become involved, to come into a state where I do something without knowing why I do it. Very often everything else is in order, but then I touch my well-constructed music or section of music, and I change something; and as a matter of fact, I change what I thought was very well constructed, because I feel I must do that. And then something happens every now and then which is amazing and which is also for me unknown. Intuition comes, according to my own experience, from a higher world. It is an influence from the cosmos, into our human mind.

Q: So this involves a lot of mathematics?

A. No, mathematics is a mixture of brain work, and in the best results, of intuition. One needs to have an intuitive flash of light in order to find a new formula, which then can produce a lot of derivations and results. But everyone needs intuition, not only artists, if one wants to go beyond the normal animal nature that we have.

The reference to the Xhosa tribe explains sections of the LICHT-cycle where characters are clicking and popping and making other mouth noises which sound odd , if not obscene!   

[uffeviking]

Where can I buy a sound swallower? I wonder if he ever followed up with the idea and put them on the shelve of an internet Karl-Heinz-Öko-Store. All kinds of areas in my town I want soundless! 

Thanks for the interview post!   

[Cato]

Where can I buy a sound swallower? I wonder if he ever followed up with the idea and put them on the shelve of an internet Karl-Heinz-Öko-Store. All kinds of areas in my town I want soundless! 

Thanks for the interview post!   

No problem!   

And the idea Stockhausen mentions seems to be the same one behind the Bose "Noise-Cancelling Headphones": they work best of course when the noise is fairly uniform.  I have a pair for airplane rides.

I do think "noise-cancelling" is overstated: noise-reducing would be more on target.

http://www.bose.com/controller?event=view_product_page_event&product=qc2_headphones_index

[karlhenning]

Your noise on this flight has been cancelled . . . .

[Mark G. Simon]

I have an interview of Stockhausen when he was in his early 60's, and he comes across as rather matter-of-fact about lunatic things e.g. his obsession with basset horns,

From my point of view, an obsession with basset horns is quite understandable, commendable in fact.

But isn't Stockhausen more obsessed with the basset horn player?

[Cato]

From my point of view, an obsession with basset horns is quite understandable, commendable in fact.

But isn't Stockhausen more obsessed with the basset horn player?

I have indeed wondered about the cultic aspect of Stockhausen and his basset-horn beauty Kathinka Pasveer, along with the others (Suzanne Stephens, etc.)

For pictures and and interesting commentary:

  http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco10/stockhausen/39.html

[karlhenning]

Music of the (pa)Sveers?

[Al Moritz]

I have indeed wondered about the cultic aspect of Stockhausen and his basset-horn beauty Kathinka Pasveer, along with the others (Suzanne Stephens, etc.)

For pictures and and interesting commentary:

  http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco10/stockhausen/39.html

The basset-horn beauty (basset-horn, clarinet, bass clarinet) is Suzanne Stephens, Kathinka Pasveer is the flute beauty (flute, alto flute, picccolo flute).

[Cato]

The basset-horn beauty (basset-horn, clarinet, bass clarinet) is Suzanne Stephens, Kathinka Pasveer is the flute beauty (flute, alto flute, picccolo flute).

Okay, I still wonder about Stockhausen's capricorny capacity up there on that Zukunftsmusikberg in Kuerten, Deutschland!

[Brewski]

Via a great blog called The Rambler, here's Paul Hillier in The Guardian, talking about Stimmung.

--Bruce

[longears]

Via a great blog called The Rambler, here's Paul Hillier in The Guardian, talking about Stimmung.

Interesting article, Bruce.  I used to love Stimmung, but probably haven't heard it in 30+ years.  Hillier's new recording might prove very interesting, indeed!  Thanks for the heads up.

[Cato]

Interesting article, Bruce.  I used to love Stimmung, but probably haven't heard it in 30+ years.  Hillier's new recording might prove very interesting, indeed!  Thanks for the heads up.

Dude!  Is that Professor Irwin Corey under your name?!   

[longears]

Who else but the man who accepted the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow on behalf of Thomas Pynchon?

[Cato]

Who else but the man who accepted the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow on behalf of Thomas Pynchon?

Somehow completely appropriate for some of Stockhausen's pronouncements throughout the years!

And what is he up to these days?

[Stockhausen] has already started on another vast project. It's called Klang ("Sound"), a cycle of works based on the 24 hours of the day. The first part is already finished and will premiere in Milan Cathedral on May 5. As part of his research for the other 23 pieces, Stockhausen says he is studying the different qualities possessed by the various hours of the day, as if savouring their tastes before capturing them in sound.

It seems a breathtakingly audacious undertaking for someone of his age but he seems to need these huge tests. You get the sense of a man actually trying to peer into time itself.

"To compose a large project of music is fascinating because I am divining, as I have in all my works since the beginning, larger organisms from nucleuses," he explains.

"Each work is one nucleus, then I develop the nucleus, make it grow in all aspects."

See:

http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=25366

[gomro]

Interesting article, Bruce.  I used to love Stimmung, but probably haven't heard it in 30+ years.  Hillier's new recording might prove very interesting, indeed!  Thanks for the heads up.

Stockhausen's own web-site has just added a CD of his latest electronic piece, Cosmic Pulses, to the roster. www.stockhausen.org

[Cato]

Stockhausen's own web-site has just added a CD of his latest electronic piece, Cosmic Pulses, to the roster. www.stockhausen.org

Scroll down to see that as part of Klang Stockhausen has actually composed with regular notes on regular music paper a Veni, Creator Spiritus!   

[gomro]

Scroll down to see that as part of Klang Stockhausen has actually composed with regular notes on regular music paper a Veni, Creator Spiritus!   

Yes he has -- under the title of Freude, for two harps and two singing harpists. Harpites. Harpies? ANYWAY, there's a rather lengthy video excerpt of that work posted at the Stockhausen website, Marianne Smit and Esther Kooi performing.
http://www.stockhausen.org/joy_skk_2006.mov