The Primer: Stockhausen
- Issue #154 (December '96) | Essays
- By: Barry Witherden | Featuring: Karlheinz Stockhausen
- Printable version
In the first of an occasional series, we offer a neophyte’s guide to the must-have recordings of some of the names we like to drop a lot. This month, Barry Witherden tackles the avant garde Tonmeister, Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Karlheinz Stockhausen fulfils a seminal role in 20th century music, and there is no doubt in my mind – or his – that he will be equally revered and vilified in the 21st century and beyond. Starting out from Teutonic serialism, he fashioned a sound world uniquely his own: magical, mystic, uncompromising. His philosophical beliefs feed obtrusively into his art, as they should. He insists he is merely the channel for music, while accepting the kudos due a creator. That underlying conflict runs through his work. He will eagerly employ chance and performer discretion in his compositions, yet set strict limits, specific guidelines which ensure that the product is unmistakeably Stockhausen. Apparently secure in certainty, his business has been paradox, and the reconciliation of supposed incompatibilities, He invented World Music: in Kurzwellen and Hymnen, he literally plucked sounds from the air, drawing, from the celestial sphere of shortwave radio frequencies, essences of most cultures having access to the radio. In the stunning “Telemusik”, he went beyond collage to meld music from countless traditions into a startling, unique, fertile hybrid.
He has been at the centre of European music for five decades, studying with Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer, teaching Cornelius Cardew, Tim Souster, Kevin Volans, influencing Miles David, John Lennon, Philip Glass, magnetising, fascinating and/or exasperating berio, Boulez, Cage, Copland, Globokar, Kagel, Ligeti, Maderna, Nono, Penderecki, Pousseur… The list is endless, the selection arbitrary.
Chore Fur Doris/Choral/Drei Lieder/Sonatine/Kreuzspiel
(Stockhausen Verlag 1 CD)
Kontra-Punkte is Stockhausen’s official Opus 1, but in the early 70s, he admitted a number of earlier works into the authorised canon. All of the pieces on this CD, from 1950-1, pre-date Kontra-Punkte. Sonatine for violin and piano pays homage to Schoenberg. Chore and Choral would not obtrude at a Three Choirs Festival. The song texts in Drei Lieder are by Stockhausen himself. Already the composer inhabits his own mythology, as he would, more dramatically, in “Licht”. The String Man has torn his hands…has already sat a long time in the rain…his ear perceives…the never played”. Stockhausen’s is not the human-centric universe of the Romantics, where even the natural elements are projections of human passions. As early as “Kreuzspiel” he was looking into the cosmos, reflecting the stars in the use of “sound-points”, but perhaps the main significance of this piece lies in its reaching towards total serialism, systematising sets of pitches and durations.
Elecktronische Musik 1952-60
(Stockhausen Verlag 3 CD)
Kontakte
(Wergo 6009 CD)
This CD collects crucial documents in the evolution of electronic music. Electronic Studies I & II” attempted to apply serial principles to timbre and frequency, areas which resisted control in instrumental music. From this perspective their success was limited but, as music, Study I at least is a triumph. Despite the straightjacket of serial methodology, this alien song from a mistakenly-imagined future blooms richly and freely out of the ether.
Kontakte exploits differing perceptions of rhythm according to the speed at which they are presented. Stockhausen used it to develop Moment Form, where each sound event, though part of a structure or process, is viabe in itself, not dependent on that process or structure for its validity. (The Verlag CD features the purely electronic version, while the Wergo version adds piano and percussion soloists reacting to the taped elements, with David Tudor instead of Aloys Kontarsky on piano.)
He has been at the centre of European music for five decades, studying with Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer, teaching Cornelius Cardew, Tim Souster, Kevin Volans, influencing Miles David, John Lennon, Philip Glass, magnetising, fascinating and/or exasperating berio, Boulez, Cage, Copland, Globokar, Kagel, Ligeti, Maderna, Nono, Penderecki, Pousseur… The list is endless, the selection arbitrary.
Chore Fur Doris/Choral/Drei Lieder/Sonatine/Kreuzspiel
(Stockhausen Verlag 1 CD)
Kontra-Punkte is Stockhausen’s official Opus 1, but in the early 70s, he admitted a number of earlier works into the authorised canon. All of the pieces on this CD, from 1950-1, pre-date Kontra-Punkte. Sonatine for violin and piano pays homage to Schoenberg. Chore and Choral would not obtrude at a Three Choirs Festival. The song texts in Drei Lieder are by Stockhausen himself. Already the composer inhabits his own mythology, as he would, more dramatically, in “Licht”. The String Man has torn his hands…has already sat a long time in the rain…his ear perceives…the never played”. Stockhausen’s is not the human-centric universe of the Romantics, where even the natural elements are projections of human passions. As early as “Kreuzspiel” he was looking into the cosmos, reflecting the stars in the use of “sound-points”, but perhaps the main significance of this piece lies in its reaching towards total serialism, systematising sets of pitches and durations.
Elecktronische Musik 1952-60
(Stockhausen Verlag 3 CD)
Kontakte
(Wergo 6009 CD)
This CD collects crucial documents in the evolution of electronic music. Electronic Studies I & II” attempted to apply serial principles to timbre and frequency, areas which resisted control in instrumental music. From this perspective their success was limited but, as music, Study I at least is a triumph. Despite the straightjacket of serial methodology, this alien song from a mistakenly-imagined future blooms richly and freely out of the ether.
Kontakte exploits differing perceptions of rhythm according to the speed at which they are presented. Stockhausen used it to develop Moment Form, where each sound event, though part of a structure or process, is viabe in itself, not dependent on that process or structure for its validity. (The Verlag CD features the purely electronic version, while the Wergo version adds piano and percussion soloists reacting to the taped elements, with David Tudor instead of Aloys Kontarsky on piano.)